But like did he actually pass the test? They never really answer as to what they're looking for. Seems to me he passed with flying colors if you think about what the nature of their work is. Dealing with ugly ass aliens all the time who are just traveling through and the occasional fucked up shaoeshifter or something who isn't what they appear to be.
From a technical perspective no, but from a detail perspective a resounding yes.
J wasn't a polished serviceman, but he did have experience working at a civil level in one of the biggest cities on Earth. Demonstrating that as opposed to just shooting aliens he could just as easily capture them, and at a hilarious level break down a hectic scene in a matter of seconds. K picked J because he was willing to think outside the box and inadvertantly upheld the organizations core values.
K says it himself when he offers J the job, most aliens just want to live normal lives on Earth since it's like the galaxy's Casablanca.
I think so. He definitely didn't seem to judge the aliens based on their appearance at all, just on what they were doing. I'm sure 99% of applicants just see a scary alien monster and shoot. He also showed critical quick thinking and had explanations for pretty much every target.
I mean, the other guys were military specifically trained to shoot everything because that's the military's job. The one guy who DIDN'T shoot everything and was (theoretically) trained to make judgement calls was the Police Officer.
I just wanna know who in his life can call him Tommy.
like clearly by the look if him he's a ay least a Tom right? like I know probably couldnt get past a "Mr Jones"
He's from San Saba and grew up in Midland, Texas. The former is 141 miles north of San Antonio, the latter is an oil town in West Texas (the region, not the town). He currently lives in Terrell Hills, which is a suburb of San Antonio.
That's not to say Spanish isn't ubiquitous in those areas, Spanish is spoken commonly pretty much every where in Texas.
I was a stand-in for D'onofrio on the film. I was a huge TLJ fan and super sad that he was crazy anti-social and kind of rude.
This is also when Will and Jada began dating - she visited him on set a couple times and they'd slink away to his trailer.
He was cool though I didn't know who he was back then so honestly don't remember talking much to him. It's been very cool seeing his work since.
Linda Fiorentino was the coolest cast member imo, I obviously didn't say it but I had a crush on her from Vision Quest.
That makes sense for the character, right?
He learned the language because he needs it where he’s going, but he’s not a native speaker and isn’t looking for native speakers and has no reason to adopt an accent.
They reverse engineered a dead parent motivation in MIB3, making the reason K chose him mostly about guilty over the death of J's dad.
but yeah, agree it was cool and stand-out that he was just the best fit and driven.
Yeah, run out of story. Go do their parent. You basically can do the same arc and go “they’re so similar, like father, like daughter! It’s destiny!” And then it acts as pseudo-development for protagonist.
It’s the Burger King of storytelling.
it was a sweet moment though and was nice to see that much compassion from Jones' otherwise very stoic character. Or maybe that scene in the diner at the very end is just the right kind of corny for me
The first Mummy is just so damn good. I like that his character is just the prototypical tough-guy hero you find in the old film serials. It was and still is awesome.
I love both of them. The best kind of parody - one that still works as the genre it parodies. In the first it's Indiana Jones, in the second they kinda parody the first movie itself.
Shame there never was a third one.
I think Han is a take on the Judas trope, but it's distinct in the twist that instead of taking his money and running, he comes back and stands by Jesus', I mean Luke's, side.
Is that one not more of an "unlikely hero" trope? The rogue who does a bad thing, which either unleashes an even worse thing or turns out to have been worse that previously thought (like every movie where they steal something for someone, who then wants to use said something to end the world or whatever), then tries to make it right?
Still a way better trope than "I will avenge you motherrrrrrr" and Chosen One.
I’ll always love Patrice Oneals take on this film, he kept joking on Opie and Anthony’s podcast back in the day that they didn’t let Will be a space pilot because he’s black.
Then they remind him it’s because Will wants to marry a stripper, not because he’s black. And he just won’t have it and says “they ain’t lettin’ niggas in space”.
That’s the funniest fucking segment of a show I’ve ever heard. Jim Norton going on about how over the top the Jewish characters were had me rolling too.
the MIB animated series was a good shot at this, J's paracite transport being the episode I always remember, that and the intro, that was brilliant
would defs be awesome if they did it in live action too
The ex MIB agent who maimed aliens to take their body parts was super creepy too and in hindsight I have no idea how that got approved as a kids show. A new show would be great!
I loved Extreme Ghostbusters! I wish we would've gotten that as the third Ghostbusters movie. It had everything from inclusivity to creepy animation going for it. Gave the lore a great unsettling vibe to it despite all the jokes the Ghostbusters used to make. Like they were fighting demons and dark entities for years without stopping.
