Men in Black II

Men in Black II
Film poster for Men in Black II
Directed by	Barry Sonnenfeld
Produced by	Walter F. Parkes Laurie MacDonald Co-Producer: Graham Place Executive Producer: Steven Spielberg
Written by	Screenplay: Barry Fanaro Robert Gordon Story: Robert Gordon Comic Book: Lowell Cunningham
Starring	Tommy Lee Jones Will Smith Lara Flynn Boyle Johnny Knoxville Rosario Dawson Tony Shalhoub and Rip Torn
Music by	Danny Elfman
Cinematography	Greg Gardiner
Editing by	Richard Pearson Steven Weisberg
Studio	Amblin Entertainment MacDonald/Parkes Productions
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	July 3, 2002
Running time	88 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$140,000,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue	$441,818,803
Preceded by	Men in Black
Followed by	Men in Black III

Men in Black II (also known as MIIB) is a 2002 science fiction action comedy film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. The film also stars Lara Flynn Boyle, Johnny Knoxville, Rosario Dawson and Rip Torn. The film is a sequel to the 1997 film Men in Black, both of which are 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 due to their unsuitability. 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 (Lara Flynn Boyle), 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. While J tries to deneuralyze K, Serleena breaks into MIB resulting in a lockdown; J and K escape after being flushed from the building. J then takes K to Jack Jeebs (Tony Shalhoub), who built an unofficial deneuralyzer. Although K eventually regains his memory, he reveals that he still has no recollection 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. 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 kicks open a forbidden door to reveal that a much larger locker located in an enormous alien version of Grand Central Terminal contains the human world.

Cast

• Tommy Lee Jones as Kevin Brown/Agent K: 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 James Darrell Edwards III/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
• Biz Markie as Rapping Alien
• 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^[1]), 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^[2]). 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."^[1] Fanaro condensed the first part of the film and brought Agent K in earlier.^[1]

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 attacks.^[3] The day after September 11, a spokesperson for the studio said that the ending would be refilmed.^[4]

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.^[5] For some of the scenes with the Serleena creature, the sound crew "took tree branches, put them inside a rubber membrane and pushed that around and added some water."^[5]

For the special effects scene where the subway train is attacked by Jeff the Worm, a specially designed vice was used to crush a subway car and make it look as if it had been bitten in half.^[2]

Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews, gaining a 38% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 49.^[6][7] A. O. Scott of The New York Times 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."^[8] A review in The Hindu called the film "worth viewing once."^[9] 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).^[10] In August 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".^[11]

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.^[12]

Sequel

Men in Black III is the third iteration of the Men in Black film franchise and will be released in 2011. It was announced at ShoWest, by Rory Bruer (Sony Pictures' president of worldwide distribution). Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are expected to reprise their roles from previous films as both actors have expressed their interests in reprising their roles.^[13][14][15] Columbia Pictures has hired Tropic Thunder and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa writer Etan Cohen to pen the script. Barry Sonnenfeld will be involved in the making of the film though it is unknown if he will return as the director for Men in Black III. The studio is looking to start filming the third installment in 2010, perhaps as early as the spring.^[16] Speculation that the film was an April fools Joke due to it being announced on April 1, 2009, which is April Fools Day, has been dismissed by Sony. The film was also announced alongside Spider-Man 4 and Ghostbusters III along with Men In Black III both of which have previously been confirmed to be in production.^[17]

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Men in Black II

• Official website
• Men in Black II at the Internet Movie Database
• Men in Black II at Allmovie
• Men in Black II Quotes