MiB3

Caught it last night. Overall reaction: some moments recapture what was good about the first film, but mostly meh.

The basic plot: creepy alien Boris (Jermaine Clement) escapes from a secret prison on the Moon, determined to get revenge on Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), who put him there decades earlier. Boris travels back in time to July, 1969 determined to kill the younger version of K (Josh Brolin) and to enable an alien invasion that K averted. Agent J (Will Smith), at somewhat of an emotional crossroads with the taciturn and secretive K, chases Boris back in time and tries to prevent history from being altered. J meets the younger K and, gradually, the two men bond and become much the same team as they will be in the future. With the help of a strange alien (Michael Stuhlbarg) who can see all the potentials in the timeline, their pursuit leads to a fairly thrilling climax atop the Apollo 11 rocket moments before launch(!!!), where they face off against Boris and HIS younger version. Before matters are resolved, J learns something about his own history that will forever change his view of K.

The film gets off to a rocky start. J and K appear and, if you don't already know who they are, you're probably going to be confused for a while. There's some fairly lame humor at a memorial service for Zed (Rip Torn, from the first two films who does not appear in this one) and we meet the new boss, O (Emma Thompson, welcome but mostly wasted here). There's a little excitement at an ostensibly Chinese (but actually alien) restaurant when Boris shows up--which, given what we know about his plans, is really completely unnecessary--and J and K barely survive the encounter.

Here's when the movie sorta lost me. Boris gets hold of some time-travel tech and goes back in time with it, altering the present so that K has been dead for years and Earth is on the brink of invasion. YET SOMEHOW, J is not only the ONLY ONE who is aware the timeline has changed, he's somehow still a MiB (despite being recruited by K!) and completely remembers the now-defunct timeline. With the help of O, J figures out what's happened and arranges to travel back to 1969 to avert K's demise and the prevention of the contemporary invasion. In a clever bit (a little reminiscent of the 88 miles per hour requirement in Back to the Future), J must leap off a tall building to activate the time travel device.

I will say this: the sequence leading up to J's jump is truly, truly effective in 3D. The effect was so thoroughly realistic, I was getting anxious watching it, as if Will Smith were REALLY 60 stories up on a precipice. If you like 3D, seeing the movie in 3D will be worth it for this sequence alone.

The film picks up once things get into the past. As everyone has noted, Josh Brolin is just dead-on as younger K; he evokes Tommy Lee Jones with every word and mannerism. There's a fairly inspired bit involving Andy Warhol (Bill Hader). And the climax on the launch tower and rocket of Apollo 11 is exciting. (By the way, I'm not spoiling much here as you're told near the beginning where the final confrontation is to take place.)

So, what's to gripe about here? Where do I begin? For one, a lot of the film seems like what we've seen before: J and K policing aliens on Earth. Second, the completely unaccounted-for ability of J to remember an alternate timeline (when NO ONE else does) is just weak storytelling (even the "temporal wake" in ST:FC was at least halfway plausible). Third, although the film does have a little fun with it--the aforementioned Andy Warhol scene being one--the movie mostly does nothing with the J-as-a-fish-out-of-water-in-1969 potential. Even where it does--a bit where J is "racially profiled" by a couple of police officers--it seems more like 1959 than 1969. Fourth, there's a lot of un-/poorly motivated changes in the direction of the plot; I'll have to watch again, but, at one point, it seemed J and K figured out something important with VERY little basis. Fourth, a character's death and the subsequent relevation is poorly set up when it COULD have been much more poignant. All of this points to either weak writing or an under-developed script.

So, while there is a little of the old magic left in the franchise and there are some good bits to the movie, most of it just left me cold. I would give it a 5, but I'll award an extra 0.5 for the high-dive sequence and another 0.5 for Brolin's performance.

6/10

Basically, it's another attempt to cash in on a franchise that needed need to be tapped in again. Figured as much.

I like all the players in this one but not the material itself- I think I'll pass on this one like I did on Battleship.

Watched it at the drive-in last night. I wasn't expecting much so I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't 'necessary' - we'd all have been OK without a MiB3. But it was a fun little film that had some nice moments in it. I put it about as good as 2 was. There was some interesting character developments, and I thought Josh Brolin was great as a young Kay. Will Smith is a solid and charismatic lead. Tommy Lee is getting really old but still chews up a screen- the young Kay aspect was a clever way of allowing the character to still be in the action.

So not missing much if you pass, but worth the money for a fun 2 hours away from the cares of the world IMO.

I think the thing with J remembering the alternate timeline, and the whole "what happened to you" bit with K were lead-ins for a sequel

Saw the movie tonight, was pretty fun, but I'm confused by the flow of events.

1. In the original timeline, K launched the Arc-Net in 1969, foiling an alien invasion and causing the extinction of Borris' species. In 2012, people even say 'They went extinct 40 years ago'.
2. When Borris went back, he prevented the launching of the Arc-Net and left earth.

Then why was the alien invasion happening forty years LATER than it did in the original timeline? If they were all set and good to go in 1972, why did the invasion get pushed back to 2012? Its bugging me. J should have woken up in a world being eaten, but he didn't.

The 'what happened' to K was pretty clearly that he had to watch a good man get killed and then lie to his son about what had happened.

There's nothing that says what's seen in the present isn't the final result of 40 years of work on the part of the invaders.