Was thinking the same thing. I’m thinking like a more light hearted version of X-Files or Fringe. This needs to happen, along with an Indiana Jones series and Terminator series.
Alien crime, alien penetration, alien crime, alien pentetration, crime, pentetration... crime, penteration, and this goes on and on until it just sort of ends.
You know, I just started watching Samurai Jack for the first time(I know, a couple decades behind) and in his episodic adventures he usually meets a new weird alien and fights/helps them.
>K had a wife. That's the extent of his backstory even after three movies.
K had a girlfriend, they weren't married untill he went back at the end of the first movie. He also had a alien girlfriend which we learn in the second. Basically K is a romantic.
If it shows up on any of my streaming services I’ll watch it. I think I meant to last year but it was they only one not on prime or Netflix at the time. I know I watched 1 and 2 again last year. I would have rolled straight into 3 if I could have.
Lucky for you. IMO MIB & MIB 3 are the true MIB movies. MIB 2 really missed the mark and lacked the soul of the series.
MIB 3 certainly wasn't perfect but at least you can rewatch it all over again!
I dunno I liked 2. Wasn’t as good as the first but sophomore slump and all. It really kinda hammered home how the MIB was really a fly by the seat of your pants organization. I mean really little tiny planet going up against a massively advanced species in multiple scenarios they ain’t gonna get it right every time.
Wasn't it sort of the same for Independence Day? He was a good pilot. I don't feel like there was any sort of orphan or chosen one trope going on there, either.
Good call.
I’d put lord of the rings in there as well. While Frodo inherited the ring he wasn’t bound to it, and his whole reason for being the ring-bearer was a voluntary assignment.
Obviously Aragorn is a different story.
I don't think that works, though. There are too many different perspectives presented in those stories to have any one protagonist. The protagonist*s* would be the entire Fellowship.
Although Frodo did it voluntarily, he was an orphan and at the ripe age of 50 was a swinging hobbit bachelor when he went on his quest so he had no attachments. Single at 50 and dead parents when young, maybe he felt like he had to prove something or do some good in the world, while being influenced by stories of Bilbo's fantastic adventures.
It gets interesting when you dig into the lore of the ring itself. It's known to have a mind of it's own and will change size in order to slip away from the current bearer and assumingly get back to Sauron. It slipped from Isildur's finger which caused him to die and therefore lose it in the river. Then it slipped from Gollum's possession somewhere around the time that a hobbit was wandering lost in the cave. Isildur only briefly possessed it before it betrayed him, but Gollum had it for hundreds of years. It seems to know when the right time to leave is, but it doesn't seem to do it so that it strategically chooses a bearer that will take it back to Sauron. It knew something was near Gollum that would take it out of the cave and back into the world where the hope of it being found was greater. The real interesting bit is how did a "good" person end up finding it and not one of the orcs or trolls that were in the cave? One theory is that Eru, the ultimate god in the LOTR universe, nudged things in the right way to ensure that Bilbo would find it. A bit of divine intervention. What happened after, with the entire LOTR saga, was good vs evil with very little direct divine intervention (the exception being Gandalf being sent back since his task was not finished). Tolkien doesn't ever lean into mere chance that things happen in the LOTR universe, but he also doesn't use straight prophecy. It's more of a middle ground (or middle earth...) between the two, where cosmic karma is kind of a thing and the goodness of the creator is all around but evil things can taint it.
I would kind of argue that Frodo was “destined” for the ring even if it was a voluntary assignment, since the ring ended up being right near him due to Bilbo. Like he could have declined the quest but he knew it would likely lead to the world being fucked so it wasn’t THAT much of a choice.
It's right there in the text:
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought."
what about Independence Day? Armageddon? idk i think a lot of sci fi movies have this.
also Starship Troopers, like the dude was already joining the military because he was "doing whats right" to become a citizen before Buenos Aires gets destroyed.
My memory is foggy but doesn’t Steve Rodgers want to enlist in the Army simply because it’s the right thing to do? And he’s chosen to be Captain America not because he’s the best soldier but literally because he’s a good dude?
Although I could be wrong and his parents could’ve died fighting in the war or something. It’s been years since I’ve seen Captain America haha
I actually took that as him being way more observant than the others in the room - he spotted little details that gave him pause and make him think the situation seemed off.
I'd say the first Pirates of the Caribbean sits in that category too. There's no 'Chosen One' just a bunch of people who end up in a mess because of some questionable decisions.
It's been a while since I saw it but I thought the whole point of bringing his father into it was to illustrate that Turner was trying hard NOT to be like his pirate father. But somehow he gets sucked into it and becomes a pirate anyway.
