'Space Jam: A New Legacy' Trailer Gives People 'Ready Player One' Vibes

The long-awaited trailer for Space Jam: A New Legacy dropped over the weekend, and while it showcases plenty that you'd expect from a sequel—the Looney Toons and NBA star Lebron James playing goofy basketball—it was the unexpected elements that drew the internet's attention.

Unlike the original Space Jam, A New Legacy transports its star into not just the Looney Toons universe, but seemingly the entire world of fiction. At one point while brainstorming his all-star basketball team, cartoon Lebron theorizes that he needs characters like Superman, Gandalf, King Kong and The Iron Giant.

Cameos abound in the 2-and-a-half minute trailer, which gave social media users extreme Ready Player One vibes. Ernest Cline's fantasy novel, later adapted into a film by Stephen Spielberg, also featured a smorgasbord of pop culture icons, but was mocked for the way it divorced the characters from their source material. The reaction to New Legacy's trailer was similar.

Space Jam is actually just Ready Player One, apparently. https://t.co/s3lJ4pwstU

— julia alexander (@loudmouthjulia) April 3, 2021

it was pretty bad when Ready Player One used the Iron Giant in a battle scene but i guess it doesn't matter if the Iron Giant plays basketball in Space Jam 2

— Al Shipley (@alshipley) April 3, 2021

shit like wreck-it ralph, lego movies, ready player one and space jam 2 are a new genre of cinema: the premise is to take storied intellectual properties, divorce them from their original contexts and use them in one movie to advertise the catalog of a studio's streaming service pic.twitter.com/gkJCZPVCgs

— coмrade_yυι (@Comrade_Yui) April 3, 2021

Space Jam 2 Trailer: it was three minutes of pure cringe, but damn if Gamemaster Anthony wasn’t a Jules Verne tier prophet about the multiverse industrial complex. “Bring it in, guys” is now the plot to every single movie that makes a billion dollars.

— Kaleb Horton (@kalebhorton) April 3, 2021

Perhaps the most bewildering cameo in the Space Jam 2 trailer was that of the Clockwork Orange droogs, who can be spotted in the crowd right at the end of the trailer. While the appearance of various cartoon characters makes some sense in the context of a Space Jam film, the cast of miscreants from Stanley Kubrick's classic, who rob, assault, and rape people in that film, seemed particularly out of place.

pepe le pew is too “rapey” for space jam 2 but the droogs from clockwork orange are fine. don’t think i don’t see your anti-french bigotry, WB

— jacob (@jacob__posts) April 3, 2021

Pepe Le Pew being cut from Space Jam 2 but the rapists from A Clockwork Orange showing up is peak corporate wokeness.

— Eric Hillis (@HillisEric) April 3, 2021

Seeing the droogs from A Clockwork Orange in the Space Jam ad is more evidence of the what I'd call the Fortnite Effect – big corporations hoover up IP and then feed it back to us in the form of undifferentiated, incoherent pink slime like chicken nuggets are made of

— Ian Boudreau (@iboudreau) April 4, 2021

very funny to me that clockwork orange and game of thrones characters are in a movie that pepe le pew was too inappropriate for https://t.co/pQhG1ozPWW

— lego killer moth (@legokillermoth) April 3, 2021

Space Jam: A New Legacy comes out July 16th.