280. Men in Black

Title: Men in Black
Genre: Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Year: 1997, 2002, 2012

Summary:

Men in Black I (1997): Men in Black (M.I.B.) is a secret non-government agency that polices extraterrestrial alien refugees. The agency operates from an underground base at a Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority ventilation station in Battery Park. MIB members use neuralyzers to erase witness's memories of alien sightings. MIB is monitoring about 1500 aliens around the world, most of them in the vicinity of New York City.

One night, Agent K and his partner, D intercept a truck containing illegal immigrants and an extraterrestrial disguised as a human. When a U.S. Border Patrol agent sees the alien without its disguise, the alien attacks him, forcing K to destroy it and neuralize the agent and his colleagues. D, feeling too old, asks K to neuralize him into "retirement". Later, the MIB leader, Agent Zed, suggests that K should search for a new partner.

Meanwhile, James Darrell Edwards III is a New York police officer pursuing a man on foot. While chasing the incredibly fast and agile fugitive over the rooftops, Edwards sees the man blink with a set of secondary eyelids, and learns he must be an alien. K arrives at the precinct station, questions Edwards about the incident, then takes him to a pawnshop run by Jack Jeebs to identify the strange weapon the criminal drew on him. While questioning Jeebs, K reveals Jeebs is an alien by blowing his head off with a weapon, which grows back immediately. After Edwards finds a weapon identical to the one he saw among Jeebs' hidden stash of alien technology, K neuralizes him and leaves the cop an MIB business card. Later, Edwards goes to the MIB's secret headquarters and competes with several others to qualify to join the agency. After the tests, K takes him aside (while the others are neuralyzed) and offers him the position. Edwards accepts and his identity is erased, becoming Agent J.

Suspicious of why extraterrestrials are suddenly leaving the planet, the M.I.B. investigate a farmer named Edgar, who has been acting strangely after an alien craft crashed on his farm. Edgar has been killed and his skin used as a disguise by a "Bug", a member of a giant cockroach-like species that are at war with several other alien races, including the Arquillians. An Arquillian prince hiding in Brooklyn who is disguised as a human jewelry store owner is attacked, and tells J as he dies that "the galaxy is on Orion's belt".

M.I.B. informant Frank the Pug, a Remoonian disguised as a small lapdog, explains that the missing galaxy is a massive source of energy housed in a small jewel. The Bug figures out the galaxy is hanging on the collar of Rosenberg's cat Orion, which refuses to leave the prince's body at the morgue. Orion has been taken care of by Dr. Laurel Weaver. J arrives at the morgue just as the Bug kidnaps Weaver and grabs the galaxy. The Arquillians deliver an ultimatum to M.I.B. to secure the galaxy within an hour, or they will destroy Earth.

The Bug arrives at the site of two disguised flying saucers, the observation towers of the New York State Pavilion at Flushing Meadows. K and J are close behind and destroy one saucer. The Bug sheds Edgar's skin and swallows J's and K's guns. K tells J to stop the Bug from getting onto the other ship, then taunts the Bug until K too is swallowed. J infuriates the Bug by crushing cockroaches and taunting him.

The Bug is blown open from the inside by K, who located his gun in the Bug's stomach. As J and K sit on the ground covered in slime, the mortally wounded insect tries to attack again, but is killed by Weaver using J's discarded weapon. The three return to M.I.B. headquarters and K tells J that he has not been training him as a partner, but as a replacement. J neuralyzes K, using a coma cover story to allow him to return to his civilian life and the young woman he left behind. A few days later, it is revealed that Weaver also joined M.I.B. and is now J's new partner, Agent L.

As a coda, the camera rapidly pulls back, showing that Earth and the Milky Way galaxy are also inside an alien marble being used in a cosmic game.

Men in Black II (2002): In 2002, five years after the first Men in Black, Agent J is now the top operative for the MIB, the New York City-based agency that secretly monitors and regulates extraterrestrials' activity on Earth. J has no permanent partner since agent K resigned, and Agent L (from the first film) returned to work in a morgue. Subsequent partners have not lived up to J's standards.

While investigating a crime at a SoHo pizzeria, J uncovers a plot by Serleena, the shapeshifting Kylothian Queen. After destroying several planets, she sneaks onto Earth, and disguises herself as a lingerie model. In her own form, she resembles a plant-like hydra. The memory-wiped "neuralyzed" Agent K has resumed civilian life as Kevin Brown, postmaster in Truro, Massachusetts. Unbeknownst to him, the post office workers are aliens, so K feels right at home. To stop Serleena, J must convince Kevin to rejoin MIB. K is the only living operative who knows how to find the Light of Zartha. The planets that Serleena destroyed were where she looked unsuccessfully for the Light.

While J prepares to deneuralyze Kevin, Serleena takes over MIB HQ, which locks down. J and Kevin escape by literally being flushed from the building. J takes Kevin to Jack Jeebs, who owns a jerryrigged deneuralyzer. Although K eventually starts to regain some memories, he cannot recall the "Light of Zartha". K neuralyzed himself in order to keep the information for himself. They first stop at a video store, where they watch a tape that jars K's memory. In a fictionalized version of the truth, 25 years ago, the Zarthan Queen Laurana arrived on Earth to hide the Light of Zartha. Wanting to remain neutral, the MIB refused to help. Serleena arrived to steal the Light, but K activated the Zarthan ship and sent it away. Believing the Light was aboard, she chased the ship - after fatally shooting Laurana. K reveals that the ship was a decoy; the Light remains hidden on Earth.

