Men in Black
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Men in Black (stylized as MIB: Men in Black) is a 1997 American science fiction action comedy film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, produced by Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald and written by Ed Solomon. Loosely based on the Men in Black comic book series created by Lowell Cunningham and Sandy Carruthers, the film stars Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith as two agents of a secret organization called the Men in Black, who supervise extraterrestrial lifeforms who live on Earth and hide their existence from ordinary humans. The film featured the creature effects and makeup of Rick Baker and visual effects by Industrial Light & Magic.
The film was released in the United States on July 2, 1997, by Columbia Pictures, and grossed over $589.3 million worldwide against a $90 million budget, becoming the year's third highest-grossing film. It received positive reviews, with critics praising its script, set pieces, and the performances of Jones and Smith. The film received three Academy Award nominations—Best Art Direction, Best Original Score, and Best Makeup—winning the latter award.
The film spawned the Men in Black franchise including two sequels, Men in Black II (2002) and Men in Black 3 (2012), a spin-off film, Men in Black: International (2019) and a 1997–2001 animated series.
Plot
In present-day America, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) is a member of an organization that has been keeping track of extra-terrestrial aliens on Earth for over 40 years. When K finds himself in need of a new partner (Will Smith), a brash NYPD detective, James Edwards fills the position, becoming Agent J. Armed with space-age technology (which J barely understands) and their razor-sharp wits, J and K investigate a newcomer who is bad news for Earth.
Production
Development
The film is loosely based on Lowell Cunningham and Sandy Carruthers's comic book The Men in Black. Producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald optioned the rights to The Men in Black in 1992, and hired Ed Solomon to write a very faithful script. Parkes and MacDonald wanted Barry Sonnenfeld as director because he had helmed the darkly humorous The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values. However, Sonnenfeld was attached to Get Shorty (1995), so they instead approached Les Mayfield to direct, as they had heard about the positive reception to his remake of Miracle on 34th Street; they actually saw the film later and decided he was inappropriate. As a result, Men in Black was delayed so as to allow Sonnenfeld to make it his next project after Get Shorty.
Much of the initial script drafts were set underground, with locations ranging from Kansas to Washington, D.C. and Nevada. Sonnenfeld decided to change the location to New York City, because the director felt New Yorkers would be tolerant of aliens who behaved oddly while disguised. He also felt much of the city's structures resembled flying saucers and rocket ships. One of the locations Sonnenfeld thought perfect for the movie was a giant ventilation structure for the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel, which became the outside of the MIB headquarters.
Filming
Principal photography began in March 1996. Many last-minute changes ensued during production. First, the scene where James Edwards chasing a disguised alien was to be filmed at Lincoln Center, but the New York Philharmonic decided to charge the filmmakers for using their buildings, prompting Sonnenfeld to film the scene at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum instead. Then, five months into the shoot, Sonnenfeld decided that the original ending, with a humorous existential debate between Agent J and the Bug, was unexciting and lacking the action that the rest of the film had. Five potential replacements were discussed. One of these had Laurel Weaver being neuralyzed and K remaining an agent. Eventually it boiled down to the Bug eating K and fighting J, replacing the animatronic Bug Rick Baker's crew had developed with a computer-generated Bug with an appearance closer to a cockroach. The whole action sequence cost an extra $4.5 million to the filmmakers.
Further changes were made during post-production to simplify the plotline involving the possession of the tiny galaxy. The Arquillians would hand over the galaxy to the Baltians, ending a long war. The Bugs need to feed on the casualties and steal the galaxy in order to continue the war. Through changing of subtitles, the images on M.I.B.'s main computer and Frank the Pug's dialogue, the Baltians were eliminated from the plot. Earth goes from being potentially destroyed in the crossfire between the two races into being possibly destroyed by the Arquillians themselves to prevent the Bugs from getting the galaxy. These changes to the plot were carried out when only two weeks remained in the film's post-production, but the film's novelization still contains the Baltians.
Design and visual effects
Production designer Bo Welch designed the MIB headquarters with a 1960s tone in mind, because that was when their organization is formed. He cited influences from Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, who designed a terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport. As the arrival point of aliens on Earth, Welch felt the headquarters had to resemble an airport.
Rick Baker was approached to provide the prosthetic and animatronic aliens, many of whom would have more otherworldly designs instead of looking humanoid. For example, the reveal of Gentle Rosenberg's Arquillian nature went from a man with a light under his neck's skin to a small alien hidden inside a human head. Baker would describe Men in Black as the most complex production in his career, "requiring more sketches than all my previous movies together". Baker had to have approval from both Sonnenfeld and Spielberg: "It was like, 'Steven likes the head on this one and Barry really likes the body on this one, so why don't you do a mix and match?' And I'd say, because it wouldn't make any sense." Sonnenfeld also changed a lot of the film's aesthetic during pre-production: "I started out saying aliens shouldn't be what humans perceive them to be. Why do they need eyes? So Rick did these great designs, and I'd say, 'That's great — but how do we know where he's looking?' I ended up where everyone else did, only I took three months." The maquettes built by Baker's team would later be digitized by Industrial Light & Magic, who was responsible for the visual effects and computer-generated imagery, for more mobile digital versions of the aliens.
