Men in Black

Corrected entry: In the scene when the alien ship crashes into the truck, it hits it from the side, and therefore would not split it perfectly; instead it would probably cut it in half and the 2 halves would both face diagonally.

Correction: Um. That IS what happened.

Corrected entry: When J is chasing the alien at the building he gets to the locked door and shoots out the glass. The gun jams with the slide back but he still fires at least 2 more shots.

Correction: He only fires the gun twice. If it jammed, it doesn't matter, because he never uses it again in the movie.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Will Smith (prior to becoming a MiB) follows the perp/bug into the Guggenheim, Will smashes a glass door. An alarm would have gone off (even a silent one) and guards would have come running. Not to mention the fact that there was no visible security around the museum, inside or out. It was deserted, as were the streets. This is NYC; come on.

Lisa 176

Correction: Have you forgotten about the MIB? They were obviously around since one neuralyzed Jay, and they would definitely have done something about any people in the area (evacuated them or something, then neuralyzed them), including the security.

Corrected entry: When Agent J gets his finger prints removed by a machine, it only removes the prints from the tip of his fingers. You can match prints from the lower parts of the fingers and the palms too, so he is still traceable.

Correction: We see K deleting all of his vital records, including his hand prints and footprints. Any prints left for someone to find wouldn't do them any good, being that they'll still need to have something prior for the computer to trace it to.

BillyBlake

Corrected entry: In the scene where Will Smith and the soldiers are being tested to become Men in Black, they are in the shooting range. All of the people there shoot off almost their entire magazine at the targets. Yet in the next shot one alien only has four neatly spaced holes in him and the others don't appear to have many if not any holes in them. I guess these guys are pretty bad shots.

Correction: Like you said, these guys ARE pretty bad shots. Coupled with the flashing light and startling images being shown while they were frantically firing, they simply missed the targets. This is not a mistake.

Corrected entry: In the beginning the agents wear Immigration and Naturalization Services patches, drive Border Patrol vehicles, and use Customs badges. All three were diffrent agencies at the time the movie was filmed.

Correction: Yes, but the MiB transcends all other agencies, and can comandeer equipment from all of them. While it would be more air-tight if they got all the tools for one job from a single agency, they could (for some reason) have opted to just scramble something together. And they would not be likely to care, since they would have to erase the memory of all witnesses anyway.

Twotall

Corrected entry: In the beginning of the movie, when the alien kills Edgar, he tosses the man's skin up out of the crater, then drags it back down where he puts it on. When it drags on the ground, it's obvious that Edgar's "skin" is simply a rubber or latex shell.

Correction: What else would an empty skin look like?

Well for one it doesn't look like rubber.

brianjr0412

Corrected entry: When the bug takes Edgar's skin, we see the skin flop on the ground. However, there are no eyes, teeth or jaw bones, so why when the bug puts on Edgar's skin would there be human eyes and a set of human teeth and jaw bones?

Correction: You're supposed to give them a break about any time something is wearing something else's skin in MiB. It's been that way since the comics.

Corrected entry: In the beginning of the movie when Tommy Lee Jones is setting up the neurolizer for the first time you can see that the dials are Minutes, Hours and Days. Later when he describes it to Will Smith, he says the dials are Hours Days, Months.

Correction: The agents usually carry neuralyzers with them for taking care of something regular people just briefly saw. They'd never need a 'months' setting. The one K had here was meant for his own retirement, which he'd seen coming, so he had one set for much longer-term memory deletion.

Corrected entry: In the end when the bug leaves with his UFO, the 2 MIB are going to shoot it down. When they fire, Will is on the left side. After the shot he is on the right side.

Correction: After Jay and Kay shoot the UFO, it circles around behind their original spot. The camera follows them as they watch the UFO fall from the sky. Jay moves to the right as Kay stands still. Watch it if you don't believe.

Corrected entry: At the very beginning, when Will Smith is chasing the alien around the building, he is running one direction around the building, and when the shot changes, he is running the other way.