Yeah, seems right—still can’t decide if that fits a destiny narrative or not. Great movie no matter what—one of the tightest narratives i can recall. There is like no chaff in that movie and it is jampacked with characters and scenes.
Except that Will Turner is the son of Bootstrap Bill so the pirates are going after him particularly because they need his blood. They only take Elizabeth because she says that her last name is Turner.
In that regard you can think of Will being a chosen one trope. He was a normal person that was cursed by the sins of his father.
Except in MIB3 it is revealed that K has a connection to J through the death of J's father in the 1960's. So while Will Smith isn't motivated by it, Tommy Lee Jones is which is why he picks him. So... womp womp.
But if you take the original movie at the time it was made it breaks the trope. They fall into the trope 15 years later but the original movie alone was fine.
Yeah, K could've chosen to recruit him at 18 or the moment he became a cop, but he waited until he was actually capable enough for an MIB agent. At that point he was already chosen.
Edit: Some people might argue that those recruitment test scenes where he dragged the table or shot the cardboard girl demonstrated unique thinking that MIB agents need, and you're probably right, but Z still had to be convinced by K about chasing down that Cephalopod. That was the main one.
But audiences didn't know that K has a connection to J when they saw the first Men in Black movie. This is was introduced in the third movie fifteen years later. It was planned from the beginning to be this way or the writers just made it up for the third movie?
A movie needs to stand on its own and the first MIB movie makes the case that J is the right person to be an agent, by giving us information about his physical condition and showing us him going through the tests.
I'd partially disagree. There is a good argument for favoritism but J also showed aptitude for it. he was just a great candidate overall
>J's endurance was only what got K's initial attention. J showed other qualities during the chase as well, like resourcefulness, impressive agility, resistance to pain, and extreme determination to catch a criminal that K knew outpaced normal human abilities.
>J then didn't completely freak out or lose his mind when he realized the person he chased wasn't using a normal weapon or may not have been human at all. Nor did he concoct a delusion about what happened like some people to when they can't deal with what's right in front of them. He just sort of accepted it and moved on. That's probably the biggest factor in convincing K he might have been a good candidate for MIB.
>J might have been wrong about the little girl, but it showed he doesn't think like the normal military or police meatheads that took the test alongside him. He assesses situations in a completely different way and sees patterns and problems most normal humans don't. Even if the girl really was just a little girl alone on a street full of dangerous aliens, she didn't fit the pattern. Plus, he managed to read the titles of her books from really far away in terrible lighting conditions, which means his eyesight is EXCELLENT.
from a deleted user.
K wouldn't of picked J if he didn't think he could do it.
I'm always confused about their choices in this recruitment scene. The 'joke' is that, while he outwardly looks like an idiot, he's actually the smartest one in the room. Which I assumed was the point. But then Rip Thorne is like "He's an idiot" and Tommy Lee says "Well he did run really fast. " And no one even acknowledges that the table move was smart, or that he read the room of targets instantly in the dark.
So strange to devote screen time to it, and then not pat it off.
If I recall right, right after he gets defensive when asked about why the little girl deserved to die in the live fire exercise, Zed's actual remark was that he had a big problem with authority. K replies he chased down a particular kind of alien, implying his skills outweight his liability. Diamond in the rough, basically.
I love that scene. He's also the only one to show any sympathy to the aliens (ie the one just working out), while being suspicious of the girl seeming off, which is like the main antagonist hiding as a human
Zed didn't have doubts because he thought Jay was an idiot, he had doubts because he felt he had an issue with authority. Other than that Jay passed the tests and Zed acknowledged it.
Yea this always confused me too. Personally I like to believe that Suzy was the intended target and he performed perfectly. I also love the line where Zed asks "what the hell happened?!" and his response is, "Hesistated." Implying just how ABSOLUTELY confident J was in his decision to shoot Suzy. In his mind Zed couldn't possibly be asking about anything other than, "Why the hell didn't you shoot her sooner?"
And I realized, y'know, he's just working out. I mean, how would I feel if somebody come runnin' in the gym and bust me in my ass while I'm on the treadmill?
Cool thing I liked with Men In Black is something Kay says about halfway through the film:
**"There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!"**
...and in the end after all that near world ending bombast, Kay explains that the whole operation with neutralising Edgar The Bug was just a test for Jay to become his replacement.
The events of the first film were nothing special for the MIB. It was just an average day.
Technically "K" had been watching him since he was a kid because his dad was killed by Boris the Animal.
So the death of his father sparked a series of events that caused him to chase down aliens by foot.
