Men in Black 3

Went to see the new Men in Black movie. I can't believe I still haven't read the comic it's supposed to be based off of. For that matter, I can't believe I haven't yet read any of the Flaming Carrot (aka, the book that started things off for the "Mystery Men" movie).

The theatre was pretty packed, which only matters in that it meant this cute little boy was sitting beside my brother on his mothers lap. I'll refer to that again later.

As far as time travel movies goes, as far as I can tell, this was actually one of the best for not futzing with its own rules of time travel. Case in point: the Bill and Ted movies, the first one they still have a clock to race against for their history project, wheras in the sequel they could take as long as they wanted to get back into the action. (That said, I have read a particularly long justification for the switch up in Bill and Ted, and it makes sense, but it also isn't something the title duo would have thought of, so I'm pretty sure the authors were stretching on that one.)

But for Men in Black: how to travel back to the present? Stop the events that necessitated going into the past, then SNAPBACK J is in the present. Doing it that way made for a cool little bit of foreshadowing in regards to some tragedy near the end- why hasn't J gone to the future yet? Oh, because the bad guy is still kicking.

They avoided the mind screwy ending of the first two films, I mean the universe as one of many marbles that impossible creatures (from our perspective) are playing with ending from the first one, and the world is contained in the locker of a larger civilizations Times Square or something, which is particularly impossible and turned me against the second movie ending.

That was a very unclear run on sentence. The nature of run on sentences.

Not that Josh Brolin didn't do a good job as Tommy Lee Jones's younger self, but the portrayal has been hyped up as the biggest thing about the movie, something that gets undercut when you see the slight differences between the older and younger 'K'. It should come as no suprise that a man is different when comparing his 30 and 70 year old selves, and it's essential to this story that that is so. That's why it's unfortunate that you may walk into the theatre expecting a straight copy of Jones from Brolin and therefore be disappointed.

Does the character Griff annoy you with his non linear, quantum perspective of reality? Yeah, me too. He just was never lucid enough to be particularly helpful, even though he was so depended on. I'm griping. Speaking of griping, giant neuralizer, but then K has a smaller one? What? Gripe gripe gripe. The giant old timey neuralizer was a good gag though, gotta give 'em that.

Anyways, it was a lot of fun, I definitely recommend it. The 60's have been so big lately. I wonder whether we have to attribute that entirely to Mad Men, or if other things can get credit. As the movie takes pains to remind us, we did in fact land a man on the moon in that decade. Kind of a big deal.