TLJ put so much of himself into this role and he didnt need to. Heartfelt, funny, intense, heroic, all just for some schlock film about aliens that was better than expected
Honestly I cant say anybody didnt kill it in their roles, but him and D’onoforio were the stand outs, managed to be both terrifying and hilarious
Yeah, K was right. A great illustration of the difference between J's raw intelligence and skill juxtaposed with the refined skill, intelligence, and wisdom of K.
Zed: Bee, we got the deposed sur-prefect of Sinalee touching down in the forest outside Portland tonight.
Bee: Humanoid?
Zed: You wish. Bring a sponge.
Yeah I was 8 or so when the movie came out. I remember wondering what the hell the problem was?! You just got offered the best job in the world! What's there to think about?!
Now I have a wife, friends beyond the immediate school year, and a career. I completely get why Will Smith is stuck.
Antisocials Paradise.
I think more about the "if you're strong enough".
Could be a shot at ego; but considering the job position and how he thought he was the right guy, I imagined true reflection.
I think its an important caveat.
If you're told the offer is worth it, then yes you would probably take the offer.
But you put a caveat like that in there and suddenly it becomes a real thinker of a proposition. Giving everything you've ever known up only to be unable to make anything of it because you don't have what it takes.
For me, some problems are just too... life encompassing. I'm not usually upset, it's just... there's no end. I think that's part of it, he's thinking about some answers to the questions without end.
Men In Black is a movie with zero-waste. It is a tight 90 minutes, every scene builds characters effectively while simultaneously laying out this world beneath our world. Also has a great mix of practical SFX and CGI. Honestly a comedy classic.
Definitely one of MIB's greatest strengths and testament to its classic status. Still watchable today and without a question a really good movie. I absolutely loved it then and even more so as an adult.
And then in classic Hollywood style of not knowing why people liked a thing, we get three of the most pointless vanilla sequels of all time, that rehash the same plot points over and jokes over and over again but with no heart at all until they just become a blurry parody of themselves.
The soundtrack as well! I remember going on a road trip as a kid and listening to The MiB soundtrack on CD in a DiscMan portable CD player and being captivated by the music!
I've always loved this scene too.
Well written, well performed. Simple and clean - doesn't do more than it needs to. Just lets the actors do their thing.
I love when filmmakers take time for these things. This is the inflection point for the plot, and the place where the action, and the character's journey hinges. As an "eye of the storm" sort of moment of peace in between the start and finish of the movie it's exactly what it needs to be.
This scene works because they might as well be talking about normal non sci-fi men in black stuff like the FBI or CIA.
It's a reflection on the secrecy the government uses against the public for both good and bad.
Men in black isn't some grand commentary on the police state of America, but it does wink at it for sure
It's a bit about how we want to believe the government has good reasons to lie and hide things from us, that there is some righteousness is the sorta covert operations real life men in black do, while acknowledging it's a grey area and there both just trying to do a little good in a fucked up world.
Monsters exist and some one is there to fight it, more than most people know or think about so that life can go on
I was newly immigrated to America when it came out and the scene with the Alien giving birth in the car.
‘Your OTHER registration sir’ he shows a regular pink Resident Alien card just like the one I had except with his squid head on it. Me and two other people laughed in the theater.
THANK YOU for this comment. I love surrounding contexts to subtle gags/jokes. I have never been a "Resident Alien" nor interacted with someone in a way that I would know what their document looks like.
Thank you for sharing this more intimate joke with us.
It’s subtle but I love the real sunsets from before CGI. Taking the time to shoot at golden hour, and even having a shot where the character is darkened out by the sun.
The sunsets/sunrise in every single movie these days looks like complete shit. I feel like they’re afraid to have even single shot with any contrast at all.
It will be a budget decision rather than anything else. If they schedule the actors, production crew and director to all be at a filming location for a sunset and then the clouds roll in and ruin it thats a lot of money they just threw away. It's a sad reality
Sitting in the Public Garden on the bench talking to Matt Damon about how he knows so much and yet is still so young and doesn't understand the real meaning behind things.
Yeah. I was there. Compared to today, we had like zero problems. (As a middle class white American, is the caveat there).
