Space Jam 2 Wants You to Dethrone the Idol Worship of Algorithms
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #186. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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Finding digital grace.
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Is Space Jam: A New Legacy a game? No, but games and game development are mentioned, so technically it passes. Does it aspire to delve into the depths of spirituality and religion? Also no! But we’re talking about it because oh my word is this film something else. It’s not good, or rather . . . it’s not good at what it wants to be, yet accidentally say something deeply profound.
So welcome to the jam, we’re gonna make a slam.
Now for the likely 99.9999% of our readers who did not subject themselves to this movie like I did, I have to break down the plot. I promise, I’m going somewhere with this*. A New Legacy starts off being about how NBA star LeBron James’s actual son, Dom James, doesn’t want to play basketball like his dad, but instead be a game developer. LeBron tries to impress his son and has him come with to a brand meeting with Warner Bros. where he meets Al-G Rhythm, played by Don Cheadle.
Of the entire cast, Cheadle is the only one seemingly having fun and my goodness does he make a wonderful villain. While Dom is actually intrigued by Al-G’s promises, LeBron outright says that the idea of making a Space Jam 2 is a bad idea. Yes, the film just outright says it shouldn’t exist. Al-G doesn’t take kindly to this, luring the father and son into a server room where they get zapped, Tron-style into the “Warner Bros. Serververse”. Yes, that is actually what it’s called.
So, for those keeping score, an insidious algorithm is manipulating the innocent and forcing a star into a role they don’t want, all just to recapture nostalgia, in a bid to have a spectacle event to draw in more viewers. Because see, if Al-G gets people watching, he can drag them into this Serververse, which definitely has no parallels to any “Metaverse” premises being hawked around by corporations at this time. And, to boot, Al-G has Dom give him prompts for how to recreate Dom’s digital basketball game in the Serververse to hedge the odds in his favor. It’s only towards the end that Dom realizes Al-G is up to no good and rejoins his father.
Now the quest LeBron goes on with Bugs Bunny is a glorified advertising walkthrough of Warner Bros. various IPs and is as shameless as could be. Yet that’s also part of the point. There is no real plot as he and Bugs find the other Looney Tunes. They’ve all been grafted into various other universe for marketability purposes. Al-G’s cynical machinations have helped ensure they’re all just there for recognizability. He even forces them to be CGI at the end, something that disturbs the Tunes as much as anyone else.
At every single step, the story is basically how the ways Warner Bros. has embraced AI has tainted every facet of its intellectual property, reducing it to nothing more than vapid consumerism. While it treats the continued existence of the Serververse – after Al-G’s defeat thanks to a glitch trick used by Bugs – as some grand thing, by this point the actual message underneath the corporate nonsense rings louder.
And you know what? As utterly depressing and scathing a thesis as this is, I kinda love it. Given that this script was, at least at one point, in the hands of They Cloned Tyrone’s Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmair, some of this isn’t an accident. Through all the corporate manufacturing, some glimpse of a subversive critique of idolatry to AI made it through.
Idolatry is a tricky topic when it comes to religion, and in general is a term more commonly found in monotheistic religions. That to worship something else is to make an idol out of it and offend your one true god. And I can imagine that a lot of people in the tech and entertainment industry will tell you that they’re above all that. They don’t worship anything, they’re too enlightened.
Yet you look at how they talk about real-world AI. The way they insist it can do no wrong. Their instant willingness to kneel before it, tossing aside anything and anyone they relied in before. Don’t get me wrong, in the early days, some folks just experimented with it in ignorance and then quickly pivoted away from it. No, I’m talking about the people who double down on it as the “future of art,” acting as if it’s some mitigating balancing of fortunes. Those who are indignant at the idea that some people dared to put in the time to hone their craft rather than just work as middle managers at a corporate office, no matter if those very same artists are often struggling to make ends meet at the best of times.
We even see it in more unnerving cases, like people who “date” AI prompt machines in lieu of actual human beings. No person is a monolith of their faith, but speaking as a Christian, there are few things more perverse than trying to commodify and bottle up love. Love is one of the few good, earnest, kind, impossible things in this world. It can’t be felt by a machine that is functionally a million monkeys on typewriters. That’s not love. That’s worship. That’s idolatry. You’re worshipping a machine in hopes that it makes you feel what you’re lacking rather than grappling with the hard reality that you have to engage with actual human beings to truly experience love.
In the Bible, idolatry and adultery are sometimes used interchangeably, and I get why, when thinking about the worship AI receives. Because it’s an inherently yearnful act that gives temporary satisfaction without consideration for the consequences. There’s a big difference between polyships and serial cheaters. One is consenting, thoughtful and messy but genuine. The other is self-serving and destructive. The same goes for human-made art versus something spat out by a machine. And what’s more, it’s just exceptionally hollowing to the creative process.
Right now, I’m writing this while putting the finishing touches on a book I’ve been working on since 2021. How I wrote my book in 2021 isn’t close to how I’ll go about it in any future books. And I only learned by doing.
Creating is good for the soul. For me, sometimes it can even feel like worship. It’s something I’ve really been mulling on since hearing Jacob Geller talk about not believing in God, expressing having not felt as though he’d ever come close to connecting with that feeling. I believe God gave me these skills for a reason. Shaped me by the experiences I’ve been led to, both the wonderful and the unpleasant. So, when I’m creating, I feel closer to Him. So why the hell would I let a false machine god get in the way of that?
And much as Warner Bros. clearly doesn’t want me to come to that conclusion, that is basically the thesis of Dom’s arc in A New Legacy. He wants to create. He almost gets swept up in the “magic” of Al-G’s machinations. Then he shrugs off any expectations, from his father and the machine, to embrace the creativity he wants to express. He’s not gonna be an NBA star like his dad, he’s gonna be a programmer and designer. And that’s fantastic.
Forget the sequel-baiting cameo of Bugs in the real world at the end. Ignore all the nonsense where the story frames the corporate execs as innocently unaware Al-G could do harm. If the only thing you take away from A New Legacy is that, my word, you can do better than it? Then it will have been worth all the money wasted on the corporate vomit that is its own existence.
Because at the end of the day, the act of creating is as much the art as the final result. Whether you worship a god or not, it is a profound experience like no other that should not be sacrificed to the idol of AI. It’s that simple. And tha-tha-that’s all, folks!
*Though seriously, why did they have to make Porky rap? Why did you have to do that to us, Warner Bros.? I mean really.
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Elijah Beahm is an author for Lost in Cult that Unwinnable graciously lets ramble about progressive religion and obscure media. When not consulting on indie games, he can be found on BlueSky and YouTube. He is still waiting for Dead Space 4.
