Sony’s Men in Black franchise managed to permeate popular culture in the late 1990s, with many of the signature comic beats and memorable lines of dialogue finding their way into everyday conversation. The original trilogy also earned close to $1.7 billion at the box office, so it was evidently massively popular.
The only problem was that the chemistry between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones was the only thing that kept the sequels afloat. The first installment is one of the best blockbusters of the last 25 years, but the sequels? Less so. Josh Brolin did a solid job in the third chapter, but that’s because he was doing an impression of Jones and little else.
Without the two main driving forces, Sony were confident the Men in Black saga could continue. Clearly, somebody in the boardroom caught a screening of Thor: Ragnarok, and decided that Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson were the ideal candidates. A sound move in theory, but a dire one in execution.
Plans were afoot for more blockbusters and various spinoffs that would globalize the Men in Black saga, until it turned out that International was a big steaming sci-fi turd. It flopped at the box office and was panned by critics, which came after a tortured production, leaving the studio to simply wash its hands of the entire mess. Not for the first time, though, it’s creeping back up the Netflix most-watched list, as per FlixPatrol.