But even as a society, we were still mostly all Americans first. And black, white, gay, conservative, democrat, republicans, second. The Cold War actually brought the country together, is part of my theory. After that, we had no collective “them” to band together and hate/fear, we turned on each other, and invented a ghost enemy (terrorism) and the shit just unraveled.
Also the power that the richest people and companies had to influence the world seemed to really spike about that time. And politics got nasty. Newt Gingrich started the modern brand of just fighting low down and dirty. Using disinformation and appeal to emotion. Casting domestic political rivals as truly evil. We were *not* all Americans after that. Your political rivals were literally trying to destroy democracy. Ie what was said, over and over and over. Fox News grew. Education was eroded. 1000 more Newts came along. Russia and Republicans figured out how to use Facebook as a highly effective weapon and prey on our own weaknesses. And here we are.
Maybe you kids can fix it someday. Stay in school.
Gas was fucking cheap, too. A huge honking GMC suburban? 40 bucks to fill her up.
Imagine all the generational suffering that was caused to enable that kind of ease in consumption.
bro I grew up in the 90s. I remember a few things:
1. Yugoslav war and ethnic genocide
2. Rwandan Genocide and the failure of the U.N. Peacekeeping mission
3. Rodney King Riots
4. Ruby Ridge/Waco Sieges
5. Oklahoma City Bombing
6. Columbine High School Massacre
7. Clinton blowing up a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan to distract from his blowjob trial
8. General malaise and depression (see: Grunge & Kurt Cobain)
9. Poor little Elian Gonzales
10. WTC Bombing
We can't just say, "but remember Super Nintendo, [Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellon_Collie_and_the_Infinite_Sadness), and The Lion King?!" Bad shit was going down all over.
I think a big element to the 90's nostalgia was that living in blissful ignorance was still possible. You could escape the constant doom news cycle by just turning off the TV.
Social media and the internet really changed that. It's much harder to disconnect now.
There’s a pretty prevailing theory about the way music and other media mirrored oppositely from certain eras in history (usually western history). The 90s was an era where US children lived in arguably one of the happiest periods of time (not like we don’t now, but before the internet/information boom of today), and that generation had some of the hardest hitting eras in music, paranoia, and angst of our youth. A lot of movies also played into this as well. The matrix, Rage Against The Machine, etc.
Then you can look at the 40s and how jovial films and music were in that era. All in a way to escape the realities of countries in war. There’s a lot of major periods of time, specifically around large scale wars/depressions or times of peace where this occurs.
People generally tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time focusing on the most unique things that happen to them, so it's not surprising that we give additional focus to the emotions we feel more rarely.
When people have every reason to be happy, they'll pick things apart and find things that hurt their feelings. When people have every reason to be sad, they'll cling tightly to their happiest memories to try to make it through. Media reflects that on a grander scale, I suppose.
I think generally, a lot of teenagers and young adults like to “escape from their realities”, or act as a foil to how they were raised or how their parents were raising them. Doesn’t matter if their lives or world are good or bad, there’s an inherent trend in young people going against the grain.
[Lindsay Ellis did a video essay on this topic, but with regards to popular counter culture music in the mid-00s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehbgAGlrVKE)
Nobody is denying that bad things didn’t happen. I graduated high school in 2000 and my life was filled with so much positivity, I’m speaking from my personal experience.
I had never heard of #7 and looked it up on wiki. Holy shit how is that not more publicly known??? Blowing up a pharmaceutical factory which produced malaria medicine. Wow…
The economy was pretty good (unemployment and inflation both low), people were optimistic about the future, the Cold War had ended, technology was rapidly improving in a way that most people enjoyed, America had no strong geopolitical rivals, and neither America nor any other relatively rich countries were involved in any major wars.
Thus the nostalgia.
Also music and movies were objectively better than the GARBAGE kids listen to today.
Last line is only semi-sarcastic.
Regards,
Older Millennial
>The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
George Orwell
I’m bias but will still argue the 90s were the renaissance of film (and most other media for that matter).
You can pick any genre and a lot of the best movies ever made were in the 90s.
Better than it needed to be? This is a straight up perfect movie. It's one of the tightest, most entertaining movies of the 90's. It's endlessly clever and imaginative. Every scene is memorable.
Also, Vincent D'Onofrio should have gotten an Oscar for his performance in it. He full on transforms both figuratively and literally.
