The Nerdlucks are characters in the film Space Jam.
History[]
They start as a group of tiny and weak aliens that work for galactic carnival worker Mr. Swackhammer. They first appear when Swackhammer is trying to attract more customers to his theme park on Moron Mountain because he's losing money. During his rant, he suggests something funny, wacky, and nutty when he suddenly sits on his remote in which a library of Looney Tunes shorts start playing on his TV screens, Bupkus and Nawt point them out and he agrees with them so he sends them to Looney Tune Land where the Looney Tunes reside.
They encounter Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd accidentally landing on Elmer in the process. They interrogate Bugs and ask him the whereabouts of Bugs Bunny because they have no idea what he looks like, he describes himself to them in one of his classic routines and they agree with the descriptions and he tells them that he never heard of him which disappoints them. Bugs remarks to himself "You know maybe there really isn't any intelligent life out there in the universe!" At this point they figure out he really is the Bugs Bunny who they're looking for and they shoot him with their laser guns and tell him to come with them.
That night Bugs holds a town meeting with the other Looney Tunes and tells them that they will be enslaved by the Nerdlucks. They laugh when they hear the Nerdlucks
talk because they look and sound small and weak which makes them incredibly hard to be taken seriously or seen as legitimate threats, so they send Yosemite Sam after them, but they shoot him with their laser guns, frying him and knocking him unconscious.
Now terrified, they raise their hands in surrender, Bugs decides to negotiate with them telling them "The rules of kidnapping a cartoon character", he then holds a meeting with Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, and Sylvester after much discussion they decide to have a basketball game to decide their fates because they think they have the advantage because the Nerdlucks are too small.
Little do they know the Nerdlucks have the ability to melt themselves and shoot into a person's brain to steal their abilities. Using this they steal the talents from Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, Muggsy Bogues, and Shawn Bradley and place the stolen talents into a basketball, later as they prepare to train.
Daffy sarcastically tells them since they are performing poorly "they need to practice growing taller." They then take out the basketball and transform into gigantic monsters now calling themselves "The Monstars." After trashing the court and intimidating the other characters (especially Porky), he decides that they may need a little help, so they abduct Michael Jordan while he's golfing. After some coaching and training he decides to help them in the game.
At first the "Tune Squad" does poorly against them and are off by many points until Bugs Bunny motivates the team with a special drink in order to improve their skills (he drank water while doing it). After the Monstars start trailing, Swackhammer tells them to play more aggressively which they do, sending most of the Looney Tunes to the hospital. The only remaining players are Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Lola Bunny, and Michael Jordan. Bill Murray eventually comes as a replacement and through the power of cartoon logic Michael Jordan is able to stretch his arm long enough to score the winning points.
Swackhammer tells them that they are a bunch of losers and will never amount to anything. When Michael ask why they take that from him, they reply "He's bigger than...we used to be!" Fed up with their abusive boss, they turn on him and strap him to one of Wile E. Coyote's rockets, sending him to the moon. Afterwards with some hesitation they agree to give back the basketball players' talents and revert to their Nerdluck forms, they then decide to live with the Looney Tunes.
Some years after the events of Space Jam, they're indirectly mentioned in Space Jam A New Legacy when Bugs mentions to LeBron James that he already played a basketball game with an NBA superstar referencing his game against the Monstars and the same thing happens later when Lola tells Bugs the same thing. Towards the end of the film, the Nerdlucks finally appears as spectators to the basketball tournament between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad. After the game they most likely came back to live in the Tune World along the other Tunes.
Notes[]
- When the Nerdlucks turned into the Monstars, they became giant monster versions of the basketball players whose talent they stole: Pound: the bald, chubby Charles Barkley; Blanko: the overtly tall, slender Shawn Bradley; Nawt: the short, limber Muggsy Bogues; Bang: muscular with a flat top Patrick Ewing; Bupkus: Larry Johnson shaved the sides of his hair, but the Monstar downright has a mohawk.
- There are three unnamed brown Nerdlucks serving Mr. Swackhammer while he watches the basketball game.
- They made a cameo in the Pinky and the Brain special "Star Warners" as patrons at the cantina bar.
- The Nerdlucks appeared in the Teen Titans Go! original movie "Teen Titans Go! See Space Jam", where they steal the talents of the Titans while watching the movie together.
- For their cameo in A New Legacy they reused archived animation from the first film. Their cameo in A New Legacy had a mixed reaction: While people were happy to see them again most of them were disappointed that the director just used recycled animation from the first film instead of actually animating and turning them in CGI like the other characters that made them the only cartoon characters during the game to be 2D animated.
Gallery[]
- Main article: The Nerdlucks/Gallery