Space Jam
Space Jam is a 1996 American live-action/animated sports comedy film directed by Joe Pytka and written by Leo Benvenuti, Steve Rudnick, Timothy Harris, and Herschel Weingrod. The film stars basketball player Michael Jordan as a fictional version of himself; the live-action cast also includes Wayne Knight and Theresa Randle, as well as cameos by Bill Murray and several NBA players, while Billy West, Dee Bradley Baker, Kath Soucie and Danny DeVito headline the voice cast. The film follows Jordan as he is brought out of retirement by the Looney Tunes characters to help them win a basketball match against invading aliens intent on enslaving them as amusement park attractions.
This article is about the film. For other uses, see Space Jam (disambiguation).Space Jam
- November 10, 1996 (Los Angeles)
- November 15, 1996 (United States)
88 minutes
United States
English
$80 million[3]
$250.2 million[4]
Space Jam was the first film to be produced by Warner Bros. Feature Animation and was released theatrically in the United States on November 15, 1996, by Warner Bros. under its Family Entertainment label.[1] The film received mixed reviews from critics, who were divided over its premise of combining Jordan and his profession with the Looney Tunes characters, while the technical achievements of its intertwining of live-action and animation were praised.[5] It was a commercial success, grossing over $250 million worldwide to become the highest-grossing basketball film of all time until 2022, as well the tenth-highest-grossing film of 1996.
A standalone sequel, Space Jam: A New Legacy, was released in 2021, with LeBron James in the lead role. The sequel was met with negative reviews and failed to match the commercial success of the first film.
Plot[edit]
In 1973, a young Michael Jordan tells his father, James, about his dreams of playing in the NBA. Twenty years later, following James’ death, Jordan retires from basketball to pursue a career in baseball.
In outer space, the amusement park Moron Mountain is in decline. The proprietor, Mr. Swackhammer, learns of the Looney Tunes from the Nerdlucks, his quintet of minions, and orders them to abduct the Tunes to serve as attractions. The Nerdlucks enter the Tunes' universe hidden in the center of the earth and hold them hostage before Bugs Bunny convinces them to allow the Tunes to defend themselves. Tunes challenge the Nerdlucks to a basketball game, noting the latter's small stature. After seeing a documentary about basketball, the Nerdlucks infiltrate various NBA games, stealing the talents of Charles Barkley, Shawn Bradley, Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, and Muggsy Bogues. They use these talents to transform into gigantic, muscular versions of themselves known as the "Monstars".
Realizing they need help, the Looney Tunes pull Jordan into their universe as he golfs with Bill Murray, Larry Bird, and Jordan's assistant, Stan Podolak. Bugs explains their situation to Jordan, who is initially reluctant to help. However, Jordan agrees after a confrontation with the Monstars, and forms the "Tune Squad” with the Tunes; they are joined by Lola Bunny, with whom Bugs is enamored. Jordan is initially unprepared, and sends Bugs and Daffy Duck to his house to obtain his basketball gear. Jordan's children aid them and agree to keep the game a secret, while Stan, searching for Jordan, notices Bugs and Daffy, follows them to their world, and joins the team. Meanwhile, the incapacity of the five players results in a national panic that culminates in the season's suspension. The players try to restore their skills through various methods, with no success.
The game between the Tune Squad and the Monstars commences, with Swackhammer arriving to observe. The Monstars dominate the first half, lowering the Tune Squad's morale. During halftime, Stan surreptitiously learns how the Monstars obtained their talent and informs the Tune Squad. Disguising a bottle of water as "secret stuff", Bugs and Jordan motivate the Tune Squad, who improve in the second half using their cartoon physics. During a time-out, Jordan raises the stakes with Swackhammer: if the Tune Squad wins, the Monstars must relinquish their stolen talent, and if the Monstars win, Jordan will become a new Moron Mountain attraction. On Swackhammer's orders, the Monstars become increasingly violent, injuring most of the Tune Squad.
With ten seconds left in the game, the Tune Squad is down by one point and one player, with only Jordan, Bugs, Lola, and Daffy still able to play. Murray unexpectedly arrives and joins the team. In the final seconds, Jordan gains the ball with Murray's assistance but is pulled back by the Monstars. On Bugs' advice, Jordan uses cartoon physics to extend his arm and achieve a slam dunk, winning the match with a buzzer beater. After Swackhammer scolds the Monstars for their failure, Jordan helps them realize that they only served him because they were once smaller. They insert Swackhammer inside a missile that sends him to the moon. After relinquishing their stolen talent, the Nerdlucks decide to join the Tunes. Jordan and Stan return to Earth and return the talent to the five players, whose remarks convince Jordan to return to the NBA.