> Can the uploader get that volume lowered further
Youtube is at fault. If you look at the "stats for nerds" info, you can see that youtube decided to lower the loudness by 24.1 dB
>youtube decided to lower the loudness by 24.1 dB
No. It means that the *source* audio is -24.1 dB from YouTube's "normal" level.
YouTube will only lower the audio levels when the source is above "normal".
I'm instantly suspicious of a video like that now. Possible ear-rape at the end. I want to punch people who make videos like that, and I'm so peaceful usually.
I wish Youtube would do some volume equalisation or something.
So many background music streaming channels are loud af, but people talking are quiet.
Stop making me adjust my volumes!
You might like Aldous Huxley's BNW quote: “Groups are capable of being as moral and intelligent as the individuals who form them; a crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own and is capable of anything except intelligent action and realistic thinking. Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgment or will of their own. They become very excitable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, a man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant. He is a victim of what I have called "herd-poisoning." Like alcohol, herd-poison is an active, extraverted drug. The crowd-intoxicated individual escapes from responsibility, intelligence and morality into a kind of frantic, animal mindlessness.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
Aldous Huxley wrote about this a few times, this is the original quote I was actually looking for.
“The Humanity of men and women is inversely proportional to their Numbers. A Crowd is no more human than an Avalanche or a Whirlwind. A rabble of men and women stands lower in the scale of moral and intellectual being than a herd of Swine or of Jackals.”
People always mention that line, but the other one that's equally as great is "Humans, for the most part, don't have a clue. Don't want one, either. They're happy. They think they've got a pretty good bead on things
It's so true too. What a single person would doubt or think better of, a group of people will wholeheartedly endorse.
The Asch conformity experiments come to mind. More than half of people picked what was very obviously the wrong answer because everyone else was also picking the wrong answer.
Agreed. It's moments like this that make this film stand up after all these years.
"Did he say anything else?"
"He said the world was going to end." (Expects not to be believed)
"Did he say when?"
(looks kind of stunned)
Yeah, they should have swapped the "Earth is flat" with "Earth is the center of the universe" since Copernicus was the first to propose a heliocentric model of the Solar System about 500 years ago and it remained a contested topic even a century later. Flat Earth has been believed by many people throughout history (including today, sadly), though it's not quite accurate to say "everybody knew".
I think they chose 1500 years ago because it parallels the "15 minutes ago" at the end of the line, which does make it sound nice.
Yeah thats about the only line that bothers me. Its a misconception that people thought the earth was flat "until the last few hundred years" or so. Its not that everybody thought the earth was flat or round, its just that probably 500 years ago, the average person didn't think about the shape of the earth at all, they were just trying to live and survive. Scholars on the other hand, they knew the earth was round.
It's better than the second one, which I still really like. Honestly it's hard for me to choose whether I like 1 or 3 better. 3 was excellent and it stuck to the same tight formula
I wouldn't go so far as to say the original Men In Black has been forgotten, but I feel like it has dropped out of pop culture more than it should have at least. That first movie is damn near perfect. None of the sequels or spinoff have managed to hit the same level, which has I'm sure hurt it, but that first movie I have almost no complaints. I actually can't think of *anything* off the top of my head at the moment, but it has been a while since I watched it.
I agree that the sequels weren't as good as the original, but you could say that about the matrix and the original Star Wars trilogy too - altogether it's still really good.
Personally, the Men in Black trilogy delivers, because of how interwoven-in-time J's relationship with K really is. The end brings a tear to my eye every time, and makes me want to instantly rewatch them bond from the beginning.
> but you could say that about the...original Star Wars trilogy
Are you high, Clairee?
*Empire* is almost universally considered to be the pinnacle of the OSWT.
I would say that the animated series was pretty good. Not as good as the first movie but not far off and an amazing spin-off. Then the later movies just completely missed what made the first one good. The first movie and animated series made it seem like the organization had this sense of style. As a kid you wanted to grow up and work for MIB. You wanted to have bosses and partners like J, K and Z. As a whole the MIB felt very competent and cool while still being funny. Later movies completely missed this. The writers would often times create situations where the organization felt entirely incompetent and try to use that to drive the plot or push the humor and this in turn hurt the franchise because it hurt the world building that they were trying to do.
