Men In Black

            Men In Black directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith and Vincent D’Onofrio. The film is a sci-fi action comedy based off the 1990 comics by Lowell Cunningham published by Malibu Comics (formerly now under Marvel).  The movie is about a secret organization in New York City known as the Men In Black, who monitor extraterrestrial lifeforms who live on earth and hide their existence from humans.

            The movie opens with two agents of the MIB (Agent K, Tommy Lee Jones & Agent D Richard Hamilton) and look for an illegal alien in disguise. The alien attacks a border agent but is destroyed and neuralyzed D. Meanwhile in New York an undercover cop (Will Smith) pursues a fast and quick human that is an alien criminal and throws himself off a building right after saying “Your worlds going to end.” Later, the cop is being reviewed and accused but Agent K meets with the cop and asks him to meet him at an address. As he goes there, he goes through a series of tests and questions all the candidates get neuralyzed except the cop and he gets offered the job and becomes Agent J. While all this happens an alien illegally crash lands in upstate New York kills a redneck farmer and uses his skin as a disguise. Later, he tracks down two aliens looking for “The Galaxy” and kills them both. Agents K & J investigate the crash landing and confirm the farmer is a bug alien disguised as a human. They head back to the city to a morgue find two bodies that aren’t human but robots. One of the dying aliens tells the MIB agents the galaxy is on Orion’s Belt. After this info they go and see their informant Frank the Pug, J then concludes it’s on the cat’s collar (Orion’s Belt). They go back to the morgue confront the alien and escapes with the coroner. Meanwhile an alien ship fires on earth asking for the galaxy and blaming the MIB, they have an hour to return it. They figure out where the bug is going, and he arrives to the observation towers of the 1964 World’s Day Fair (both are disguised as flying saucers). He gets one flying but is shot down just in time by agents K & J. The alien then reveals its true self, a cockroach like alien, it takes their guns and heads to the next saucer but K stalls it by getting eaten alive and goes after his gun, where J tries to distract it and keep it on the planet. As he does this, he realizes its soft weakness, squishing other cockroaches. It gets angry about ready to attack but K gets the gun and explodes the bug from the inside and gets the galaxy. The bug is killed K tells J he’s a replacement for him and he gets a new partner Agent L.

            The film’s success led to making over $250 million domestically, internationally over $337 million making worldwide close to $588 million on a $90 million budget. It also became the highest grossing action buddy comedy in the US and inspired Marvel the option to sell their products to other film companies (Which led to Spider-Man few years later) and it inspired three sequels, an animated series, videogames and a theme park attraction at Universal Studios Florida. Another huge key factor in the film’s success was the creatures and use of CGI.

            The CGI in the film was made by Industrial Light and Magic (company that made Star Wars and other films after) oversaw most of the aliens and the physical creatures and costumes were designed by Rick Baker (special effects artist known for King Kong, An American Werewolf in London, Mighty Joe Young, Nutty Professor and The Grinch) designing all the aliens and alien like creatures. The two famous creatures that were made were Mikey and Edgar. The creature Mikey at the beginning of the film is an amphibian, reptile type alien made from ILM, and a creature costume designed by Baker. When the creature is revealed after removing his disguise you notice the movements are very human like for example when he’s holding the head on a stick and talking to the MIB agents. That’s all the human in a costume and at first, he’s human but he becomes CGI later. Once Mikey yells and moves his eyeball then he becomes a CGI creature. Each shot as the creature runs, it’s a computer frame by frame using wire frames and almost like in Jurassic Park The Gallimimus stampede they capture the creature and keep him stable as he runs up to the ranger. Then the creature explodes leaving blue goo.

            The next character is Edgar the Bug in the final scene. Originally Baker designed a talking miniature puppet for the scene, but script changes were made to make Edgar more cockroach like and therefore to Baker’s disappointment Edgar became a CG creature. The whole scene was little more than the previous monster, this one used blue screen, wires, and complicated choreography. As they filmed the last scene most of the shots were added and there are at least 45 additional shots. After crash landing of the ship that K & J shot down, Edgar reveals its true form. During the scene the actor D’Onofrio is scene but for a frame you see him shed the skin of the human costume off, but it is bunch of wires hooked to the back of it to rip it off. Using this technique, they were able to show the bug. Another key scene when the bug swallows Agent K, blue screen and CGI were used in that; lifting him up, him being swallowed and the inside of the bug’s stomach. The next scenes when it’s J vs the bug; Will Smith had to improvise most if not all those scenes. For example, when he grabs a flaming bush and gets thrown like a rag doll he mostly is being pulled by wires on cue and when the bug girly slaps him aside Smith improvised that, and it matched well with the bug pushing its arm at him. More shots of Smiths character squishing the cockroaches the alien bug is full-size all-in CGI. All the blue screen elements were added of the cockroaches on his arm some of them in the garbage and on the ground. To get the splat and sound effects Smith was stepping on mustard packets to get the effect. The rest of the bug exploding, and last half of the bug was all CGI and blue screen.

                This film was also a recognizable and great film to use a combination of CGI and creature design to get the full film. Men In Black became a pop culture iconic film, inspired sequels, videogames, theme park ride and became a pop culture icon. It also made Will Smith a popular actor and made him a recognizable person in film. Men In Black continues to inspire and entertain people then and still today.

Works Citied

Berardinelli, James. “Men In Black.” Reelviews Movie Reviews, Reelviews, https://www.reelviews.net/reelviews/men-in-black.

Sneeringer, Cheryl. “Men in Black.” Men in Black , Christian Answers, https://christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/pre2000/i-minblack.html.

Sonnenfeld, Barry, director. Men In Black. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2008.