Some sequels continue a story. Others repeat it. Men in Black II creates a new threat for the MIB, but recycles the same premise, which is that mankind can defeat an alien invasion by assigning agents in Ray-Bans to shoot them into goo. This is a movie that fans of the original might enjoy in a diluted sort of way, but there is no need for it except, of course, to take another haul at the box office, where the 1997 movie grossed nearly $600 million.
The astonishing success of the original MiB was partly because it was fun, partly because it was unexpected. We d never seen anything like it, while with MiBII, we ve seen something exactly like it. In the original, Tommy Lee Jones played a no-nonsense veteran agent, Will Smith was his trainee, Rip Torn was their gruff boss, and makeup artist Rick Baker and a team of f/x wizards created a series of fanciful, grotesque aliens. Although the aliens had the technology for interplanetary travel, they were no match for the big guns of