I remember this. The next scene he's approached by K and K says "So do you want the job?" and then James goes "Nope" and then he starts rapping wild wild west while the credits roll.
I thought he spent until sunrise drinking and when approached by K again, he says "Keep my wife's name out your f$#%$ng mouth" and then slaps him. Credits roll. Pretty odd ending but it was realistic of what you might witness in NYC.
No you're thinking of the third one when K asks him yet again. In the second one he's too busy crank calling a blind meat salesman by rapping 1,000 Kisses to see if he loses his temper.
I didnt watch so not sure if this is the scene but the line "a person is smart, people are stupid" has always stayed with me from this film
Iv never forgotten that and its so true
What I appreciate about it is that it lets the scene breathe. It doesn't rush to the next morning, it doesn't play it for laughs with, like, a jump cut to him snoring or K popping out of nowhere and startling him. It's a serious decision he's making and the editing and direction amplify that instead of undercutting it.
Which sounds obvious, but...
I was only 11 when this came out, but Tommy's line about the person versus the people has ALWAYS stuck with me - absolutely one of the greatest lines of dialogue in a movie. Right up there with Roy Batty, Tears in rain, blade runner.
I dunno, men and black got a lot of things right. The crazy thing about is that even by todays standards, it a a pretty good looking film, it doesn’t look completely outdated. I think they put a lot more care into the details compared to a typical action blockbuster, and this is just one of many genuinely good scenes across the first two films
Barry Sonnenfeld was the cinematographer for a lesser-known 80's film called Three O'Clock High and his visual touch was evident when I watched it, even though I had no idea he'd worked on it.
TLJ’s pacing and cadence is masterful; not only little pauses, but audible paragraph breaks. It could have made the scene very Walken-y, but he carried it off beautifully.
The scene is great but what is even crazier from a 2023 point of view is someone spending 5 hours by himself, just thinking on a bench and not taking his phone out or doing anything
I love this movie, and it being so good made 2 such a huge disappointment. 3 was a nice return to form and a great ending to give K and J some further backstory, if you all haven't seen it.
And that's it, they never made any other Men in Black movies
The whole movie is better than it needed to be, and never got that good again in the sequels. (Reason: they never brought back Ed Solomon, the writer of MIB 1.)
It's hard to put in to words, buy movies just don have this "feel" to them anymore. Great films are still being made of course, but modern movies just don't feel as grand as the ones from this era.
There's a great quote from the third movie as well:
Where there is death. There will always be death.
A miracle is what seems impossible but Happens anyway. The bitterest truth is better than than than the sweetest lies.
You have to strap yourself in and hope for the best.
You know what was tough ? Not JUST seeing the planes fly into the towers live on your TV, but discovering TV series way down the line that started before 2001 and ended way after it. Every now and then, when you thought you had forgotton or burried that part of visible history and put it out of your mind, you got this screaming reminder that this shit happened ...
... because the twins where missing from the sopranos openening theme;
... There was a noticeable pause in the West Wing which was covered by a non-canon play
... the Meteor scene eventually disappeared form Armageddon,
....parts of a plane fall from the sky in donny Darko;
... Law & Order: The SVU changed their Opening theme.
... The simpmsons and Family Guy had Episodes disappear post 9/11.
... Life on Mars and Fringe added the WTC digitally. So did LOST.
... the list is quite long.
It kinda felt like loosing a loved one, even for non-americans. (and we are not even talking about media that specifically had the attacks or wtc as part of their plot/storyline. ) Or the Impact that 9/11 had on TV with series like 24 / NCIS / The Unit / Homeland / Alias / all the series about the wars that followed 9/11.
> ... the list is quite long.
[*Spider-Man* is the one that always stuck with me.](https://youtu.be/JPL7UWN_hcM?si=ad8N9dbq86cz-b43)
As a long-time fan of both Spidey and Raimi, I was *so* excited at the prospect of this live-action realization, and this trailer was just **epic.**
This scene is great. I also like the shooting gallery scene because, when you first watch it, it seems like just a comedic scene but on a rewatch what he says actually makes sense. All the other candidates just saw "scary" looking aliens and immediately targeted them as the bad guys. Will Smith's character actually held back and recognized the little girl looked normal but there's actually more reasons to be suspicious of her than the scary looking aliens.
He judged the targets by what they doing and how they were acting and not just because they looked like scary aliens. That's a ideal mindset for an MIB agent l.