Correction: The start of the ramp in the Guggenheim museum runs in a clockwise direction before changing direction to anti-clockwise. This can be seen in the film in the overhead shot of Will Smith as he starts chasing the alien up the ramp.

Correction: No, the light from the tunnel shines on him to make it look like they are, but they aren't.

T Poston

Corrected entry: If the noisy cricket can blow Will Smith backwards through a car window, why doesn't the gun he uses to shot down the alien ship near the end knock him anywhere?

Correction: Will Smith probably braced himself before shooting the Cricket. If you are expecting someone to run into you, you will brace for impact. If you don't you get blasted a good 3 yards.

Correction: No, it isn't. According to both his IMDb page and the 'Men in Black' cast list, Richard O'Brien is not in this movie.

Guy

Corrected entry: Steven Spielberg cast Will Smith for the movie after Will was suggested by Steven's wife, she jumped right up and said "Will Smith" after they read the script together.

javier santos

Correction: Actually, director Barry Sonnenfeld cast Will Smith after Sonnenfeld's wife recommended him, Sonnenfeld has stated this fact in several interviews over the years, most recently when he spoke on the 25th anniversary of the film's release.

Correction: This is highly suspect. Do you have any source for this information? Unless you were in the room I doubt you can know she "jumped right up and said Will Smith".

Corrected entry: In the scene where Edgar's skin gets inhabited by the alien bug, and goes back into the house, he pulls his skin back to make it stop hanging from his bones, in the next shot, he appears to still be holding it back, but when he lets go, it is very apparent that he was only holding his hair.

Correction: Which is attached to the skin. That's not a mistake.

Phixius

Corrected entry: The Arquillians threaten to destroy the Earth if they cannot retrieve the Galaxy. But where is Griffin's Arc Net Shield (MIB 3) which protects earth from alien invasions?

Correction: That arc shield was meant specifically for the Boglodites, not all alien species. Besides, the Arquillians aren't invading Earth, they just blow it up from orbit.

lionhead

Correction: Griffin's Arc Net Shield did not exist in the first movie, nor in the second, because the Arc Net Shield was a plot device of the third movie only. There is little background continuity between the three films, so we cannot assume they share the same plot devices, especially in retrospect. One constant, however, was mentioned by Agent K in the first film: "There's always an alien battle cruiser, or a Corellian death ray, or an intergalactic plague intended to wipe out life on this miserable little planet. The only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they do not know about it!" In this way, director Barry Sonnenfeld set up a sequel universe in which there could be any number of independent threats against the Earth that the MIB simply addressed one at a time without overlapping plots. Multiple threats and appropriate defenses were seldom discussed but were just routine for the MIB.

Charles Austin Miller

There is continuity between the 3 films. Frank the Pug as a picture on J's wall. J complaining about false promises K made when he recruited him. The alien battle cruiser you mentioned. Why shouldn't there be no continuity? Who said MiB movies are standalone episodes?

Goekhan

I agree there is continuity. The supposed constant helps keep things small and reset them almost completely (same goes for the neuralizer), but that doesn't mean there is no continuity. Its also a fact J doesn't know a tenth of what K knows, including the existence of the arc shield.

lionhead

My comment was "little or no background continuity," such that there are sequential references to Frank the Pug, et cetera. But MIB3 is its own story, and the first two films didn't anticipate or acknowledge the Arc Net Shield. That was purely an MIB3 plot device.

Charles Austin Miller

But it fits in the first 2 MIB movies just fine, so its irrelevant.

lionhead

Well, by that reasoning, you could just as easily say that the first MIB film and MIB2 ceased to exist throughout most of the third film. Early in MIB3, Agent K was killed in Florida in 1969, he never launched the Arc Net Shield (so why didn't the Boglodites invade the Earth), Agent K never met J again in New York City years later, J never became an MIB Agent, et cetera, et cetera. Yet the present hardly changes at all after Agent K is killed in 1969. As long as we're "fitting" things together in retrospect, there are a LOT contradictions and continuity problems with the whole trilogy. Which is why I still think the trilogy is supposed to be a series of stand-alone films with no over-arcing continuity.