Animation and design[edit]
Technology[edit]
Space Jam was one of the earliest animated productions to use digital technology. 2D animation and backgrounds were first done on paper with pencil at the Sherman Oaks studio before being scanned into Silicon Graphics Image files through Cambridge Animation Systems' software Animo and were then sent to Cinesite via a File Transfer Protocol, for its team to touch upon, digitally color, and composite into shots in Photoshop before being sent back to Sherman Oaks.[22] Unlike previous projects that used the Cineon digital film system, Cinesite used the quicker Inferno and Flame systems for Space Jam.[22] The film's Holly render farm consisted of 16 central processing units, four gigabytes of shared memory, and took up one million dollars of the film's budget, "on top of which the deskside boxes had 256 megabytes of RAM to splurge on whatever scene you needed to create and render," explained Privett.[27]
Cinesite had begun developing proprietary software for motion tracking when working on Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), which involved most of its shots incorporating a digital background; this made the company prepared for Space Jam, which consists of a bunch of moving camera shots with 3D backgrounds to be added.[22] The CGI backgrounds moved around with the motion trackers via Cinesite's proprietary software Ball Buster, which identified the markers through algorithm.[22] To avoid mistakes in the visuals as much as possible, Cinesite artists worked on the film by frame instead of viewing each shot as a whole; those, such as Jonathan Privett were dissatisfied with the method, primarily because it put them under much pressure: "We much preferred the good old fashioned run-at-24-fps, just-as-the-viewer-sees-it approach."[22]
Backgrounds[edit]
The design of the stadium was heavily dictated by that of the film's many characters, and it was such a long process that it went through 94 revisions, explained Cinesite digital effects supervisor Carlos Arguello: "Tasmanian Devil was brown so we couldn't have a wooden brown upper level, and there were so many colorful characters, and Michael Jordan and everybody had to look good in all the scenes."[27]
For scenes that take place in the stadium, shortcuts were made. For crane shots of the crowd of 15,000 people in the final basketball sequence, it was created with live-action extras, cloned animated crowd members, and a few computer-generated characters walking around the aisles in the stadium.[24] When these shots involved camera movements, a few 2D extras were animated to reflect the angle of the camera, but much lighting was added to distract from the crowd, thus minimizing this work.[27] The reflections of the floor on the gym were also "fake[d]" as raytracing would've meant rendering it for four days per a few frames.[27]
Characters[edit]
Abbate suggested the hurried workflow of the animators bled into the character animation, resulting in a quick-witted style the Looney Tunes cartoons are most known for.[10]
Although the animators had to work with almost 100 characters, they were the most focused on Bugs and Daffy not only because they were principal characters, but also because they were the most recognizable Warner Bros. characters to general audiences.[14] Sculpting was incorporated the most on Bugs and Lola, including in "beauty shots" or sequences where Bugs and Lola are together.[27] Perkins conceived the idea of the villains being secondary colors, as the main Looney Tunes were either primary colors, black, or brown.[17]
There was also a lot of experimentation with motion blur with the 2D characters, especially Tweety; as Simon Eves explained, "The workflow was that an artist would track some specific points on the sequence of 2D character-on-black that came from the animation house, and I think it was able to take a basic roto shape as well, and then it would generate an interpolated motion vector field which could be applied as a variable directional blur. The field would deform based on the relative motion of the tracking points on the camera, to produce more accurate blur as the character deformed."[22]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Space Jam grossed $90.5 million in the United States, and $159.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $250.2 million.[37]
Domestically, it debuted to $27.5 million from 2,650 theaters, topping the box office. The film then made $16.2 million in its sophomore weekend and $13.6 million in its third.[4]
In China, the film was released in 1997 and grossed CN¥24.1 million.[38]
Critical response[edit]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Space Jam holds an approval rating of 43% based on 86 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "While it's no slam dunk, Space Jam's silly, Looney Toons-laden slapstick and vivid animation will leave younger viewers satisfied – though accompanying adults may be more annoyed than entertained."[39] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 59 out of 100 based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[40] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[41]
Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel of the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune both gave Space Jam a thumbs up,[42] although Siskel's praise was more reserved.[43] In his review, Ebert gave the film three-and a-half stars and noted, "Space Jam is a happy marriage of good ideas—three films for the price of one, giving us a comic treatment of the career adventures of Michael Jordan, crossed with a Looney Tunes cartoon and some showbiz warfare. ... the result is delightful, a family movie in the best sense (which means the adults will enjoy it, too)."[42] Siskel focused much of his praise on Jordan's performance, saying, "He wisely accepted as a first movie a script that builds nicely on his genial personality in an assortment of TV ads. The sound bites are just a little longer."[43] Leonard Maltin also gave the film a positive review (three stars), stating that "Jordan is very engaging, the vintage characters perform admirably ... and the computer-generated special effects are a collective knockout."[44] Todd McCarthy of Variety praised the film for its humor as well as the Looney Tunes' antics and Jordan's acting.[45]
Although Janet Maslin of The New York Times criticized the film's animation, she later went on to say that the film is a "fond tribute to [the Looney Tunes characters'] past."[6] Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune complained about some aspects of the movie, stating, "...we don't get the co-stars' best stuff. Michael doesn't soar enough. The Looney Tunes don't pulverize us the way they did when Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng or Bob Clampett were in charge." Yet overall, he also liked the film, giving it 3 stars and saying: "Is it cute? Yes. Is it a crowd-pleaser? Yup. Is it classic? Nope. (Though it could have been.)" TV Guide gave the movie only two stars, calling it a "cynical attempt to cash in on the popularity of Warner Bros. cartoon characters and basketball player Michael Jordan, inspired by a Nike commercial." Margaret A. McGurk of The Cincinnati Enquirer gave the film 2+1⁄2 stars out of four writing, "Technical spectacle amounts to nothing without a good story."[46]
Veteran Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones was critical of the film and its premise, opining that Bugs Bunny would not have enlisted help from others in resolving a conflict.[47]
Legacy[edit]
Cultural influence[edit]
The Monstars make a cameo in the Pinky and the Brain episode "Star Warners". Jordan, who was a spokesman for MCI Communications before the film was made, would appear with the Looney Tunes characters (as his "Space Jam buddies") in several MCI commercials for several years after the film was released before MCI merged with WorldCom and subsequently Verizon Communications.[48] Bugs had previously appeared with Jordan as "Hare Jordan" in Nike ads for the Air Jordan VII and Air Jordan VIII.[49][50] In the next theatrical Looney Tunes film, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Jordan appears in archive footage from this film as one of the disguises of Mr. Chairman (Steve Martin). In 2013, Yahoo! Screen released a parody of ESPN's 30 for 30 about the game shown in the film. The short dates the game as taking place on November 17, 1995, although Jordan's real-life return to basketball when it occurred on March 18.[51] In April 2019, the website SBNation ran a mockumentary April Fools Day episode of its popular Rewinder series on Jordan's climactic shot.[52] The Nerdlucks appeared in the Teen Titans Go! original film Teen Titans Go! See Space Jam which aired on Cartoon Network on June 20, 2021, and was released on digital on July 27, 2021.[53]
The film's official website spacejam.com, created in 1996 alongside promotion of the film, remained unchanged but active for 25 years prior to the release of the film's sequel, an unusual aspect to film promotion websites. The site was one of the earliest film promotion websites, and included a number of unrefined web design facets, such as heavy use of animated GIFs. While the site's content had been moved under Warner Bros.'s site around 2003, the site's design gained a resurgence of interest around 2010 as an historical artifact of the early days of the web, and Warner Bros. returned the site to the spacejam.com address in response.[54] Following the release of Space Jam: A New Legacy's first trailer in April 2021, the website was updated for promotion of the new film, though the 1996 content remained available as a separate landing page.[55]
A television film crossover with Teen Titans Go!, Teen Titans Go! See Space Jam, aired on Cartoon Network in June 2021. The film features the Teen Titans meeting the Nerdlucks and providing humorous commentary over the original film. The movie's length is slightly abridged, omitting the opening credits and several scenes that do not feature the Looney Tunes, and the soundtrack is replaced by an original score.[56]