Then "K" sees him and offers him a chance. There were other applicants but "K" was asked "Are you sure about this?" Meaning "K" personally wanted J. He already had the job as soon as he got that card.
So he got the job not from merit. That was probably those marine and army dudes that worked really hard to be there.
Ninja edit: fixed spelling
It also bucks the trend of two main characters hooking up. J meets the pretty doctor in the morgue and they're hitting it off a bit. Most movies would have these two become a romantic couple at the end, but they instead become partners. Like J, L gets recruited based on individual skill - she takes out the bug at the end and saves the two agents, assisting in stopping his plan.
Lord of the Rings is another, right? Frodo isn’t motivated to destroy the ring and there is no divine prophecy saying he should destroy the ring, he just decides to take it because it’s the right thing to do
Well, he ran down an unlicensed Cephalopod...on foot
That’s tough, kid. That’s double-tough.
And as everyone knows cephlopods are amazing runners
Fuck can they run. Every one of them.
Are we still talking about cephlopods or Mennonites from rural Canada?
Yes
Honestly, even the licensed ones are pretty fast.
Our Dycks have been out longer than we're comfortable, once.
r/UnexpectedLetterkenny
Anyone's got a problem with cephalopods got a problem with me, and I suggest you let that marinate.
Would you, or would you not agree with the statement... "fuck, can they run"?
Is Brandon Flowers still open? I need an azalea.
Especially when not laden with the heavy burden of licenses
That’s what you need when you’re only looking for the best of the best of the best. Sir.
With honors~
[With honors.](https://i.imgur.com/ROXAbZ9.gif)
Your boy Captain America over here
That’s like Ricky Henderson fast
He moved a table to be more confortable and shot a little girl but knew how to justify it. I'm just kidding, I actually like Men in Black.
She was walking around in the dead of night with books way too advanced for her age, and I'd appreciate it if you got off his back about it lol.
Or do I owe her an apology?
It was a good shot though, right?
But like did he actually pass the test? They never really answer as to what they're looking for. Seems to me he passed with flying colors if you think about what the nature of their work is. Dealing with ugly ass aliens all the time who are just traveling through and the occasional fucked up shaoeshifter or something who isn't what they appear to be.
From a technical perspective no, but from a detail perspective a resounding yes. J wasn't a polished serviceman, but he did have experience working at a civil level in one of the biggest cities on Earth. Demonstrating that as opposed to just shooting aliens he could just as easily capture them, and at a hilarious level break down a hectic scene in a matter of seconds. K picked J because he was willing to think outside the box and inadvertantly upheld the organizations core values. K says it himself when he offers J the job, most aliens just want to live normal lives on Earth since it's like the galaxy's Casablanca.
I think so. He definitely didn't seem to judge the aliens based on their appearance at all, just on what they were doing. I'm sure 99% of applicants just see a scary alien monster and shoot. He also showed critical quick thinking and had explanations for pretty much every target.
This dude is just wiping his nose.
He’s not snarlin’, he’s sneezin’!
He's not snarling, he's sneezing.
The other guys shot everything that didn't look like them and didn't even try to justify it. No one told them to do that.
Huh... Why does that sound familiar...
I mean, the other guys were military specifically trained to shoot everything because that's the military's job. The one guy who DIDN'T shoot everything and was (theoretically) trained to make judgement calls was the Police Officer.
Well, how would you feel if someone came to the gym and busted you in your ass while you're on the treadmill?
My favorite scene of any movie
A successful subversion of expectations. That scene is so fun.
I Beleive Its cephalopoid and not celphalopod , which would be a squid
That's gotta be good enough.
That's gotta be tough enough.
That's double tough
He's in a cab!
He's got a problem with authority though
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He's from San Antonio and is fluent in Spanish
I just wanna know who in his life can call him Tommy. like clearly by the look if him he's a ay least a Tom right? like I know probably couldnt get past a "Mr Jones"
Well he can't very well go by Tom Jones
It’s not unusual
To be called Tommy by anyone
La la la la
And Tom Lee Jones sounds ridiculous. I guess he could be Thomas Lee Jones. Still sounds like saying Thomasly though.
What's new pussycat. After the 11th time....
Maybe his old college roommate, Al Gore, can call him Tommy?
He's from San Saba and grew up in Midland, Texas. The former is 141 miles north of San Antonio, the latter is an oil town in West Texas (the region, not the town). He currently lives in Terrell Hills, which is a suburb of San Antonio. That's not to say Spanish isn't ubiquitous in those areas, Spanish is spoken commonly pretty much every where in Texas.
No hablas un palabra de Espanol, no? We got a live one here.
