With a 3d MEN IN BLACK movie scheduled after a 10??-year gap , does anyone have anything to say about the series , and any other manifestation of it , including , oh yeah , the original comic book it came from ?
I have often thought that , of all the " comic-book movies " of modern times , MIB has the weird distinction of being , I think , by far the most widely successful against the commerical obscurity/not " being noticeable " of the source material !
I mean , the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wee massively successful ground-breakers as an independent comic , then the simplified TV version became an even bigger fish , albeit in a muchmuchmuch muchmuch bigger " real world " kind of bigger pond...Hellboy , well , the comic's chugged along sucessfully , I suppose , including its spinoffs...Maybe we could argue that ( Virus , Time Cop , Barb Wire , The Mask...Well , I suppose starting Jim Carrey's starring career is an accomplishment in itself..., others?? ) those tons of Dark Horse properties that somehow got movies made out of them & released surpass MIB in the Funnybook Obscurity derby , uning '' surpass " sort of ironically here...
But , maybe not .
I did not see MIB I .
I did see MIB II , during the last 3d of 2002 .
Around 2001 , I received some old comics of mine that had been in storage for a long while and found , to my suprise , that a beat-up copy of Malibu's original B&W MIB mini-series' 2nd issue was in it !!!!!!!!! ( #2 issues !!!!!!!!! WAY collectible !!! Or so says Wizard , the Comic Book Magazine , anyway ! On every newsstand.........)
I don't even recall there BEING any additional comics published by Marvel of MIB since a couple at the time of the first picture .
Oh , and this the thing about MIB-the-funny-book's success and " meaningfullness " - Noticeability , perhaps , is a better term ? - , or the movie's , and likewise w/any other comic-movie discussed here , isn't meant to be about the quality/enjoyability of the comic or movie .
MIB II had a jokey suprise ending that I suppose III will ignore??? Feel free to spoil here , bros...
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I love the first MIB but it's been a while since I've seen it. I remember it being a good blend of Sci-fi and comedy. Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith had a good chemistry. I didn't care for MIB 2 but only saw it once. I think the main problem with it was that all the funny parts were shown in the trailers so when I saw the movie, I was bored. I don't remember much about it. I am looking forward to the new one though. I don't think too much has been spoiled in the trailers and the introduction of time travel is a good move.
I never read the comics though, I'd be interested in seeing how they compare to the films. I know there was a cartoon inbetween the first and second film. I never watched it but it seemed to be fairly popular.
...The first film , IIRC , sort of marked Will Smith's ascension to " real " movie stardom , alongside " Mr. Jones " - Now , is it a position of Smith giving " old-timer " Jones a " one more payday " favor ???!!??!!??!!??!!??!!
Some years back ( as you'll see ) I joked , after reading that " the plans for MIB III were prohibitively expensive " that , perhaps , they could go down to a lower budget - by switching the leads to Dennis Hopper and Lil' Bow Wow !!!!!!!!!!!
I haven't had time to IMDB it again , but when I looked before , Lowell Cunningham had no other movie/TV credits 'cept MIB ones ( including writing episodes of the TV series ) - What , he couldn't at least have coasted thru Hollywood for a while and gotten paydays , anyway , from " it's by the creator of MIB " sales ?
Maybe he had OPTIONS but stayed " eternally in turnaround " !!!!!!!!!!!
I distinctly remember reading that MIB II originally had a full-scale climax filmed at the World Trade Center , which of course had to be expensively reshot...Like that brief shot of the WTC in the poster for Raimi's SPIDER-MAN but far more so !!!!!!!!!!!
Hilarious that you mentioned this because I just put up a semi-related blog post about MIB.
I actually bought a few of the MiB comics years prior to their movie stardom and honestly didn't like them too much. I'm certainly glad it made the creator a boatload of money though.
The movies, in my opinion, were pretty lousy. Director Barry Sonnenfeld's work has always driven me absolutely bonkers with inconsistencies and plot holes. When I watched the director's cut of MIB 2 (back when I had time to watch director's cuts), he pretty much said that he just shoots a bunch of semi-related scenes and then has the editors mash them together in an effort to make a plot. The scripts are only marginally followed. All this in-attention to detail creates all sorts of loose ends and aggravating scenes that don't seem to serve a purpose.
The MIB Cartoon series, however, is remarkably entertaining, although it doesn't let itself stray too far from the mythos presented in the first movie, which is too bad.
An ideal spinoff, however, would be to focus on some agents besides J, K and Z. That's what you get to do in the MiB role-playing game, by the way.