I just realized that "Men in Black" is one of the very, very few fantasy/adventure movies where a character is not motivated by the death of a loved one or some kind of divine prophecy. Will Smith was chosen simply because he was a good applicant, and joined because it was the right thing to do.

Just think about it. Almost all blockbusters use the orphan trope or the chosen one trope. A lot of the time they use both. MIB did neither.

Will Smith was not picked because he was a chosen one prophesied to defend earth against the aliens. He didn't decide to say yes because some inspirational quote his dead brother told him instilled a certain set of values in him. He was offered a chance because he was a good cop. They picked him because he showed the most skill in their testing scenarios. And he joined because he wanted to.

In fact, after three movies we still know next to nothing about their lives before joining. J was a cop. That's literally all we know. In the third we found out he grew up without a dad, but it had zero relevance to the story until the third one and wasn't his motivation. In the first one, all of his characterization was purely based around his personality and interaction with others, his backstory was completely nonexistent.

K had a wife. That's the extent of his backstory even after three movies.

Isn't this kinda cool, when you really think about it? It's way less cliche, and prophecies are now so overused that they no longer carry weight. And the fact that we bonded with the characters so much, purely based on their personalities, just shows how great the writing and acting was. It feels cheap to get an audience to connect with someone using the death of other characters or some kind of other complicated backstory.

I guarantee if you put the story in less competent hands they would have done all this.

Submitted April 20, 2021 at 09:45PM by BigBadBrockLock https://ift.tt/3tzVOtt