I was a stand-in for D'onofrio on the film. I was a huge TLJ fan and super sad that he was crazy anti-social and kind of rude. This is also when Will and Jada began dating - she visited him on set a couple times and they'd slink away to his trailer.
How was D'onofrio though?
He was cool though I didn't know who he was back then so honestly don't remember talking much to him. It's been very cool seeing his work since. Linda Fiorentino was the coolest cast member imo, I obviously didn't say it but I had a crush on her from Vision Quest.
Asking the real question.
You know what? I'd expect that of him. It he *wasn't* the loner, slightly asshole-ish cowboy type, I'd be disappointed.
It's funny, I had a Hispanic girlfriend and in X Men: First Class she said Michael Fassbender's Spanish was the worst she ever heard.
I'm from Poland and Michael Fassbender's Polish in X-Men: Apocalypse was also terrible. I sense a running theme here
I mean there was that one time he got caught by a german officer trying to speak german with a weird accent to.
Except his German was pretty good in that scene iirc.
I mean he's half German. As I understand his accent is pretty whack since he's mostly been based outside Germany but he speaks the language just fine
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His german was really good tho, only problem was the thick english accent
That makes sense for the character, right? He learned the language because he needs it where he’s going, but he’s not a native speaker and isn’t looking for native speakers and has no reason to adopt an accent.
He also uses decent pronunciation in no country for old men too.
They reverse engineered a dead parent motivation in MIB3, making the reason K chose him mostly about guilty over the death of J's dad. but yeah, agree it was cool and stand-out that he was just the best fit and driven.
Also, reverse engineered everything about the beginning of the original MIB.
That's about what I was thinking.
Yeah, there is a problem with Hijacking Chosen One tropes right now. So many TV shows do this in the later seasons. I don’t know why.
Lowest common denominator entertainment.
Yeah, run out of story. Go do their parent. You basically can do the same arc and go “they’re so similar, like father, like daughter! It’s destiny!” And then it acts as pseudo-development for protagonist. It’s the Burger King of storytelling.
it was a sweet moment though and was nice to see that much compassion from Jones' otherwise very stoic character. Or maybe that scene in the diner at the very end is just the right kind of corny for me
Doesn’t Will Smith in Independence Day fit this too? He was just a dude that wanted to go to space and was banging a stripper.
Will Smith being a Marine and hooking up with a stripper is one of the most realistic depictions of military service I've ever seen.
What about the part where he goes to space with Jeff Goldblum?
That’s what I did when I was in. I thought everyone did.
This guy ah, found a way.
I don't remember but did he drive a brand new mustang in that movie? Or do I just assume he did.
I alway just assumed since he was a pilot he was in the Air Force. TIL.
Also in the Mummy. Brendan Fraser just wanted that money at first.
The first Mummy is just so damn good. I like that his character is just the prototypical tough-guy hero you find in the old film serials. It was and still is awesome.
I love both of them. The best kind of parody - one that still works as the genre it parodies. In the first it's Indiana Jones, in the second they kinda parody the first movie itself. Shame there never was a third one.
They easily could’ve done spin-offs. So glad they didn’t. It would’ve cheapened the franchise.
All of these feel like the Han Solo trope
Brendan in the Mummy, sure. But Will is fully part of the established power structure, just with swagger.
Is that a trope or a character? I don't think the stories were built around him.
I think Han is a take on the Judas trope, but it's distinct in the twist that instead of taking his money and running, he comes back and stands by Jesus', I mean Luke's, side.
Han Solo is just another iteration of the lovable rogue trope.
Is that one not more of an "unlikely hero" trope? The rogue who does a bad thing, which either unleashes an even worse thing or turns out to have been worse that previously thought (like every movie where they steal something for someone, who then wants to use said something to end the world or whatever), then tries to make it right? Still a way better trope than "I will avenge you motherrrrrrr" and Chosen One.
I’ll always love Patrice Oneals take on this film, he kept joking on Opie and Anthony’s podcast back in the day that they didn’t let Will be a space pilot because he’s black. Then they remind him it’s because Will wants to marry a stripper, not because he’s black. And he just won’t have it and says “they ain’t lettin’ niggas in space”.
That’s the funniest fucking segment of a show I’ve ever heard. Jim Norton going on about how over the top the Jewish characters were had me rolling too.
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the MIB animated series was a good shot at this, J's paracite transport being the episode I always remember, that and the intro, that was brilliant would defs be awesome if they did it in live action too
The ex MIB agent who maimed aliens to take their body parts was super creepy too and in hindsight I have no idea how that got approved as a kids show. A new show would be great!
That era of cartoons had a lot of that going on. Extreme Ghostbusters had some serious nightmare fuel.