Charles Austin Miller

Nothing wrong with the timeline in that aspect. The Boglodites didn't invade earth until the present day, just hours after Boris escaped and killed K, that was the scheduled invasion, which would have failed had the shield been there (and killed off the boglodites). Without K someone else obviously recruited J, seeing his potential just as K did, as you might recall J was just an agent in the alternate present day and not seen as a stranger. Any other things that might have gone different we simply don't see in the little time we spend in the altered present day (before J goes back).

lionhead

But Agent K did not just pick J "for his potential; according to MIB3, Agent K took the very young J under his wing, giving him a specific direction in life (probably spying on J regularly as he grew up, and intending to recruit J to the Men in Black. Assuming that J was always going to be an MIB agent (without K's intervention) is a pretty huge assumption. And then, of course, there's the matter of J being the only one who remembered K in the present. How did that work?

Charles Austin Miller

Again, even though K wasn't there to take J under his wing some other agent could have picked up on J's capabilities, its not that huge an assumption. J remembers K in the present because, according to Jeffrey, he was there, in the past his young self was present when the time change occurred and therefor he retains his original self (which is just a plot contrivance, but whatever, its a time travel movie).

lionhead

Corrected entry: When the rear of the truck explodes after Will Smith shoots it, the pipes that feed the scene with smoke can be seen just above the kerbstones. (01:03:55)

Correction: Already submitted and listed as #86084: "In the scene after J shoots the exterminator van off of the tow truck he shoots again. When the camera clips to the tow truck driving away, you can see the smoke generators emitting smoke from the curb."

Sacha

Corrected entry: At the end, Jay is holding hotdogs in his left hand and newspapers in his right. He hands the hotdogs to L but the papers disappear.

Correction: As he hands the hot dog to L, the tops of the papers are in front of his belly, and again as he is opening the car door still in his right hand.

jimba

Corrected entry: When the Arquillian battle cruiser appears above Earth, all of the other aliens on Earth leave. Later, K tells J that "there's always an alien battle cruiser or a Corellian death ray or an intergalactic plague that's about to wipe out life on this miserable little planet." If that's the case, shouldn't the aliens always be leaving, or just never come back at all?

Moose

Correction: This was K's way of telling J that there's always something going on. In this case, the Arquillian's gave a clear warning that the planet was going to be destroyed. The aliens on Earth reacted to that with fear. They aren't going to know about every little job the Men in Black deal with.

Correction: They are refugees mostly, they got nowhere else to go, nobody would accept them. Plus there is a good chance any other place in the galaxy experiences the same things, but worse.

lionhead

Revealing mistake: When Will Smith throws a rock at the escaping Edgar alien, if you watch the rock after it hits the alien, it disappears after hitting the ground. (01:23:20)

More mistakes in Men in Black

Kay: Imagine a giant cockroach with unlimited strength, a massive inferiority complex and a really short temper is tear assing around Manhattan in a brand new Edgar-suit. That sound like fun?

More quotes from Men in Black

Trivia: After reading the script with his wife, Barry Sonnenfeld (the director) turned to his wife and said "Tommy Lee Jones". She turned to him and said "Will Smith", and that is how they were cast. This is confirmed by Barry Sonnenfeld on the DVD commentary.

THGhost

More trivia for Men in Black

Question: When we first see MIB headquarters, K says that the little destructive energy ball thing is "a little practical joke by the Great Attractor." As far as I can tell, the Great Attractor is just a gravitational anomaly, so how could it play practical jokes?

Answer: Yes, "the Great Attractor" can refer to a specific anomaly in the Centaurus Supercluster, but that is a far cry from saying that the term can only refer to that specific anomaly. It is completely possible for a high-tech prankster and/or performer to use the name "the Great Attractor." It's like saying "the Boss" when referring to Springsteen. The term means a manager over a group of people in a place of work, but he can still use it as a stage name.

Garlonuss

More questions & answers from Men in Black

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