As scores of bad reviews pour in for Space Jam: A New Legacy, the movie will perhaps be most talked about, and mostly remembered, for its peculiar cameos and Ready Player One style antics.
Space Jam 2 features many cameos but there’s definitely some odd ones in there, like the child-eating clown Pennywise (IT), or the brutal rapist gang, the Droogs, from Stanley Kubrick‘s A Clockwork Orange (why Warner Bros. thought that was acceptable is unknown) – these are definitely not child friendly characters for a child friendly movie.
Batman & Robin Mr. Freeze (Victor Fries) Arnold Schwarzenegger Cameo in Space Jam 2
As you can see, Batman & Robin‘s Mr Freeze (Victor Fries) is lurking in the background of this screenshot of the movie, which makes us think that the Mr. Freeze cameo in Space Jam 2 suggests Terminator could have appeared had Warner Bros. still had a hand in the franchise.
Space Jam: A New Legacy has been heavily criticized for the cameos, which are all characters from the Warner catalogue, and in turn being nothing more than shameless self-promotion of the studio. We get the feeling this strategy of making people flock to search engines will get more and more frowned upon with time; especially if a movie is not tracking well, or is not receiving good reviews.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr Freeze is of course free-reign for Warner to use due to their long-standing relationship with DC, and while it is nice to see all these characters coming together (in a sense), it does take away from the overall experience if the movie is gaining a reputation for being a shameless cash-grab.
If Warner Bros. Had The Terminator Rights or Involvement…
Terminator Fans will remember that Warner Bros. used to be involved with the Terminator franchise, and before Skydance – the studio that made Terminator Genisys and Terminator: Dark Fate got a hold of the rights, we could have seen Terminator turn up in Space Jam 2 for sure. Warner Bros. may have been one of the studios that wanted solid hold on the Terminator rights to continue on with the Terminator Salvation trilogy, so we could have seen a T-800 Endoskeleton, Christian Bale‘s John Connor, Sam Worthington‘s Marcus Wright, but most likely a Warner Bros. iteration of Schwarzenegger‘s Terminator; a T3: Rise of the Machines T-850, or subsequent Warner Bros. unmade Terminator movie T5 or T6 version of Arnold).
If they had a choice between Mr. Freeze and The Terminator we think they would have picked Arnold’s Terminator.
What could have been…
Would you have liked to have seen Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator in Space Jam 2, or would you like studios to stop exploiting the Terminator franchise, especially in a child friendly context?
4 Comments
Terminator is a weird one for this. I haven’t seen Space Jam 2, so can’t really comment on the movie itself.
But, so long as the characters aren’t doing anything ratings inappropriate in the cameo, I don’t really see any harm. It’s a nostalgia treat for the adults and ‘shameless self promotion.’
I remember back in the 90’s when I was a kid and Terminator 2 was heavily marketed to children. I saw (at the very least) the TV version so many times when I was about four or so that it was insane. I have basically memorized that movie likely before I knew my ABC’s and 123’s. The TV version was pretty heavily muted, but I still remember understanding the basic themes of the film pretty early on in my life.
As a kid, at some young age, they think this screaming lady is crazy, but she’s actually right. The world is going to explode from big bombs. This cool biker robot is good and here to save this (at the time compared to me) older boy who will lead us to victory over the bad robots. There is a liquid metal bad robot who’s trying to kill them.
I feel awful but I didn’t really understand the themes of ‘we’re not going to make it, are we?’ and ‘it’s in your nature to destroy yourselves’ until later. As well as the concept of free will VS fate and how Miles was involved. I was just too young to get that.
But, I had the NES game, the game boy game, I played the arcade game, I had the figures. The car. I loved that movie and it was marketed to kids my age like crazy. I mean… an R rated movie and it was plastered up and down the toy isles.
So, would I think it odd that they put a cameo of a killer robot in a kids film? No more odd then hard marketing an R rated movie to a bunch of 4 year olds.
When the camera gets closer to the impersonators the illusion is destroyed (especially with a maskless character like Mr. Freeze) but some slight amusement at Mr. Freeze and his dodgy little Schwarzenegger impression / sounds in one of the shots.
Overall, the movie was a total cringefest and lacked soul.
That T-1000 poster is ice-gold.
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