So, Hollywood has decided to pump the brakes for a minute on the 80s nostalgia, have they? Then whatever else will they do for much necessary reboots and remakes? The answer – move onto 90s nostalgia instead, I guess. In all seriousness, though growing up in the late 90s early 2000s meant that I was exposed to the MIB movies a lot, I unashamedly loved them and still do to this day. So, when I heard that a new film without its iconic leads was in the works, I was a little trepidatious, but upon finding out that Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson were going to be the new leads, the hesitation melted away and I was left excited. Today, I checked out the second international trailer. It’s a little different from what you may have seen in the mainstream trailer, but this one seemed a slight bit more coherent.
The trailer opens with Emma Thompson (Head of MIB) interrogating Tessa Thompson – too many Thompsons. This interrogation grants us the framework for Tessa’s, now agent M’s, backstory. As a nice little change. It doesn’t seem to be the same fish out of water tale but instead that she wanted in and managed to do the impossible and track MIB down by herself. Inducted into MIB and off on a mission, she is partnered with agent H (Chris Hemsworth) in London. The trailer flicks through multiple worldwide destinations through its run, with title ‘International’ being chosen for good reason (this looks to be a Bondesque world travelling plot). From here, we are given a glimpse of a few character moments with Hemsworth and Thompson retaining the same fun chemistry that endeared so many fans in Thor: Ragnarok, all while Liam Neeson introduces the villains. The villains are shape-changing aliens and you’ll see that MIB are supposed to be fighting a mole in their organisation, so we all know where this is going. This is where I feel a bit shaky… there are so many ways that this film could fall into a pit of cliched tropes with that kind of plot, so let’s hope it manages to steer clear from trope-land. From here we have a montage of out of context action scenes which look fun, a cool motorbike in the mix. Finally wrapping up with another character moment, agent M and H test out the most powerful weapon in the galaxy – for fun, resulting in a rather noticeably large crater.
In the end, all I really want from this film is to have fun, that’s what the original flicks were all about and therefore is all Men in Black: International needs to be. The trailer shows off some nice action, an interesting story to build from in Tessa Thompson’s Agent M and, with as likeable leads as these, there shouldn’t be any problems on the humour or chemistry front. As long as it doesn’t fall into a pit of clichés that it can’t escape, it should be fine. I just want jokes, aliens and ridiculous guns to splatter the bad guys with, that’s not too much to ask for… is it?
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