Men In Black (1997)

Will Smith starts his movie career with this comic adaptation. He makes his presence after his debut in The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. It is his charm and flair that brought him into the big screens and Hollywood saw him as bankable. He partners with Tommy-Lee Jones, who played a more embarrassing role of Two-Face in Batman Forever two years earlier. Despite his ordeal, this current film can be described as a step up in his movie career, as an experienced agent K who recruits J as a novice agent of a secret government organisation, Men In Black.



This movie was released the same year along with Spawn, Batman & Robin, and even Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. These movies were poorly received by critics and fans alike, notably for production value, relations to the source material, commercialization over substance, character development, visual effects and the choice of cast. Of all the movies mentioned, Men In Black was a critical and commercial success, cementing Smith's position as a superstar of Hollywood. It is also a movie that helped launch the popularity of its source material, and result in its pop culture reference.

So if I could get this right, from the opening credits we can see how two agents K and D intercept a truck transporting illegal immigrants. They find an alien only known as Mikey, but soon realize that one of the border patrols eavesdrops on them. Just before the alien launches its assault on him, the patrol shrieks so long in high pitch that no matter how loud Mikey roars, the scream is just hilarious to listen too; and so is the eventual disintegration of the alien, which is accompanied by another special sound effect. The design of the alien Mikey required a costume aided with some C.G.I. The disintegration is aided with digital effects so that it appears the alien turned into bits of goo so realistic that it is debatable whether any C.G.I. was used at all.

Will Smith is initially an N.Y.P.D. officer, James Darrell Edwards. He is pursuing a perpetrator, which happens to be a cephalopod. The action scenes here have to be far too dangerous to have been carried out without any harness. One is the alien jumping of from a bridge without having waited for a bus to break his fall. This stunt is demonstrated by Edwards to be too risky. Another stunt that must be too unrealistic involves the alien scaling a building. This one requires a harness that I have a hard time trying to discover. The power of digital technology is at its peak to have anyone convinced that this is for real. However, the last scene involves the alien committing suicide after playing the "pronoun game" with Edwards. There were no takes for this shot, just one, heavily enhanced with the power of editing and digital alterations. I was extremely convinced that the stunt double was never going to survive this whatsoever. This powerful capability is also employed when the cephalopod drops his gun which then disintegrates into nothing. No C.G.I. was employed, seeing how real the gun appeared.

So another alien has crash-landed into earth. His true form is concealed from the camera; he kills a farmer and dresses up in his skin. How it does this without tearing the skin is something I cannot even understand. Anyhow, it has to move around without attracting immediate attention, though due to the deprivation of life-sustaining blood and water, the skin does decay. It has been acknowledged that the skin must surely atrophy over time, so this skin must have had countless designs to illustrate the stages of decay. This alien is a cockroach. It has come to earth to steal a source of energy. This source is a galaxy, despite its size of a marble. If the alien gets a hold of it, it can decimate its enemy race, the Archillians. For the majority of the film, it only talks off camera in its initial form and while wearing John Edgar's skin. When it reaches the climax, it does not speak for some reason. Nonetheless, it does not affect the character whatsoever.

Remember that moment when the cockroach crashlands into earth? That scene alone required only one take and sheer power of C.G.I. It looks as though the flying saucer was really crashing, thus begging belief that C.G.I. was ever used. A truck is standing in a field next to his house. It felt like the truck was really cleaved in half, and a crater formed.

Recruiting someone into Men In Black has a catch or two: they erase their existence, contacts with their loved ones, and all that they ever were involved in prior. It can be painful for someone to lose contact with their loved one, as we can see from Agent K's point of view. Nonetheless, he still can't make contact with her.

 

 There are several gadgets in this film that you wish were real. One of them is the iconic "Neuralizer". Before any agent uses it, they must put on a pair of sunshades to shield their eyes from the flash.  

 

While K is the business-oriented character, J has to be the one who offers the laughs when he gets entangled in slapstick, although this happens once in this movie in order not to wear out in the course of the flick. J makes several pop culture references whenever there is a situation he thinks alludes to it. He also mimics some characters whom he thinks are robotic and monotonous. He thinks that K could be less rigid in his assignments in order to be more human and amicable.

 

This movie brings about a breakthrough at a time comic movies were bashed for lacking the depth and breadth of their source materials. Even on a high budget, this movie implements C.G.I. and digital effects to give the audience the impression of realism, in such a way that it is convincing and well put. Practical special effects have been upheld for every costume, instead of over-reliance on C.G.I. Having various designs of aliens from different corners of the galaxy is a pinnacle of human imagination and the wonders of creativity.