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?
