Cartoons Basketball
Carin Mita
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.
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] Critics were divided over its premise of combining Jordan and his profession with the Looney Tunes characters, while praising the technical achievements of its intertwining of live-action and animation.[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 received negative reviews and failed to match the commercial success of the first film.
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".
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 game 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.
Space Jam's cast includes Manner Washington, Eric Gordon, and Penny Bae Bridges as Jordan's children, Jeffrey, Marcus, and Jasmine, respectively. Brandon Hammond plays the ten-year-old Michael Jordan. Larry Bird and Bill Murray appear as themselves,[6] and Thom Barry portrays Jordan's father, James R. Jordan Sr. Several NBA players make cameo appearances in Space Jam, including Danny Ainge, Steve Kerr, Alonzo Mourning, Horace Grant, A.C. Green, Charles Oakley, Luc Longley, Cedric Ceballos, Derek Harper, Vlade Divac, Brian Shaw, Jeff Malone, Bill Wennington, Anthony Miller, and Sharone Wright, as do coaches Del Harris and Paul Westphal, and broadcasters Ahmad Rashad and Jim Rome. Dan Castellaneta and Patricia Heaton cameo as fans at a game between the New York Knicks and Phoenix Suns.
The Nerdluck voices include Jocelyn Blue as their orange leader, Pound, Charity James as the dim-witted blue Blanko, June Melby as the neurotic green second-in-command Bang, Colleen Wainwright as the diminutive red Nawt, and producer Ivan Reitman's daughter, Catherine, as the eccentric purple Bupkus. Their transformed "Monstar" versions are voiced by Darnell Suttles (Pound), Steve Kehela (Blanko), Joey Camen (Bang), Dorian Harewood (Bupkus), and T.K. Carter (Nawt). Wainwright also voices Sniffles, Kehela also voices Bertie's announcer voice, and Frank Welker voices Jordan's bulldog, Charles.
In 1992 and 1993, two Super Bowl Nike ads, "Hare Jordan" and "Aerospace Jordan" respectively, aired on television and featured Michael Jordan with the character Bugs Bunny.[3][8] Wieden+Kennedy creative director Jim Riswold conceived the "Hare Jordan" campaign following the popularity of advertisements where Jordan played with Mars Blackmon (played by Spike Lee), a character from She's Gotta Have It (1986); he chose Bugs Bunny for his next campaign because the character was his "childhood hero".[3] Directed by Joe Pytka, "Hare Jordan" took six months and a $1 million budget to make.[3] It was hindered by reluctance from Warner Bros. to allow Nike to modernize Bugs' character; however, the commercial success of both ads "was a nice bit of research for Warner Bros. to understand that the Bugs character still had relevance and to tie it in with Michael", explained Pytka.[9] This led to the company green-lighting a film featuring Jordan and Bugs, which came out of a plane meeting between a Nike executive and producer Ivan Reitman.[8][3] Jordan was offered movie deals previously, but his manager, David Falk, turned them all down because he felt the basketball icon could only act as himself.[3]
The project was closed when Jordan retired from basketball in 1993, only to be reopened in 1995 when Jordan returned as a basketball player.[10] Falk pitched the idea to several major studios, without a story or script written.[3] One of them was Warner Bros., which tried to create more "adult, sophisticated material" that deviated from the formula set by Disney in the animated film market.[11] After Warner Bros. initially rejected Falk's pitch, he called the consumer products division leader, Dan Romanelli, reacting in surprise the studio would turn down a project having potential of high-selling merchandise.[3]
Pytka was informed about the project only months before the start of principal photography; in addition to being hired as director, he also revised the script, including writing a scene where Jordan hits a home run after he returns to Earth that was filmed, but ultimately never used.[9] Spike Lee was also interested in helping Pytka with the screenplay, but Warner Bros. blocked him from the project out of dissatisfaction from how he funded Malcolm X (1992).[9]
Reitman, serious about the voice actors for the established Looney Tunes characters being far better than their original voice actor, Mel Blanc, and not just replications, was very involved in the voice casting.[14] Joe Alaskey, one of Blanc's successors since the latter's death, was put by Reitman through a set of auditions, which lasted for months until Alaskey grew tired of auditioning and backed out from the project.[15] Billy West learned of Space Jam through Reitman on The Howard Stern Show, who was producing Stern's film, Private Parts. Reitman was impressed by West's voice talent and asked him if he could audition for Space Jam. West accepted, and after doing an audition, he landed the roles of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.[16] The casting directors originally planned several voice cameos; however, that did not work out, and Danny DeVito ended up being the only celebrity voice actor in the film, which was for Mr. Swackhammer, who was originally planned to be played by Jack Palance.[14] Swackhammer was also planned to be a live-action character until the very final days of development, with Dennis Hopper possibly playing the role due to his friendship with Pytka.[11]
One thing I heard was that Ivan Reitman, when they were thinking about going ahead with this movie, had phoned up Robert Zemeckis about Who Framed Roger Rabbit and asked, "Do you have any advice on what we should do to make a movie like this?" And he said,"Don't do it, it nearly killed me."
The Classic Animation faction of Warner Bros., which animated the commercials and was located in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, was originally planned to be the only company responsible for Space Jam. However, after only a week, the animation work was so complicated that Warner Bros. contacted more studios, including reassigning the Feature Animation division in Glendale from working on Quest for Camelot (1998) to Space Jam. Ten of Classic Animation's members, including the production's animation director Tony Cervone, were taken out of the faction to become involved all throughout production, and development artists were reassigned to animating jobs, including supervising animator Bruce Woodside, who had little faith in the project: "Like so many other animators, I adore the classic Warner Bros. characters, but I really had little hope that tying them to the massive anchor of an apparently doomed marketing scheme could actually give them a successful second life in features".[11]
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