The website for the 1996 animated film Space jam became legendary after Warner Brothers left it in its original form forever. The low-tech, outdated design initially became a joke, but eventually gained a patina of vintage cool, not least because it was fast, simple and reliable, three concepts that are foreign to modern web design.
All things come to an end. The website was updated this weekend to make way for a marketing page for Space Jam 2, the upcoming sequel. The replacement is spectacular, hinky and slow. It blows an autoplay of the full screen video. Tests show the extent of the bloating. The original site took a few seconds to load. The new meal still after twenty.
“I think the original site took about the same time to load dial more than 56k as the new website now takes 3g, ”wrote Max Böck, a leading developer.
The original has been saved to a new address, but the tracking and adtechs have been sneaked in – and the URLs are different as a result, meaning all the old links have been disconnected thereafter.