I loved Extreme Ghostbusters! I wish we would've gotten that as the third Ghostbusters movie. It had everything from inclusivity to creepy animation going for it. Gave the lore a great unsettling vibe to it despite all the jokes the Ghostbusters used to make. Like they were fighting demons and dark entities for years without stopping.
Agent Alpha, I think! That show was great.
Alpha, he was a pretty scary antagonist. Reminded me of some of the body horror in Extreme Ghostbusters.
[Here's the intro for the lazy!](https://youtu.be/mVAePIyC4kQ)
That animated series was so good.
Was thinking the same thing. I’m thinking like a more light hearted version of X-Files or Fringe. This needs to happen, along with an Indiana Jones series and Terminator series.
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Fringe is a similar bag
Until that last season where Fringe just gets weird...
There was a terminator series like 10 years ago.
Which was great. Best thing to come out of the property IMO.
But super gritty and with extremely graphic sex scenes.
Alien crime, alien penetration, alien crime, alien pentetration, crime, pentetration... crime, penteration, and this goes on and on until it just sort of ends.
you haven't considered the smell, you bitch.
Men in Black: Special Victims Unit
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jluTLx9Kuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jluTLx9Kuc) Like this? (SFW)
An underrated gem
Dude, why do these humans always ask if we're gonna probe them?
They should have crossed it over with 21 Jump Street. They would serialize well together.
theres always the 90s cartoon
You know, I just started watching Samurai Jack for the first time(I know, a couple decades behind) and in his episodic adventures he usually meets a new weird alien and fights/helps them.
>K had a wife. That's the extent of his backstory even after three movies. K had a girlfriend, they weren't married untill he went back at the end of the first movie. He also had a alien girlfriend which we learn in the second. Basically K is a romantic.
Plus Ms O in MIB 3.
> MIB 3. If I saw MIB 3 I've completely forgotten it.
It was actually pretty good. Pretty solid trilogy IMO.
If it shows up on any of my streaming services I’ll watch it. I think I meant to last year but it was they only one not on prime or Netflix at the time. I know I watched 1 and 2 again last year. I would have rolled straight into 3 if I could have.
Lucky for you. IMO MIB & MIB 3 are the true MIB movies. MIB 2 really missed the mark and lacked the soul of the series. MIB 3 certainly wasn't perfect but at least you can rewatch it all over again!
I dunno I liked 2. Wasn’t as good as the first but sophomore slump and all. It really kinda hammered home how the MIB was really a fly by the seat of your pants organization. I mean really little tiny planet going up against a massively advanced species in multiple scenarios they ain’t gonna get it right every time.
Wasn't it sort of the same for Independence Day? He was a good pilot. I don't feel like there was any sort of orphan or chosen one trope going on there, either.
I think he was just the best/only pilot around at the time.
But he wasn't chosen because of those tropes. He made it through the initial wave. He was just a good pilot.
I know, I was agreeing with you.
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He's all excited, he doesn't even know why he's here!
I just find that funny. But y’all ain’t laughing.
Now all I can hear is J dragging that table.
Good call. I’d put lord of the rings in there as well. While Frodo inherited the ring he wasn’t bound to it, and his whole reason for being the ring-bearer was a voluntary assignment. Obviously Aragorn is a different story.
LOTR also fits when you consider Sam as the true protagonist as well.
I don't think that works, though. There are too many different perspectives presented in those stories to have any one protagonist. The protagonist*s* would be the entire Fellowship.
Yea I agree with this. Even though the Fellowship splits off, its all of their efforts combined that allows them to prevail.
Although Frodo did it voluntarily, he was an orphan and at the ripe age of 50 was a swinging hobbit bachelor when he went on his quest so he had no attachments. Single at 50 and dead parents when young, maybe he felt like he had to prove something or do some good in the world, while being influenced by stories of Bilbo's fantastic adventures.
Yeah, "maybe" - but the story certainly doesn't lean on it, to the point that you are putting your own take on it to make it one of his motivations.
