The ???? ???upcoming Space Jam sequel, Space Jam: A New Legacy, is now occupying the very sensible spacejam.com URL. But that thankfully doesn't mean one of the internet's premiere destinations for more than 25 years is just dead now.
As internet scholars know well, the original Space Jamwebsite that launched to hype the movie more than 25 years ago has lived on ever since. This example of the early "World Wide Web" in action hasn't changed in the slightest since it first went live; more than 20 years later, it's a piece of digital archeology.
It hasn't changed until now, that is. The arrival of a New Legacytrailer also heralded the launch of a brand new Space Jam website. It's as slick-looking, feature-laden, and intensely normalas you'd expect from a hype website for an upcoming movie. The kind of site that needs some time to load in, so you're greeted by a progress bar and a trailer overlay when you first visit.
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Credit: screenshot: warner bros. See? Pretty much what you'd expect. And a little bit of a bummer, right? The O.G. Space Jam website is a real piece of digital history. It was one of the last URLs you could visit that still show us what the internet's earliest days looked like. And unlike Wayback Machine, it's not snapshots from a moment in time. The website is just like that; old and simple and stupid-looking, but with a real charm.
Well, great news. The old website isn't completelygone. It's not right there at spacejam.com anymore, but it's still pretty close by.
Take a look at the above screenshot. Notice anything familiar and out of place in the image? Like the original Space Jammovie logo in the top-right corner? Yeah, so that's a link. Click it and you'll be whisked off to the original site, in all of its low-tech glory.
Would it have been cooler if Warner Bros. had simply used the old site to hype the new movie? Definitely. The original Space Jamwebsite is a beloved piece of internet history. But maybe this is for the best, then. Instead of changing something perfect, that perfect thing simply moved to a new home. And that's where it lives now, as perfect as it's ever been and no longer in danger of being wiped out forever by a sequel.
It's a fitting URL too: www.spacejam.com/1996. Simple, easy to remember, and specific enough to never again raise the worry that an important piece of internet history might disappear forever.