Men in Black 3 | Review
It’s been 15 years since the original ‘Men in Black’ film and 10 years since the sequel. One would think such a large time gap would damage the quality of this latest installment, especially since it is a threequel, but ‘Men in Black 3’ is actually not that bad. It’s better than the original, which may or may not mean something; the first film was lifeless and boring, so it doesn’t take much for the other installments to surpass it in quality. Despite a bloated budget, production issues, and the wide gap between the second and third films, this latest film manages to have fun and breathe some life into a franchise thought to have been long dead.
The plot of the ‘Men in Black’ films have always been simple, and ‘Men in Black 3’ is no exception. Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) and Agent J (Will Smith) are still around, this time working under Agent O (Emma Thompson), after their previous chief of the department, Agent Zed (Rip Torn), passed away. The antagonist is a hideous alien named Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement), having escaped from a high-tech prison based on the Moon. Boris has a parasite-like alien that he keeps in his hand, which can shoot sharp projectiles. His other hand, his whole arm, actually, is gone. Agent K was the cause of this lost arm, and Boris plans to travel back in time and kill the younger K before he could do so.
When the present K disappears because of Boris’ successful task, Agent J travels back in time as well to prevent Boris from killing K. Time travel, as interesting as it is, can be tricky and sometimes complicated. J was told not to interact with the younger K, yet he does so anyway. What are the consequences of interacting with the past K? There doesn’t seem to be one. And Boris does the same thing with his younger self. There are no consequences whatsoever, yet it’s warned in the film not to do so. Whatever the case is, ‘Men in Black 3’ focuses less on plot and more on being silly and fun. The time travel/jump sequence is a surprisingly thrilling one, involving J jumping off the Chrysler building and pressing a button right before hitting the ground. This sequence was not shown in any of the film’s trailers, which is a smart move because it’s one of the film’s most surprising and best scenes. Again, the logic of having to jump off of a great height in order to travel through time makes no sense, but it was fun watching.
The casting of Josh Brolin (‘True Grit’) as the younger K was a brilliant decision and is probably the film’s greatest achievement. Before seeing the film, it seemed like a mistake to replace one of the franchise’s two lead actors with someone else (Jones only appears in this film for about 10, 20 minutes tops). However, Brolin’s portrayal of young Agent K is so spot-on it’s uncanny. Brolin looks and sounds so similar to Tommy Lee Jones that his character is truly believable.
Other than the time jump sequence and Brolin’s fantastic performance, the only other noteworthy aspect of the film is its inclusion of Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), an alien who has the ability to see every possible future and its variations. Griffin is a nice and charming character, though it feels like his role in the film has more to do with filling in plot holes and progressing the film from point A to point B and so on. His character could have been included because of the film’s terrible production: filming commenced even though only the first act was written (so basically only the first 20-30 minutes were written), writers were on set and writing lines just moments before the actors had to say them, and filming was split into two parts (November to Christmas and then April) in order to finish the script. The problem with the film’s script is evident in the confusing plot mechanics revolving around the whole time travel aspect. Why was there exactly two time travel gadgets, one for Boris and one for J, and why were they in the hands of a junkie? Sure, the guy is the son of a scientist who was locked away by the MIB due to his time travel experiments, but shouldn’t the MIB be monitoring the son for time travel gadgets? And if they were monitoring him, why didn’t they confiscate the gadgets?
‘Men in Black 3’ is supposedly a blockbuster film, yet there’s nothing in the film that shows this. This is a film that has the same budget as ‘The Avengers’ but it has nothing exceptional that shows this bloated budget. The biggest action sequence is one that involves J and younger K driving a high-tech vehicle in the shape of a large tire. This driving sequence lasts for maybe a minute and then it’s over. Where did the film’s 230+ million dollar budget go?
The final act of the film has the antagonist head towards yet another space ship (this is annoyingly repetitive in the MIB films), though this time it’s Apollo 11 ship to the Moon. This final confrontation between J and young K and the two Boris’ is okay, though it leads to a surprisingly sentimental and wonderful scene that has the potential to change the dynamic of J and present-day K’s relationship if future installments are made.
‘Men in Black 3’ is not a great blockbuster film, and it doesn’t exactly convince us that there needs to be more films in the series, but it does offer some fun and excitement. It’s nice to see Will Smith back on the big screen after a four-year hiatus, and Josh Brolin’s performance is memorably impressive. I can only imagine how much better this film could have been if the production was better organized. Director Barry Sonnenfeld stated “We knew starting the movie that we didn’t have a finished second or third act. Was it responsible? The answer is, if this movie does as well as I think it will, it was genius. If it’s a total failure, then it was a really stupid idea.” Regardless of the film’s success, this was a really stupid idea. But Sonnenfeld is lucky it wasn’t a total disaster of a film.