Everything was going so well. “You never let me do what I wanna do, Dad. You never let me just do me,” LeBron James’s son (Cedric Joe) said to James in the first trailer (below) for Space Jam: A New Legacy. Sure. Fine! A classic Troy Bolton framing device. Then James got sucked into the “Server-verse” of supercomputers where the Warner Bros. archives are held (how many Warner Bros. execs workshopped that idea?) and teamed up with the Looney Tunes characters to play ball against evil computer Don Cheadle while Hanna-Barbera characters, King Kong, and the Iron Giant all watched. It was Ready Player Toon, and we had come to accept that.
But then. But then the second trailer dropped (above), and it was more of the same with some nice new footage. (Lady Goons on the Goon Squad! This really is the 21st century!) Until the trailer showed its hand, revealing that Space Jam: A New Legacy is going to be a lazier project than we could have anticipated. Yes, you already know what I’m going to say. CGI Daffy Duck pulls a sarcastic face and says, “Well, that happened.” The laziest of lazy comebacks. Matthew Perry ca. 1994 called, and he’d like his one-liners back. And to make matters worse, Granny says, “Haters gonna hate!” Ma’am! Enough! This IP-fest hits theaters and drops on HBO Max simultaneously on July 16.
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