Meanwhile, Serleena frees MIB's worst high-security prisoners and recruits them as her henchmen. Believing the Light is in the bracelet worn by pizzeria waitress Laura Vasquez, Serleena kidnaps her and prepares to send Laura back to Kyloth. K and J, helped by the "worm guys", assault MIB headquarters, defeating Serleena's henchmen and rescuing Laura. However, K warns them that if the Light is not sent to Zartha, it will explode and destroy the planet. They fly to building-top departure point in J's car. Serleena chases after them but is eaten by Jeff, a giant alien worm living in the New York subway system. At the departure point, K reveals that Laura is Laurana's daughter (and it is heavily implied that K, in turn, is Laura's father), and is the actual Light of Zartha herself. To save Earth and Zartha, Laura leaves Earth. She and J are both reluctant, since they have fallen for each other. Serleena, having assimilated Jeff, returns to capture Laura again. K and J are finally able to destroy her and Laura escapes to her homeworld Zartha.

To cover up the events caused by Serleena's rampage, K activates a giant neuralyzer hidden in the Statue of Liberty's torch. K and Chief Zed, the head of MIB, try to console J for the loss of his love, but he claims no sorrow. For comfort, K puts the tiny city of aliens from a Grand Central Terminal locker (one of the clues) into J's locker. When J suggests showing the miniatures their world is bigger than a locker, K shows J that they themselves are in a locker of a huge alien station.

Men in Black III (2012):  Boris the Animal, last of the Boglodites, a malevolent alien race that consumed all planets in their path, escapes from Lunar-Max Prison on the Moon. He wants vengeance on Agent K, who shot off his left arm and jailed him in 1969. Boris confronts K and his partner Agent J  while on a case, telling K that he is "already dead," and flees. J searches the MIB database when K refuses to discuss his past, and discovers Boris committed several murders in 1969 before being captured by K, and that K deployed an "ArcNet" shield around Earth in July of the same year that prevented a Boglodite invasion, thus starving them to extinction. Agent O, the new head of MIB after Zed's passing, confronts J and tells him not to probe deeper. That night as he talks to J on the phone and awaits Boris to arrive to attack him, K vanishes, and only J remembers he ever existed when he shows up at MIB looking for him. O shows J a statue to K, killed by Boris in 1969, and tells J that his chocolate milk craving and headaches are a result of a 'temporal fracture' of time travel. At this point, the Boglodites start to invade Earth. J learns that Boris time-jumped to July 16, 1969, killed K, and prevented the ArcNet from being installed. J jumps off a skyscraper with another time travel device in order to travel back to July 15, 1969 and save K.

In 1969, J heads to Coney Island, where the first murder took place. He finds 1969 Boris and attempts to shoot him but is knocked out by 1969 K, 29 years old and much more light-hearted than the K J knows in 2012. J is taken to 1969 MIB headquarters for questioning, and finds K flirting with 1969 O. Suspicious of J, K prepares to neuralyze J until J tells the truth, convincing K to accept his aid in capturing Boris. The two follow clues to Griffin, a fifth-dimensional being who sees multiple timelines simultaneously. At The Factory studio party hosted by Andy Warhol aka Agent W, 1969 Boris attacks. Griffin flees, after promising a gift and a miracle game. J remembers a miracle game Griffin said that will take place soon at Shea Stadium. They arrive there and find Griffin, who shares his timeline vision of "his favorite moment in human history", when the losing NY Mets win the World Series due to a series of cosmic coincidences aligning at once. Before Griffin can give them the ArcNet, he is kidnapped by 1969 Boris. J and K pursue him and rescue Griffin and the ArcNet, but 1969 Boris escapes and is met by his 2012 counterpart.

J, K, and Griffin jet-pack to Cape Canaveral, Florida, where Apollo 11 prepares to launch, as they need to attach the ArcNet to the rocket so it can deploy once in space. The military stops them, but Griffin shows the skeptical colonel the future, convincing him how important the agents are, and he assists them in reaching the launch site. As the agents climb to the top of the rocket supports, both 1969 Boris and 2012 Boris attack them, J battles 2012 Boris as K battles 1969 Boris. Using his time travel device to relive Boris's attacks, J defeats him and knocks him off the supports. K shoots off the left arm of 1969 Boris, knocking him off the rocket, and the ArcNet is attached and deployed successfully as Apollo 11 launches, 2012 Boris being incinerated by the exhaust. K and J retreat to safety, when 1969 Boris attacks the colonel, mortally wounding him before K kills 1969 Boris, remembering J's advice to not arrest him. The colonel's young son runs to his father's side but is stopped by K, who neuralyzes the boy and tells him his father is a hero. J, hidden nearby, realizes the boy is his own younger self, the colonel Boris killed being his father, and that K has been watching over him all his life.

J returns to 2012, joins K alive at a diner for pie, and subtly thanks him for all his care, and learns that by Boris's death, the future has remained intact as he remembers it. After they leave, Griffin, previously unseen sitting on a nearby stool, says "This is my new favorite moment in human history. Unless this is the one where K forgot to leave a tip." Griffin looks up and the camera shows a meteor falling to earth. K returns to tip and the disaster is averted as a satellite collides with the meteor. Griffin smiles and says, "That was a close one".