REB00T 1T - Men in Black: International

Welcome to the new segment I’m starting called Reb00t 1t, where I’ll be discussing the successes and failings of franchise reboots, largely on their own merits but I’ll make comparisons to the original if I feel they’re needed.

Men in Black: International comes under the reboot/sequel category. Where this is technically a sequel but since none of the main cast return in major roles and it’s been a few years since the last sequel came out so I’ll classify it under reboot.

This film has issues in production from the start, Producer Walter F Parkes and director F. Gary Gray clashes on the direction of the film. Parkes oversaw extensive rewrites to the original script, with apparently it being so confusing to stars Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson that they hired their own dialogue writers.

It also seems he got involved with directing, annoying F. Gary Gray so much that he actually tried to leave production on multiple occasions. To be fair, Walter F Parkes was a producer of the original trilogy so I understand why his experience was considered valuable by Sony.

Made on $94m budget, the film made $265m at the box office, when you factor in a nearly $200m marketing campaign that went alongside this film, that’s a substantial loss for the studio. And despite most people’s views being ambivalent, it also holds the worst critical score on Rotten Tomatoes, with only 23% of critics giving it a positive score.

We open with a little backstory for each of our two agents. First off Agent H (Chris Hemsworth) and his partner, at this point I presume Agent T (Liam Neeson) fighting off against a threat at a hub at the Eiffel Tower. We don’t see the full story of how that pans out but people believe that they were victorious.

Agent M, as we later know her as a kid sees 2 agents looking for a rogue alien and failing miserably at their jobs, not looking in the house for the alien that was in the house and not neuralising the kid M. She spends years trying to get into the agency and marked as delusional by the intelligence agencies she applies for.

An opportunity finally arises when she manages to hack into government satellites to track alien activity, a skill she never actually uses when she does get into MIB, to get into MIB, and is eventually successful. She’s sent to London as a probationary agent where she meets with Agent H (quick question, there are definitely more than 26 agents, what happens when you run out of letters?) and now Head of the London Branch, High T (get it? That’s the level of joke you can expect in this film)

H has become… I’m not really sure how to describe he’s lazy, competent but also incompetent and is failing missions, only surviving in the agency because of High T. M lies about knowing an alien language (despite scoring competently in tests about alien languages) to tag along with H on his latest mission, which goes drastically wrong and sends them on a tour of Europe and Northern Africa.

This movie is… I won’t say not good because that would be a lie but it’s not great either. The plots of MIB have always been kinda dumb. This one is also compounded by the fact that despite the international premise, it’s also kinda dull. The stakes feel lower than in previous movies, and that starts with the villains.

Our twin villains, who also had the misfortune of being in Cats that year, guys, get a better agent are incredibly dull. They have no personality and their powers are relatively vague and unspecific. As for the Hive, the main villain, aside from the finale, they’re a vague threat off in the distance and to be honest, they don’t do enough to Earth to make them menacing.

For example, beyond getting the mcguffin for the movie, what was their possessed agent doing on Earth. (I can’t not spoil this, High T is the mole) that’s all he was doing for 10 years, what a waste of time.

The Classic MIB dynamic is the young and energetic but also naïve and inexperienced agent meets the less in their prime but tough and smart seasoned agent who can provide the necessary exposition. Moving onto a new pair could have offered a new dynamic but honestly, I’m not really sure what the dynamic is between M and H.

Their characters are rather inconsistent with both being incredibly competent and incredibly incompetent as the script demands it. Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson have decent chemistry, largely off the back of other projects they’ve done together. But the inconsistent character writing, which may be down to the dialogue writers.

Side characters, Agent C is the agent with the stick up his ass. And then there’s Pawny, the only side-alien in this film, it feels, that’s not horny as f*ck. His dialogue occasionally makes me smile but there’s nothing quite funny enough to make me laugh out loud.

Men In Black: International isn’t funny enough to work as a comedy, nor is it interesting enough to work as a drama, I hear there were supposed to be parables to immigration, but got cut out over the rewrites. That’s a shame but I also do understand why that may have made people nervous.

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