Space Jam: A New Legacy gave the Toon Squad an upgraded 3D look, which was justified in the first trailer. The Looney Tunes are ready to take over the big screen again in an adventure that will follow the steps of their biggest one back in 1996, in Joe Pytka’s Space Jam. The movie was a mix of live-action and animation which brought together two very different worlds: the Looney Tunes and professional basketball, a mix that critics weren’t happy with, but viewers welcomed with open arms, and so Space Jam amassed a cult following through the years.
Space Jam told a fictionalized account of what happened in Michael Jordan’s career between his retirement from the NBA in 1993 and his return in 1995, in which he was enlisted by the Looney Tunes to help them win a basketball game against a group of aliens called Monstars, who wanted to enslave them and use them as attractions for their theme park. 25 years later comes a sequel titled Space Jam: A New Legacy, now with Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James leading the Toon Squad in a story that mixes family, basketball, the Looney Tunes, an evil algorithm, and which will give Bugs Bunny and company a brand new 3D look.
When the first official images of Space Jam 2 were released, fans were excited to see LeBron James next to Bugs Bunny and other members of the Toon Squad sporting their new jerseys, but they were also quick to point out that the team got a brand new look. In Space Jam, the Toon Squad (along with the Monstars) were digitally drawn but kept their 2D style, while the sequel opted for a full 3D look. While this was understandable given the “new legacy” part of the movie along with it adapting to the modern world, the first trailer for Space Jam 2 already justified this change by making it part of the story.
The trailer sees LeBron entering a virtual space where he meets a rogue algorithm named AI-G Rhythm (Don Cheadle), who tells him that in order to rescue his son, he will have to win a basketball game against his team, and so sends him to the “rejects”, a.k.a. Tune World, where LeBron lands as a cartoon version of himself – opposite from Michael Jordan’s arrival to this same world, where he landed as his human version. Once the Toon Squad is together and ready to play, LeBron and the team go from cartoon to human/3D, as they’re now out of Tune World and in the virtual space where AI-G Rhythm and other characters from different Warner Bros. franchises co-exist. This gives the 3D change an in-universe reason to be, beyond the fact that the Looney Tunes would have had to modernize themselves to fit the present world.
The Toon Squad went through other upgrades aside from their 3D look, with Lola Bunny not being sexualized, Granny going from cheerleader in the first movie to actual player in the sequel, and more. While it kept the essence and basic premise of the original movie, Space Jam: A New Legacy is already very different from its predecessor, and offers a whole new adventure for both old fans of the Toon Squad and a new generation of viewers.
