Trailer Trash
By Samuel Hoelker
May 29, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The trailer begins with Will Smith Neuralizing a crowd of people, and telling people not to flush goldfish down the toilet so he won’t have to deal with large frightening creatures again. He then talks about how he is getting too old for his job, and then we see him fighting Chinese people in a Chinese restaurant, and we think that the movie must handle the race issue really well. Will Smith then jokes about Tommy Lee Jones’s age. In response, he says that he only promised Will Smith “the secrets of the universe, nothing more,” leaving Will Smith confused. And then Tommy Lee Jones goes through a strange hole.
Will Smith goes into the Men in Black HQ looking for Tommy Lee Jones, but only finds Emma Thompson (what?), who says that Tommy Lee Jones has been dead for 40 years. Obviously, Tommy Lee Jones went back in time and altered history, so Will Smith will need to do the same. And then there’s a pot joke. Will Smith jumps off the Chrysler Building to go back in time, and wakes up to see Josh Brolin playing Tommy Lee Jones. It’s the late '60s because “All Along the Watchtower” is playing. Josh Brolin immediately trusts Will Smith, and they go to see Bill Hader’s Andy Warhol, who, surprisingly, isn’t an alien, but a MiB agent. Will Smith then says “pimp-smacking the shiznit,” despite the fact that this is the trailer for 2012’s Men in Black 3, not 2002’s Men in Black 2. The lead actors are introduced, Josh Brolin introduces a crazy unicycle-thing that one would think would still be around in a modified sense in the present day, a montage of action happens, and Will Smith sums up the plot (spoiler alert: they need to save the world). The trailer ends with a joke that Josh Brolin looks older than 29.
The main question that we all wanted answered from the trailer is if this movie is necessary. At least, personally, Men in Black 3 seemed like a worse idea than even Battleship (and this is coming from someone who’s excited for that Monopoly movie, if that ever comes to fruition), but with strong jokes and a logical extension of the Men in Black franchise, it could still be successful. The jokes, the trailer would make it seem, are just that Agent K isn’t emotive and that '60s culture is different than 2012 culture. Sure, there’s plenty of room for some good fish-out-of-water comedy, if it would have the courage to stray from Austin Powers territory. It doesn’t even have the courage for that. Outside of a scene at the Factory, you could forget, even, that it was the '60s. There’s so much plotting going on that requires so much from the screenplay that there isn’t room for any jokes. J and K have to get from A to B so many times for such thin and convenient reasons that the humor has to stick to the very obvious and uncomplicated (ha ha! Josh Brolin has “city miles” on him!).
Time travel, in movies, should be treated delicately. You have to a) set up your rules, b) make your rules believable, and c) adhere to your rules. You can have goofy things happen (really? The person is literally going to disappear from the picture?), but you need to have the audience’s trust in your handling of it. That’s not something that Men in Black 3 does.
Any unique element is strictly for the sake of the plot (did you know that the distance from the top of the Chrysler Building and the top of the Apollo 11 space shuttle are EXACTLY the same and EXACTLY the right distance for time travel?), and it’s never uniform – things that happen to our hero Agent J conveniently don’t happen to our villain Boris the Animal (oh yeah, there’s actually a villain in this movie, played by Jemaine Clement. Don’t worry, the movie didn’t give him much thought either). It’s a mess, and it’s almost insulting how much we’re supposed to go along with when the film itself doesn’t put any effort into making it fun (which is what time travel should always be).
“But Sam,” you’re saying, “isn’t the point of a summer action blockbuster to just have fun? You don’t need to overanalyze everything!” And I would be saying how you’re incorrect. We’re willing to accept flaws, conveniences, and some shortcuts if a film is written well and intelligently. If something is obviously slapdash and made for a profit instead of storytelling, we’ll give it the credit it deserves.
You know who deserves credit, though? Josh Brolin. When everyone involved is lazy (Will Smith goes through the motions, Tommy Lee Jones is barely in it, and the effects look like they were left on the editing room floor of Lockout), Brolin gives his K a new life by doing the Tommy Lee Jones that Tommy Lee Jones wasn’t allowed to do. It’s a spot-on job; it’s one of the most effective uses of two actors playing the same character I’ve ever seen. It’s quite obvious, too, that Brolin deserves the credit for this. Barry Sonnenfeld didn’t even open his eyes when directing this movie. Also, Michael Stuhlbarg is just a delight.
Final verdict: if you were afraid that Men in Black 3 was going to be just a cheap, lazy cash-in, your fears have been verified. Goodbye, Barry Sonnenfeld. I’ll remember you and Tim Burton as you were in your prime, not in the last 15 years.