#mib2

The original 1997 Men in Black is my favorite movie of all time, and I could not be more disappointed with its sequels.  If I got to rewrite Men in Black 2, I’d overhaul everything.

First, I hate how MIB2 got rid of Agent L entirely; J gives some offhanded remark about how she wanted to go back to the morgue, which is BS.  In this new version, L stays on the force; I don’t know if Linda Fiorentino was unavailable, or if she just didn’t want to do a sequel, whatever, but I think her character should have been expanded upon.  I like the animated series, but it felt a little too disconnected from the original canon for my taste, so I’d only lift a few pieces of it into the new sequel.  J had skills as a police officer before joining the agency; L was a coroner, so in this sequel she’d be the agency’s dedicated xenobiologist.  She knows how every alien species ticks; it’s implied in the first movie that she was regularly neuralyzed by the agency whenever a dead alien showed up at the morgue, so she’s had experience doing alien autopsies, which could prove helpful in the future.

I also hate how MIB2 undid Agent K’s happy ending by making his wife leave him and having him come out of retirement to rejoin the agency.  He gave the agency 35 years of excellent service, he went well above and beyond the call of duty, he deserves to be able to settle back into the life he was forced to leave behind. In this new MIB2, J and L need his help to solve one last case, but he doesn’t come out of retirement permanently.  There is no Princess Lauranna or Agent O in this timeline, he pined after his lost love for decades, Elizabeth Ann Reston, and reunited with her upon retirement.  K is deneuralyzed so he can help them out, but he chooses to stay a civilian at the end.  Instead of getting neuralyzed again, maybe this time he’s allowed to keep his memories.  He’s semi-retired, a plain-clothed agent, undercover, on call when needed but able to keep living his life.  I think it would be nice to actually see his wife in this one, have her be a major character; she never married, never fell in love after he went missing, so how did she react when he came back?  How would she react if she found out where he had been?  If the main villain wants revenge on K, I think they’d try to use his wife as leverage.

What I liked about the first movie is how casual everyone is about the agency; the world is in peril so often that nobody cares anymore.  “There’s always an alien battle cruiser or a Corelian death ray or an intergalactic plague that’s about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT.”  For us, it’s the end of the world; for them, it’s Tuesday.  K is the straight man, he’s cool as ice, he’s got nerves of steel, he’s a pro; J is the funny man, he’s the rookie, he’s the loose cannon, he’s the audience surrogate.  In this new sequel, J is less the comic relief and more the hardened veteran, with L becoming the audience surrogate (it’s hard to imagine late 90s/early 00s Will Smith as anything but comic relief, but I think the sequel would work better if he actually learned on the job and got used to it instead of still reacting like it’s Day 1 every time.  No more “hell naws” and “say whats,” he’s a professional, let the man work).  It’s a big budget sequel so they have to raise the stakes, but everyone keeps calm, nobody worries, they just deal with the problem one piece at a time.  Some eldritch abomination is going to swallow the Earth in less than a week?  That’s plenty of time, just head on down to Staten Island, an expert lives there, he’ll know what to do.  Business as usual.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

They can keep the underlying plot from the original MIB2, Serleena, the Light of Zartha, all that, but they should make it more of a detective story this time so Agent L’s skills can shine through.  They kinda did that in the original MIB2 with K leaving himself breadcrumbs to the train station locker and the video store, but I think this new sequel should have an actual mystery to be solved.  The first one was a buddy cop movie, this one is a whodunit.  The agents aren’t just space cops or space border control, they’re humanitarians (xenotarians?), they help just as much as they police, and I for one would like to downplay the law enforcement aspect of it.  We don’t need anymore movies where cops can do whatever they want and are always right; fuck cops.  The Men in Black are apolitical, they are the neutral third party in a hundred different intergalactic conflicts, let’s see how they handle diplomatic missions.  An Arcquillian Prince was assassinated in the first movie and it was brushed aside because they had to find the Galaxy; do alien heads of state get murdered a lot?  Why was he on Earth?  Why did he have the Galaxy with him?

Also, I would like to explore a little more about the agency itself.  K says it was founded in the mid-1950s by the government, but by 1997 it was independent.  Presumably after first contact (March 2, 1961) they erased themselves from the government databases and began operating in secret.  What were the early 60s like?  Did aliens kill JFK?  How did the agency become the world famous (galaxy famous) political entity that every alien species goes to for help?  Earth is on the outskirts of the galaxy, the boonies, the edge of civilized space.  I’d expect it to be seedier than it is, like some lawless frontier town away from any prying eyes from the more densely populated galactic center.

Via Tested

Interview with Prop Store where discussed is their upcoming live auction this September.

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