Here’s a sequel a don’t mind watching. The MIB movies have always been real popcorn fun. I really enjoy them. So I was surprised and at ease when they announced that Will Smith would be coming back for the third one. His character and persona is essential to the franchise’s mood and vibe. Plus, having a plot involving time travel and getting Tommy Lee Jones back are both great elements. Oh, and don’t forget bringing Josh Brolin to play a young Kay.
The film has Agent Jay sent back in time to 1969 where he teams up with a young Kay to stop an evil villain named Yaz from destroying the world in the future, and I’ve got a few more details about the project to share with you here.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
– There’s only one real bad guy in the film, and it’s Yaz, described as a nightmare biker who looks like Dennis Hopper and Satan. But it would seem it would be hard to craft a “badass hell biker” villain who is played by Flight of the Conchord’s Jemaine Clement and named after a side-effect prone brand of birth control. He’s not meant to be particularly funny and the movie is careful to describe him as oozing badassery and violence out of every pore, which makes me wonder why they’d cast Clement over someone more appropriate like Ron Perlman or Mickey Rourke.
– Further casting questions come up when it’s revealed Kay is supposed to be 26 in 1969. Josh Brolin is 42, Tommy Lee Jones is 64. That’s quite the gulf there, on a few different levels, and as talented as Brolin is, looking 40 years young than Tommy Lee Jones is pushing it. I can however see him playing a somewhat younger version of Jones’ stone-faced Kay quite well, and I think he’d be a good balance to Smith’s antics.
– The time travel plot actually kind of works in the MIB universe because there’s no real need for it to make perfect sense since the tone of the series is so goofy. But this spawns a lot of stereotypical time-travel comedy moments, including the mandatory “You’ve gotta believe me!” intro where Jay tries to convince past Kay he’s from the future and obvious jokes about Jay being black in the ‘60s.
– A new cast of celebrities are revealed as aliens in this era, among them Yoko Ono, Jimi Hendrix, Castro, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Andy Warhol, who actually has an extended scene where he aids Jay and Kay on their mission. The film is funny, but there’s little to differentiate it from the previous two films other than a new time period, which has a few inside nods to the events of the present day. I did however, have to laugh at one scene which describes an Apple Store as a secret time-travel hub, and shaking the iPhone’s clock app as a way to travel into the past. I wonder if they’ll actually keep the Apple brand name in the film itself.
Like I said, I don’t mind watching this. MIB movies are fun. Nothing wow, just fun. It will make lots of money. Looking forward to some pictures and trailers…
What do you guys think?
