Who doesn’t love a good movie about aliens living among us? The media would have you believe that they’re all out to kill us or enslave us, but Men in Black has an important message to all of you. Aliens are among us and they can be friendly just as often as they can be murderous A-holes.
Meet the Men in Black, Agent K who is played by Tommy Lee Jones and his partner Agent D played by Richard Hamilton as they go on a mission to intercept illegal aliens, literally. During the mission, Agent D decides that he is too old for this any longer and asks to be neuralyzed into retirement, basically your memories are wiped and replaced with new ones to cover up the discrepancies. Because you aren’t ready to know about aliens, you know… just in case one wanders into your home and murders you, it’s still important that you don’t know they exist.
Agent K is tasked with finding a new partner and inexplicably (later explicably) chooses James Edwards, his memories are altered and he becomes Agent J the newest edition to the M.I.B. who is going to bring some different techniques to the collective.
Apparently aliens have been departing Earth en masse and it’s up to our Agents to discover why this is. Of course, coincidences are next to nil and everything is connected here for convenient plot reasons. Their mission leads them to a farm where an alien space ship has crashed and it is here where things pick up. Some aliens are killing and replacing people and Agents K and J must stop their plan before it grows too out of hand.
Men in Black was a successful film and it began a small franchise even though technically the movie was what made it a franchise, what with it being based off of a comic book and all. This is a comedy film to its core and it takes some serious concepts, illegal immigration (from a galaxy far, far away of course), the importance of secrecy, and the importance of team work and it plays them fast and loose for the most comedic value that it can get out of them all.
The primary antagonist is played by Vincent D’Onofrio and it seems that D’Onofrio quite enjoys playing the villain as he so often does. Linda Fiorentino plays Laurel Weaver, who eventually joins up as Agent L despite never appearing in a sequel. And Zed, the head of the M.I.B., is played by Rip Torn. They round out the supporting cast and of course there’s the occasional alien here or there but the primary focus remains almost entirely on Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as they find their chemistry and work to stop this alien takeover.
Lloydd Marshall Books 