First Look: Inside details about Men in Black 3!

I’ve recently gathered some inside info about MEN IN BLACK 3, the totally necessary sequel starring Josh Brolin and Jemaine Clement alongside the original duo of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.

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.

I had a bit of trouble following the details of the plot. The general idea is that Yaz travels back in time to kill Kay, which sets off a chain of events that ends in the destruction of the world. But the how and why are pretty muddled, and hopefully it’ll be easier to watch instead of read. There’s a bunch of future-seeing aliens that are central to the plot, but I never did quite understand their role in the film throughout.

This could be fun I suppose, and I’m sure Smith alone will make this a watchable film, but I just don’t think this franchise really has a fanbase clamoring for more of these movies. But that aside, it’s a popcorn flick, and despite an effects-heavy budget, it will surely be profitable worldwide, and really, isn’t that all that matters?

Source: JoBlo.com

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