Where the Men in Black Sequels Went Wrong

https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/where-men-in-black-sequels-went-wrong/

Yet Solomon is no stranger to keeping a franchise going—having recently co-written another successful Bill & Ted odyssey after creating those characters with writher Chris Matheson when they were both in their 20s. So when we brought up Men in Black with the writer during our interview, he had some passing thoughts about why, at least for many folks, those sequels never lived up to the original film.

“I always felt like the secret to Men in Black was not the sunglasses and the big guns and the coolness, and the other surface level coolness of it,” Solomon says. “I always thought the secret of Men in Black was the generosity of spirit… It was the attitude of the film and its relationship to the audience, which was more of a ‘Hey, everyone check this out, come join us on this journey. Take a look into this world that other people don’t know exists. Let’s go in it together.”

For Solomon, the heart of the movie’s appeal is the relationship between Smith’s young hotshot Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones’ weathered Agent K. However, it isn’t just the buddy cop dynamic of the funny guy/straight man dynamic that made it work; it was the dawning sense of humility in J as he finds the perspective to fully appreciate his place in the universe.

“It seems to me like the sequels weren’t dealing with the humanity of the [first] movie,” Solomon says. “The other thing that I really loved in writing the first Men in Black was that it really was about how we humans think we’re so important, but in fact we don’t know anything that’s really going on. And so that was a very human experience, and to me, the story of Men in Black was about a cocky human being who gets humbled and realizes that he ain’t even close to the center of the universe. In fact, the universe, the world, what’s important, is nothing that he ever thought about. Reality isn’t anything like he ever thought. It’s a humbling blow. It’s a very human experience.”

Solomon continues, “So I just don’t know. I didn’t get that experience watching the sequels. I think their priorities were slightly different and, I’m not an expert on why a movie works or doesn’t. Sometimes, I’ll think something’s going to be a giant hit and it isn’t, and vice versa. I can’t say for sure, all I can say is that during my own personal experience of writing [Men in Black] that was what was important, and I didn’t get those elements as much from the other movies. That was my own takeaway from being the writer of the first and an audience member of the others.”