Men in Black 3

Barry Sonnenfeld’s film is split in two, and the weight sits plainly on the 1969 half. That is not only a storytelling choice: when shooting began, the second and third acts had not been written. Sonnenfeld says so himself, adding that it would count as a really stupid idea if the picture failed. Production then broke for months so the writers could close the story, and Rick Baker recalls a writer on the soundstage producing lines moments before they were spoken. Those conditions are visible. The present day scenes stay thin while the 1969 stretch is full in both design and rhythm. Baker deliberately separated the two eras of creatures: the 2012 aliens keep the shapes the series taught us, while the 1969 ones are big brained and bug eyed with fishbowl helmets, a direct nod to the cheap science fiction of that decade. What Josh Brolin does is more than mimicry. He plays the young K not as a Tommy Lee Jones impression but as a separate man whose choices will later explain the older K’s silence, and because the emotional close rests on that, it lands weakly on anyone new to the earlier films. Right for a viewer there for the 1969 design and Brolin. Wrong for anyone who needs time travel rules to hold together.