Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I try to catch a
garter snake in our local park – it gets away, I try to catch an American toad –
same story, and the leopard frogs in the park’s swamps are mocking me, I say!
So I turn to the world of fiction, and what do I get? ‘Men In Black:
International’, where Thor and Valkyrie – I mean, Henry ‘H’ and Molly ‘M’ get
to save planet Earth from Hive. The fuck?!
No, this is exactly what is going on: Hive in MIB4 (let us
call this move that here) may be depicted differently from how it did on MCU’s
AoS, but its’ M.O. is the same, its respective roles on AoS and MIB4 are
practically the same, and this incarnation of MIB (the titular organization,
not the movie), is essentially the good old S.H.I.E.L.D. of MCU, just, again,
depicted somewhat differently – just enough to avoid copyright infringement
issues.
Now, let us be completely honest – on one hand, MIB4 did
have some references to Marvel™,
especially Henry-H’s connection to Marvel’s™ Thor, and on the other, MCU itself is known by now
to remake the comic characters, but, uh, the MIB franchise isn’t part of Disney/MCU,
not now, so their appropriation of AoS isn’t kosher, I bet. So far, I have not
heard anyone calling the MIB team on this, but judging by how the – commotion regarding
MIB4 is dying down, (unlike the ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ film, which has its’ own
share of problems, but regardless), I am guessing that someone did. Someone was
not happy, and called the people in the MIB franchise out, and now the odds of
the MIB franchise returning anytime soon are not very good – a long-term long
show is better.
As for the MIB4 movie itself…listen. The first movie was
especially a cop-buddy film, not unlike another movie series starring Will
Smith, ‘Bad Boys’. It worked, mostly because Will and Ian had amazing chemistry
together, as odd as that was. So, a second movie – a reboot of the first one –
was made, and then a third, which was more of the same, with time travel and
further elaboration of the J & K’s relationship, and then it took a rest.
Now, along comes MIB4, which is not really a space cop movie, unlike the first three
films, but more of a spy thriller, though less ‘James Bond’, and more ‘Man from
U.N.C.L.E.’ and ‘Get Smart’. Both were TV series about spies belonging in paramilitary
organizations fighting other, more evil organizations, cough – yeah, one can
see how AoS could get unintentionally conflated into the mix…but that epiphany
doesn’t make anything better.
…On a different note, both ‘Get Smart’ and ‘Man from
U.N.C.L.E.’ got to be rebooted and rebranded from TV series into movies, but
unlike, say, ‘Godzilla 1998’ or even ‘MIB’ in question – in case of ‘Godzilla’,
the animated TV series (lasting for at least 2 series) were much more popular
than the movie was, while in case of ‘MIB’, set after the initial film…and one
of their episodes had almost the same plot as MIB3 movie did, so there’s that.
Back to MIB4 film proper? As flawed as it was, but between
it and the last season of Netflix’s JJ show, I did skip last week’s AoS
episode, and as for this week’s episode – ‘Inescapable’ – it was meh. It was
focused on the FitzSimmons on one hand, and introduced plenty of exposition
regarding the FitzSimmons pre-show history, (in a manner of speaking), and also
the audience got to fill-in the gaps between S5 and 6. It was a well-balanced
episode – it had drama, action, horror, romance and humor equally balanced –
but is it enough? Judging by the numbers of the previous S6 episodes – not so
much. AoS has become established well-enough among its’ fan base that the
latter don’t need it anymore – they can ‘play’ with its’ characters to their
hearts’ desires without being concerned about canon anymore. It’s harsh and
unfair, but that’s real life for you, sometimes it’s just unfair and there isn’t
anything you can do, other than to try again to catch that mocking leopard
frog!..
Ahem. This is it for now. See you all soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment