ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

My goodness, who knew science fiction could be this funny?

Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones are the perfect buddy cops, but the bad guys they hunt down aren't really bad . . . and they're never really guys.

The wonderful thing about the three MIB movies is that even though they aren't all equally good, they're still all very enjoyable. Sequels always have to struggle to win the audience's approval, because the first one popped up out of nowhere and surprised everybody with something fresh and new, but a sequel is duty bound to do the same thing all over again, except it's gotta look different.

No easy trick.

The basic concept of these movies is brilliant. While humanity's great unwashed masses are staring up at the stars and wondering if they're alone in the universe, the guy standing next to them is pretending he's from Hoboken, NJ, when he's really from Arcturus.

If truth is really stranger than fiction, this movie is right — I couldn't handle the truth.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

Enjoy the trailer.

______________
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Robert (Butch) Day]

The movie worked not only because of the stars and story because it was a successful comic before the movie was made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_in_Black_%28comics%29
_________________
Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Krel]

I never saw the comic, but I do remember the poster for the comic. It was 3 or 4 men in a junk yard, with large weapons, and creatures emerging from the wrecked cars. The tag line read: The Men in Black. They're from the government, and they're here to help...Sort of.

David.

[Custer]

I do hope that Lowell Cunningham got a fair share of the money from selling the film rights to the biggest minor-publisher movie franchise since the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He doesn't seem to have done a whole lot else, though imdb does give him more coverage than a rather stubby Wikipedia page.

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

Here's a few of IMDB's 108 trivia items. Oddly enough I was only tempted to post 12 of them.
________________________________

~ Vincent D'Onofrio researched his role as Edgar by watching a lot of bug documentaries. In order to achieve his character's distinctive walk he put on knee braces so he couldn't bend his legs, and he taped up his ankles.

Note from me: Wow, and we think that being an actor is easy!

~ Will Smith didn't believe it was really Steven Spielberg on the other end of the line when the Executive Producer first called to talk to him about Men in Black (1997).

Note from me: "Hi, Will! This is Steve!"

_____________ "Ummm . . . Steve who?"

~ The site BadAstronomy, famed for bashing science fiction movies (such as Armageddon (1998)) about their science blunders, praised this movie for being comedic, yet surprisingly accurate, when it comes to astronomy facts.

Note from me: If a sci-fi film is serious, the science needs to be spot on! But if the sci-fi film is humorous . . . we can cut it a little slack!

~ The little ball which J accidentally sends smashing around MIB headquarters is said by K to be, "a practical joke from the Great Attractor". In astronomy, the Great Attractor is an actual entity, first detected in 1973, a gravitational anomaly approximately 250 million light-years from Earth that affects the motion of every galaxy within hundreds of millions of light-years.

Note from me: Wow, I have GOT to look this up! And "entity" located 250 million light years from Earth . . . and it affects galaxies? Holy Cow!

These next two items are related.

~ Will Smith, after reading the script, did not want to accept the role, but his wife Jada Pinkett Smith convinced him to take the part.

Will Smith was cast because Barry Sonnenfeld's wife was a fan of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990), and Sonnenfeld also liked his performance in Six Degrees of Separation (1993).

Note from me: Is Will Smith and Barry Sonnenfeld just a bit hen-pecked? Well . . . maybe just a bit

~ Rick Baker claims his work on this film was his most complex to date, as he had to have approval on his alien designs from both Barry Sonnenfeld and Steven 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!"

Note from me: I fell sorry for Rick! If somebody told me that the head of this alien —



— would look good on THIS alien —



— I'd tell them they were nuts!

~ Clint Eastwood was offered the role of K, but turned it down.

Note from me: Clint is a fine actor, but Tommy Lee is perfect for the role.

~ To research his role, Will Smith visited an alien encounter convention in Las Vegas.

Note from me: Will demonstrated an impressive dedication to his role. It's very admirable in view of the fact that this is comedy as much as a science fiction story.

~ Linda Fiorentino "won" her role in Men in Black (1997) in a poker game with Barry Sonnenfeld. Afterwards, he warned her she would not be in any nude scenes.

Note from me: This lady is extremely hot. I get very nervous during all her scenes! I couldn't find a good shot of her in that nice miniskirt she wore.


____________


These next two items are related.

~ Rick Baker constructed an animatronic of the giant Bug to use in the film, but to his annoyance, changes to the script's climax required that the Bug be rendered in computer graphics imagery.

~ After script rewrites, looking for a more action-oriented ending, the original animatronic Bug was discarded after eight months of development. The new sequence using a redesigned Bug containing 45 CGI shots, at a cost of 100,000 dollars each. According to Barry Sonnenfeld "It was the best 4.5 million dollars we spent".

Note from me: This must have been very frustrating for poor Rick. I wonder what the animatronic Bug looked like. And if he has it in in living room scare off robbers.

~ The American Humane Society made sure no animals were hurt during filming, including cockroaches. Will Smith was actually crushing mustard packets. At the end of the day, they had to count all the roaches and make sure none were missing.

Note from me: Occasionally I have to kill a roach in my townhome. Roaches creep me out more than any other bug or insect. I'm not sure why.

~ The automobile Agents K and J drive (which J describes as a "Ford P.O.S."), is a 1987 Ford LTD Crown Victoria.

Note from me: And we all know what P.O.S. stands for. Will was NOT paying that car a compliment!
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Linda Fiorentino is gorgeous, but from what I've read a nightmare to deal with, which is why she was never asked back for any of the sequels.

And why we rarely see or hear of her anymore.

[Bud Brewster]

[Bogmeister]

____________
_________
______________________

This — Will Smith's follow-up sci-fi action pic after Independence Day — would have been the highest-grossing film released in 1997 if not for Titanic. Smith hit it out of the ballpark two-in-a-row in terms of box office (popularity) and high-gloss entertainment.

This had similar elements to Independence Day — the aliens from outer space — but it's less of a hostile invasion and more . . . illegal aliens. Based on a comic book, the aliens here are mostly humorous. Even the villain, a giant insect from outer space, is just a series of dark-humored scenes. This insectoid-invader arrives by its lonesome and takes the guise of a belligerent farmer (Vincent D'Onofrio), so we don't really see what it looks like — just hints — until the final act.



The heroes (Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones) are part of a super-secret government enforcement agency which monitors the roughly 1000 aliens on our planet — these are real aliens, from other planets.

Smith, as Agent J, is not yet part of this organization as the film begins. He's a hotshot plainclothes cop who is agile enough to run down one of these aliens. Agent K (Jones, deadpan to the max) feels that Smith is good enough to join, though his boss, Agent Zed (Rip Torn), has doubts.

However, recruiting Smith proves to be good timing — just in time to deal with the new alien-insect threat. The other prime character is a medical examiner (Linda Fiorentino) who has begun to catch on to the secret alien doings via her job and is soon captured by the villain.



What really works in this movie is the humor; there's a consistently laidback, cheerful tone that runs through the whole film, empowering all the scenes with jokey attitudes and dialog. It's not over the top or boorish or stupid — the characters actually all come across as pretty sharp.

Miss Fiorentino holds her own, even though her career never reached the levels of Smith or Jones. There are also surprising scenes around every corner as we are introduced, gradually, to this secret world of alien residents and the agency charged with keeping things ordered.

The FX for the most part are impressive for the time, and are mostly inserted organically to further the story. The plot takes a backseat to the style and visuals — the bad bug is after a "galaxy" — but it's never boring. It may lack gravitas — it's all so flippant and perhaps even disposable that it doesn't stay in the mind afterwards, but while you're watching,

It's great fun






BoG's Score: 8 out of 10

Trivia in Black: the sequel arrived in 2002; true to form, it grossed only about two-thirds of this original; a 3rd film arrived in 2012.


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]