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Men in Black II
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Men in Black II (also known as MIIB) is a 2002 science fiction comedy action film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. The movie also stars Lara Flynn Boyle, Johnny Knoxville, Rosario Dawson and Rip Torn. It is the sequel to Men in Black, based on the Malibu comic book series The Men in Black by Lowell Cunningham.
years after the events of the earlier film, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) has assumed civilian life as a small town's postmaster while Agent J (Will Smith) continues to work for the Men in Black, the self-funded New York City-based agency that secretly monitors and regulates extraterrestrials' activity on Earth.
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Encyclopedia
Men in Black II (also known as MIIB) is a 2002 science fiction comedy action film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. The movie also stars Lara Flynn Boyle, Johnny Knoxville, Rosario Dawson and Rip Torn. It is the sequel to Men in Black, based on the Malibu comic book series The Men in Black by Lowell Cunningham.
Plot
Five years after the events of the earlier film, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) has assumed civilian life as a small town's postmaster while Agent J (Will Smith) continues to work for the Men in Black, the self-funded New York City-based agency that secretly monitors and regulates extraterrestrials' activity on Earth. J is largely without a partner, his former partner Agent L having returned to her former task as a deputy medical examiner and her successors having been expelled from the agency by J himself. While investigating a seemingly routine crime, J uncovers a diabolical plot by Serleena, a sadistic, shapeshifting Kylothian queen who disguises herself as a lingerie model, but resembles a Lernean hydra in her own form. To circumvent her plans, J must convince K — who has no memory of his time spent with the agency, but is the only person alive who knows what is needed to defeat Serleena — to reunite with the MIB before Earth is destroyed.
A large part of the plot centers on Agent J's relationship with a woman called Laura Vasquez (Rosario Dawson), a waitress at a SoHo pizzeria who witnesses Serleena's killing of the pizzeria's owner. Rather than erase her memory according to MIB rules, J allows her to retain it. As Laura becomes increasingly involved in the battle between Serleena and the MIB, she comes to view Agent J as her protector, while he simultaneously falls in love with her. When J tries to deneuralyze K, MIB is put into lockdown and they are ejected from the building. He then takes K to Jack Jeebs (Tony Shalhoub), who built an unofficial deneuralyzer. Although K regains his memory, he reveals that he still has no memory of the "Light of Zartha" but left himself a series of clues in case he needed to remember.
Ultimately, Laura's true identity is revealed as an extraterrestrial princess and power-source styled the "Light of Zartha". This revelation requires her to return to Zartha, her ancestral homeworld. Serleena, who has been seeking all along to find and possess the Light of Zartha, is killed just as Laura is transported away. Agent K is said to have had a romantic attachment to Laura's mother Laurana, after whom she is named, who was killed by Serleena twenty-five years before the film's story began; as a result, there is an implication that Agent K may be Laura's father, although this is never made explicit. When Laura has gone, K and Agent Zed (the head of MIB) attempt to console J for his loss, only to have him answer that he needs no consolation, having accepted her departure without much sorrow. Since people all over New York City have witnessed these events, an emergency neuralizer built into the Statue of Liberty is used to erase everyone's memory.
Two other plot threads relate the interaction of J with Frank the Pug (an extraterrestrial refugee posing as a pug dog, who becomes J's partner early in the film) and the revelation that K keeps a race of minuscule extraterrestrials inside a storage locker at Grand Central Terminal, the locker encasing their whole world. At the end of the film, K knocks open a forbidden door to reveal that a much larger locker located in a larger version of Grand Central Station contains the human world.
Cast
- Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K/Kevin Brown: A decommissioned senior MIB agent and the only person who knows (or knew) how to stop the latest threat to Earth's safety.
- Will Smith as Agent J: Still on active duty with the MIB, he is not satisfied with the partners assigned to him and keeps neuralizing them.
- Rip Torn as Chief Zed: The head of the MIB.
- Lara Flynn Boyle as Serleena: A shape-shifting alien who has come to Earth to find a vital power source used by her race's enemies.
- Johnny Knoxville as Scrad & Charlie: A humanoid alien (Scrad), with a second small head (Charlie) on a stalk protruding from his neck, who does Serleena's dirty work.
- Rosario Dawson as Laura Vasquez: A young woman who turns out to be the power source sought by Serleena.
- Tony Shalhoub as Jack Jeebs: An alien pawn shop owner who uses a home-built machine to "de-neuralize" K and restore his memory.
- Patrick Warburton as Agent T: Partnered with J, who neuralizes him and throws him out of the MIB.
- Jack Kehler as Ben
- David Cross as Newton
- Michael Jackson as Himself (tries to persuade Chief Zed to make him Agent M)
- Tim Blaney as the voice of Frank the Pug
Production
Despite some initial involvement from David Koepp (who left to work on Spider-Man), the script was written by Robert Gordon and later revised by Barry Fanaro (who added humorous pop culture references, something which Gordon had deliberately avoided). Sonnenfeld took issue with the producers' focus on the love story between Will Smith's and Rosario Dawson's characters, saying that "I learned on Wild Wild West that audiences didn't want to see Will as the straight man. And until Tommy comes back into the movie, by definition Will's the straight man." Fanaro condensed the first part of the film and brought Agent Kay in earlier.
The climax of the film was originally to have taken place at New York City's World Trade Center. However, this had to be changed following the destruction of the buildings in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The day after September 11, a spokesperson for the studio said that the ending would be refilmed.
Supervising sound editor Skip Lievsay used a Synclavier to recreate and improve the original recording of the neuralizer sound effect from the first film (which was the sound of a strobe flash as it recycles) by removing some distortion. For some of the scenes with the Seleena creature, the sound crew "took tree branches, put them inside a rubber membrane and pushed that around and added some water."
For the special effects scene where the subway train is attacked by Jeff the Worm, a specially designed vise was used to crush a subway car and make it look as if it had been bitten in half.
Reception
A New York Times review said that, "Within the trivial, ingratiating scope of its ambition, though, the sequel is pleasant enough," and, noting the huge array of aliens designed by Rick Baker, said that the film "really belongs to Mr. Baker." A review in The Hindu called the film "worth viewing once." Another review from Digital Media FX Magazine praised the spaceships as looking very realistic, but criticized many of the simpler visual effects such as the moving backgrounds composited behind the car windows using blue-screen (which it called a throwback to the special effects of earlier decades). In August of 2002, Entertainment Weekly placed the Worm Guys among their list of the best CG characters, and said that the enlarged roles of both Frank the Pug and the Worm Guys in Men in Black II was beneficial for the "tiring franchise".
Box office
Following the success of the first Men in Black, the sequel was also a commercial success, although not to the extent of the original. It grossed $52,148,751 on its opening weekend, and after the film's 62 days-release it grossed $190,418,803 in the United States and $251,400,000 overseas, for a total gross of $441,818,803.
Sequel
In 2005, Variety magazine mentioned that Sony was in talks with director Michael Bay to direct Men In Black III. Will Smith has expressed interest in returning for a third film.
In 2008, fresh new rumours have resurfaced regarding a Men In Black III after an interview with Walter Parkes. On September 28, 2008 Parkes told Magazine Personality Parade in an interview, "The challenge is getting the script right and finding a time when our busy stars are available." .... "Everyone, including Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, wants to do another."
External links
- Official site* at Counting Down Movies
- at The Movie Insider
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