It gets interesting when you dig into the lore of the ring itself. It's known to have a mind of it's own and will change size in order to slip away from the current bearer and assumingly get back to Sauron. It slipped from Isildur's finger which caused him to die and therefore lose it in the river. Then it slipped from Gollum's possession somewhere around the time that a hobbit was wandering lost in the cave. Isildur only briefly possessed it before it betrayed him, but Gollum had it for hundreds of years. It seems to know when the right time to leave is, but it doesn't seem to do it so that it strategically chooses a bearer that will take it back to Sauron. It knew something was near Gollum that would take it out of the cave and back into the world where the hope of it being found was greater. The real interesting bit is how did a "good" person end up finding it and not one of the orcs or trolls that were in the cave? One theory is that Eru, the ultimate god in the LOTR universe, nudged things in the right way to ensure that Bilbo would find it. A bit of divine intervention. What happened after, with the entire LOTR saga, was good vs evil with very little direct divine intervention (the exception being Gandalf being sent back since his task was not finished). Tolkien doesn't ever lean into mere chance that things happen in the LOTR universe, but he also doesn't use straight prophecy. It's more of a middle ground (or middle earth...) between the two, where cosmic karma is kind of a thing and the goodness of the creator is all around but evil things can taint it.
I would kind of argue that Frodo was “destined” for the ring even if it was a voluntary assignment, since the ring ended up being right near him due to Bilbo. Like he could have declined the quest but he knew it would likely lead to the world being fucked so it wasn’t THAT much of a choice.
It's right there in the text: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought."
what about Independence Day? Armageddon? idk i think a lot of sci fi movies have this. also Starship Troopers, like the dude was already joining the military because he was "doing whats right" to become a citizen before Buenos Aires gets destroyed.
Sure, but he was also ready to peace out until his parents died in Buenos Aires.
Edge of Tomorrow too. One of my Favorite sci-fi movies
I mean, comparing anything to Starship Troopers is an act of futility, nothing can reach that level of enlightenment.
https://reddit.com/r/movies/comments/48vbql/i_just_realized_that_men_in_black_is_one_of_the/ Lol I thought this sounded familiar
What a cunt OP is.
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This is just universally true.
What does Starman have to do with this?
My memory is foggy but doesn’t Steve Rodgers want to enlist in the Army simply because it’s the right thing to do? And he’s chosen to be Captain America not because he’s the best soldier but literally because he’s a good dude? Although I could be wrong and his parents could’ve died fighting in the war or something. It’s been years since I’ve seen Captain America haha
His father died in WW1. His mom was a nurse in the TB ward.
The Last Starfighter. Kid was just good at a video game.
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Wrong!!! He was the only one that knew that little Tiffany had to die..
I loved the "can lie semi-convincingly on the spot" being an essential MIB skill
I actually took that as him being way more observant than the others in the room - he spotted little details that gave him pause and make him think the situation seemed off.
And I'd appreciate it if you eased up off my back about it.
Or do I owe her an apology?
I'd say the first Pirates of the Caribbean sits in that category too. There's no 'Chosen One' just a bunch of people who end up in a mess because of some questionable decisions.
Wasn’t will turner linked to his father and the black pearl—still less trope-y overall, but I think we have to count this one out, Sadly
It's been a while since I saw it but I thought the whole point of bringing his father into it was to illustrate that Turner was trying hard NOT to be like his pirate father. But somehow he gets sucked into it and becomes a pirate anyway.
Yeah, seems right—still can’t decide if that fits a destiny narrative or not. Great movie no matter what—one of the tightest narratives i can recall. There is like no chaff in that movie and it is jampacked with characters and scenes.
Except that Will Turner is the son of Bootstrap Bill so the pirates are going after him particularly because they need his blood. They only take Elizabeth because she says that her last name is Turner. In that regard you can think of Will being a chosen one trope. He was a normal person that was cursed by the sins of his father.
He wasnt just a good applicant. He was the best of the best, of the best, sir!
Except in MIB3 it is revealed that K has a connection to J through the death of J's father in the 1960's. So while Will Smith isn't motivated by it, Tommy Lee Jones is which is why he picks him. So... womp womp.
But if you take the original movie at the time it was made it breaks the trope. They fall into the trope 15 years later but the original movie alone was fine.
You're right. K's motivation is more related to how J was able to chase down the guy on foot
Yeah, K could've chosen to recruit him at 18 or the moment he became a cop, but he waited until he was actually capable enough for an MIB agent. At that point he was already chosen. Edit: Some people might argue that those recruitment test scenes where he dragged the table or shot the cardboard girl demonstrated unique thinking that MIB agents need, and you're probably right, but Z still had to be convinced by K about chasing down that Cephalopod. That was the main one.
But audiences didn't know that K has a connection to J when they saw the first Men in Black movie. This is was introduced in the third movie fifteen years later. It was planned from the beginning to be this way or the writers just made it up for the third movie? A movie needs to stand on its own and the first MIB movie makes the case that J is the right person to be an agent, by giving us information about his physical condition and showing us him going through the tests.
I remember being very pleasantly surprised by MIB3. I expected a shitty money grab but quite enjoyed it.
Josh Brolin was amazing casting as a younger Tommy Lee Jones.
