Men in Black 3, Ten Years Later and Forty Years Back
Arriving a decade after the second film, Men in Black 3 overcame a notoriously unsettled production to become the most emotionally grounded entry in the series.
By 2012, Men in Black was a franchise many assumed had run its course. The 1997 original had been a sharp, funny surprise; Men in Black II (2002) was widely seen as a thinner retread. When director Barry Sonnenfeld reunited with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones for a third film, the question was whether there was anything left to say about Agents J and K.
The plot: saving a partner who was never there
The answer was time travel. Boris the Animal, a vicious alien whom K captured decades earlier, escapes from a prison on the Moon, travels back to 1969 and kills the younger K before that arrest can happen. In the altered present, J is the only one who remembers his partner. To put things right, he follows Boris into the past by leaping from the top of the Chrysler Building, landing in a New York of the late 1960s.
There he teams up with the young K, played by Josh Brolin, and the two race towards Cape Canaveral and the launch of Apollo 11, where the fate of a planetary defence system, and of the Earth, will be decided. Along the way they meet Griffin, a gentle alien who sees every possible future at once, played with wide-eyed charm by Michael Stuhlbarg. Emma Thompson appears as the agency’s current head, and Bill Hader turns up as an Andy Warhol who is not quite what he seems.
The ending adds a twist that reframes the whole series: a revelation about J’s own childhood that explains why K has always looked out for him. It gives a franchise built on deadpan jokes an unexpectedly tender final note.
A troubled road to the screen
Behind the camera, things were far less tidy. Filming began in late 2010 before the screenplay was complete, a decision widely attributed to scheduling pressure, and the production then took an extended break so the story, particularly its second half, could be reworked. Etan Cohen received the screenplay credit, but it was widely reported that other writers contributed to the rewrites. Time-travel plots are hard to build in a hurry, and some of the film’s looser logic may be a product of that process.
How it landed
The reception was better than many expected. Critics generally preferred it to the second film, and almost everyone singled out Brolin, whose take on the younger K captures Jones’ clipped delivery so closely that the illusion rarely slips. Smith settles comfortably back into a role he clearly enjoys, while Jones, with reduced screen time, gets the film’s quietest and most affecting moments.
Audiences turned up in large numbers worldwide, though not enough to keep the original pairing going. The next film, Men in Black: International (2019), moved on with a new cast.
From today’s vantage point, Men in Black 3 looks like a lucky escape: a film whose chaotic making could easily have sunk it, rescued by a strong central idea, a terrific piece of casting and a willingness to let its heroes feel something.
Tron Legacy: from script to screen · Alien Resurrection: what could have been · All movie articles