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?
Charles Austin Miller
30th Jul 2018
Men in Black (1997)
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.
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?
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.
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.
But it fits in the first 2 MIB movies just fine, so its irrelevant.
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.
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).
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?
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).
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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