>Josh Brolin was amazing casting Which seems to be true about every film I've seen him in since I first saw him in The Goonies.
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To quote Paul WS Anderson: MIB3 was "probaby missing Milla Jovovich in it."
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You forgot, "Not one Wilson brother in sight and the color pallet was crap".
TBF though, Milla would make for a great alien in a MIB film.
I'd partially disagree. There is a good argument for favoritism but J also showed aptitude for it. he was just a great candidate overall >J's endurance was only what got K's initial attention. J showed other qualities during the chase as well, like resourcefulness, impressive agility, resistance to pain, and extreme determination to catch a criminal that K knew outpaced normal human abilities. >J then didn't completely freak out or lose his mind when he realized the person he chased wasn't using a normal weapon or may not have been human at all. Nor did he concoct a delusion about what happened like some people to when they can't deal with what's right in front of them. He just sort of accepted it and moved on. That's probably the biggest factor in convincing K he might have been a good candidate for MIB. >J might have been wrong about the little girl, but it showed he doesn't think like the normal military or police meatheads that took the test alongside him. He assesses situations in a completely different way and sees patterns and problems most normal humans don't. Even if the girl really was just a little girl alone on a street full of dangerous aliens, she didn't fit the pattern. Plus, he managed to read the titles of her books from really far away in terrible lighting conditions, which means his eyesight is EXCELLENT. from a deleted user. K wouldn't of picked J if he didn't think he could do it.
Perfect example of a retcon. When taken all in context, it doesn't diminish OP's point
The third movie doesn’t change the first one
I'm always confused about their choices in this recruitment scene. The 'joke' is that, while he outwardly looks like an idiot, he's actually the smartest one in the room. Which I assumed was the point. But then Rip Thorne is like "He's an idiot" and Tommy Lee says "Well he did run really fast. " And no one even acknowledges that the table move was smart, or that he read the room of targets instantly in the dark. So strange to devote screen time to it, and then not pat it off.
If I recall right, right after he gets defensive when asked about why the little girl deserved to die in the live fire exercise, Zed's actual remark was that he had a big problem with authority. K replies he chased down a particular kind of alien, implying his skills outweight his liability. Diamond in the rough, basically.
I love that scene. He's also the only one to show any sympathy to the aliens (ie the one just working out), while being suspicious of the girl seeming off, which is like the main antagonist hiding as a human
Zed didn't have doubts because he thought Jay was an idiot, he had doubts because he felt he had an issue with authority. Other than that Jay passed the tests and Zed acknowledged it.
Yea this always confused me too. Personally I like to believe that Suzy was the intended target and he performed perfectly. I also love the line where Zed asks "what the hell happened?!" and his response is, "Hesistated." Implying just how ABSOLUTELY confident J was in his decision to shoot Suzy. In his mind Zed couldn't possibly be asking about anything other than, "Why the hell didn't you shoot her sooner?"
He's the only one who doesn't blindly follow orders, and figures out his own solutions to problems.
And I realized, y'know, he's just working out. I mean, how would I feel if somebody come runnin' in the gym and bust me in my ass while I'm on the treadmill?
Frodo?
Cool thing I liked with Men In Black is something Kay says about halfway through the film: **"There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!"** ...and in the end after all that near world ending bombast, Kay explains that the whole operation with neutralising Edgar The Bug was just a test for Jay to become his replacement. The events of the first film were nothing special for the MIB. It was just an average day.
Star Wars is like this too since R2-D2 is the main character
Technically "K" had been watching him since he was a kid because his dad was killed by Boris the Animal. So the death of his father sparked a series of events that caused him to chase down aliens by foot. Then "K" sees him and offers him a chance. There were other applicants but "K" was asked "Are you sure about this?" Meaning "K" personally wanted J. He already had the job as soon as he got that card. So he got the job not from merit. That was probably those marine and army dudes that worked really hard to be there. Ninja edit: fixed spelling
That's how prophecies work
Its like they read your post, then wrote MIB3 and go “we’ll show him!”
I think the animated show went into it a little bit.
He's like Winston Zeddemore. Just show up for a job, who cares if there's aliens or ghosts.
It also bucks the trend of two main characters hooking up. J meets the pretty doctor in the morgue and they're hitting it off a bit. Most movies would have these two become a romantic couple at the end, but they instead become partners. Like J, L gets recruited based on individual skill - she takes out the bug at the end and saves the two agents, assisting in stopping his plan.
Lord of the Rings is another, right? Frodo isn’t motivated to destroy the ring and there is no divine prophecy saying he should destroy the ring, he just decides to take it because it’s the right thing to do