Why It Rocks
- The acting in this movie is beyond incredible, especially from Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.
- Agents J and K are and awesome duo with great chemistry.
- The idea of secret agents who investigate alien creatures is very awesome and compelling.
- Awesome soundtrack composed by Danny Elfman, alongside other songs in the movie’s album including the song “Men in Black” performed by Will Smith himself.
- Edgar (the cockroach alien) is an entertaining antagonist and Vincent D’Onofrio does a great performance in his human form.
- Brilliant character and plot development.
- Impressively good CGI, even for the 90s standards.
- Many unforgettable, well-executed moments that are either funny, action-packed or both, such as the scene where Jay stomps on a bunch of cockroaches which triggers and kills Edgar.
- The scenes with the test and the shooting range in which J auditions to become an MIB are hilarious.
- Interesting and memorable characters, especially Kay and Jay, who are very entertaining protagonists who can get some good laughs most of the time.
- The costume and makeup designs for the aliens are great.
- "You know what the difference is between you and me? I make this look GOOD!"
Bad Qualities
- Too much uses of goo within the film, which may start to get repetitive for various viewers.
- The ending where K reveals to J that he was being trained to become his replacement makes no sense and comes out of nowhere. Seriously, J has been on the job for like 2 days, and suddenly he's worthy of being the replacement? Also, why would K have found two replacements, rather than leaving J to find one?
Reception
Critical and audience response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 92% based on 85 reviews, and an average score of 7.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Thanks to a smart script, spectacular set pieces, and charismatic performances from its leads, Men in Black is an entirely satisfying summer blockbuster hit." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". On IMDb, the film has an average user rating of 7.3/10. On Letterboxd, the film has an average rating of 3.6/5. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
The movie currently has a Google users rating of "88% of users liked this film".
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, praising the film as "a smart, funny and hip adventure film in a summer of car wrecks and explosions." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, giving particular praise to the film's self-reflective humor and Rick Baker's alien creature designs. Janet Maslin, reviewing for The New York Times, wrote the film "is actually a shade more deadpan and peculiar than such across-the-board marketing makes it sound. It's also extraordinarily ambitious, with all-star design and special-effects talent and a genuinely artful visual style. As with his Addams Family films and Get Shorty, which were more overtly funny than the sneakily subtle Men in Black, Mr. Sonnenfeld takes offbeat genre material and makes it boldly mainstream."
Writing for Variety, Todd McCarthy acknowledged the film was a "witty and sometimes surreal sci-fi comedy" in which he praised the visual effects, Baker's creature designs and Elfman's musical score. However, he felt the film "doesn't manage to sustain this level of inventiveness, delight and surprise throughout the remaining two-thirds of the picture." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly|Entertainment Weekly]] graded the film a C+, writing "Men in Black celebrates the triumph of attitude over everything else – plausibility, passion, any sense that what we're watching actually matters. The aliens, for all their slimy visual zest, aren't particularly scary or funny (they aren't allowed to become characters), and so the joke of watching Smith and Jones crack wise in their faces quickly wears thin." John Hartl of The Seattle Times, claimed the film "is moderately amusing, well-constructed and mercifully short, but it fails to deliver on the zaniness of its first half." While he was complimentary of the film's first half, he concluded "somewhere around the midpoint they run out of energy and invention. Even the aliens, once they stop their shape-shifting ways and settle down to appear as themselves, begin to look familiar."
Box office
Men in Black grossed $250.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $338.7 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $589.3 million. The film grossed a record $10.7 million in its opening weekend in Germany, beating the record held by Independence Day.
Despite its grosses, writer Ed Solomon has said that Sony claims the film has never turned a profit, which is attributed to Hollywood accounting.
Accolades
Men in Black won the Academy Award for Best Makeup, and was also nominated for Best Original Score and Best Art Direction. It was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy.
On Empire magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, "Men in Black" placed 409th. Following the film's release, Ray-Ban stated sales of their Predator 2 sunglasses (worn by the organization to deflect neuralyzers) tripled to $5 million.
Videos
Trailers
Behind the Scenes
Reviews, Ranks and 101 Facts
References
- ↑ Jump up to:1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 David Hughes's Comic Book Movies (page 123–129)
- ↑ Jump up to:2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "Metamorphosis of 'Men in Black'", Men in Black Blu-ray
- ↑ http://www.aintitcool.com/node/55992
- ↑ http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,288677,00.html
- ↑ https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-07-04-9707040101-story.html
- ↑ https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/men-in-black-1997
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/01/movies/oh-aliens-business-as-usual.html
- ↑ https://variety.com/1997/film/reviews/men-in-black-1117432622/
- ↑ https://ew.com/article/1997/07/11/men-black-6/
- ↑ http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19970701&slug=2547298
- ↑ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0119654/
- ↑ Variety's 'Pie' flies high in Germany (page 9)
- ↑ https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/men-in-black-profits-ed-solomon-104552239.html
- ↑ https://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1800023362/awards
- ↑ https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/500-greatest-movies
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20080819234200/http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/educational/teachable_moments/word_from_our_sponsor.cfm
External Links
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