Gosh, no, not THAT long ago. I created Buck Hopper in 2008 and the FBA as an open project in 2009. But even that many years after the release of the original Space Jam most everyone saw basketball-playing rabbit and immediately thought of the movie. Space Jam occupies that truly unique place of being utterly awful in quality and yet completely embedded in culture like Red Dawn, Weekend at Bernie's, and Point Break.
The bitter truth is that the overlap between cartoon fans and sports fans is too small to overcome Hollywood's devotion to Canoga Park's 17-year-olds, so the truly basketball-focused cartoon I've dreamed of is unlikely to be produced, even if b-ball's popularity is growing rapidly worldwide. I had hoped this version would show more courage than 1996's, but instead it wasted a genuinely more interested NBA player on a showcase of generic computer-inspired CGI that would be more at home at a remake of WarGames or the Matrix.
And, man, I never thought I'd see a movie squeeze more from its studio's IP vault than Ralph Breaks the Internet. Well done, WB. Well done.
Gosh, no, not THAT long ago. I created Buck Hopper in 2008 and the FBA as an open project in 2009. But even that many years after the release of the original Space Jam most everyone saw basketball-playing rabbit and immediately thought of the movie. Space Jam occupies that truly unique place of being utterly awful in quality and yet completely embedded in culture like Red Dawn, Weekend at Bernie's, and Point Break.
The bitter truth is that the overlap between cartoon fans and sports fans is too small to overcome Hollywood's devotion to Canoga Park's 17-year-olds, so the truly basketball-focused cartoon I've dreamed of is unlikely to be produced, even if b-ball's popularity is growing rapidly worldwide. I had hoped this version would show more courage than 1996's, but instead it wasted a genuinely more interested NBA player on a showcase of generic computer-inspired CGI that would be more at home at a remake of WarGames or the Matrix.
And, man, I never thought I'd see a movie squeeze more from its studio's IP vault than Ralph Breaks the Internet. Well done, WB. Well done.
...and that's a swish.