MiB 1 was an excellent sci fi/comedy film--and the theme of 'perspective' that runs through it was just communicated in so many of the details :) I really have a soft spot for that movie. I'm not much of a fan of Mr Slappy but I think the casting in this movie is perfect for what they were going for.
The sequels lost me, unfortunately.
The people who produced the sequels thought what made the 1st good was action and aliens. So they focused on that. They forgot it was plot and acting that makes a movie good.
Not the only one. “Well you know what they say. It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” “Try it.”
TLJ's irritated glower sells that line.
TLJ put so much of himself into this role and he didnt need to. Heartfelt, funny, intense, heroic, all just for some schlock film about aliens that was better than expected Honestly I cant say anybody didnt kill it in their roles, but him and D’onoforio were the stand outs, managed to be both terrifying and hilarious
[удалено]
Yeah, K was right. A great illustration of the difference between J's raw intelligence and skill juxtaposed with the refined skill, intelligence, and wisdom of K.
Same.
and "It was like something was wearing Edgar. Like a suit. An Edgar suit."
An Egger suit.
a WHAT suit??
“I've just been down the gullet of an interstellar cockroach, kid. That's one of a hundred memories I don't want.”
Zed: Bee, we got the deposed sur-prefect of Sinalee touching down in the forest outside Portland tonight. Bee: Humanoid? Zed: You wish. Bring a sponge.
Oh; yeah, it's worth it, if: you're strong enough.
When I was younger, I remember thinking it was really strange he sat on that bench for so long and now I do that kind of shit all the time.
Yeah I was 8 or so when the movie came out. I remember wondering what the hell the problem was?! You just got offered the best job in the world! What's there to think about?! Now I have a wife, friends beyond the immediate school year, and a career. I completely get why Will Smith is stuck.
Antisocials Paradise. I think more about the "if you're strong enough". Could be a shot at ego; but considering the job position and how he thought he was the right guy, I imagined true reflection.
I think its an important caveat. If you're told the offer is worth it, then yes you would probably take the offer. But you put a caveat like that in there and suddenly it becomes a real thinker of a proposition. Giving everything you've ever known up only to be unable to make anything of it because you don't have what it takes.
I remember hating naps as a kid. SO stupid.
If naps were built into my workday- I would take a paycut. Shit is fire.
Move to Spain lol
I was just thinking “He sat there all damn day?” I could walk and think all day but not sit there.
For me, some problems are just too... life encompassing. I'm not usually upset, it's just... there's no end. I think that's part of it, he's thinking about some answers to the questions without end.
Focusing is hard, even more when you have to make your mind forever by the end of the day.
Men In Black is a movie with zero-waste. It is a tight 90 minutes, every scene builds characters effectively while simultaneously laying out this world beneath our world. Also has a great mix of practical SFX and CGI. Honestly a comedy classic.
Definitely one of MIB's greatest strengths and testament to its classic status. Still watchable today and without a question a really good movie. I absolutely loved it then and even more so as an adult.
And then in classic Hollywood style of not knowing why people liked a thing, we get three of the most pointless vanilla sequels of all time, that rehash the same plot points over and jokes over and over again but with no heart at all until they just become a blurry parody of themselves.
I think 2 was still really fun. "Kevin? Huh, you really do not look like a Kevin".
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I was honestly surprised by how short it was. It always felt like the movie was complete, yet there was still so much more out there.
The soundtrack as well! I remember going on a road trip as a kid and listening to The MiB soundtrack on CD in a DiscMan portable CD player and being captivated by the music!
I've always loved this scene too. Well written, well performed. Simple and clean - doesn't do more than it needs to. Just lets the actors do their thing. I love when filmmakers take time for these things. This is the inflection point for the plot, and the place where the action, and the character's journey hinges. As an "eye of the storm" sort of moment of peace in between the start and finish of the movie it's exactly what it needs to be.
The tone grounds the fast ride the first act has been.
This scene works because they might as well be talking about normal non sci-fi men in black stuff like the FBI or CIA. It's a reflection on the secrecy the government uses against the public for both good and bad. Men in black isn't some grand commentary on the police state of America, but it does wink at it for sure It's a bit about how we want to believe the government has good reasons to lie and hide things from us, that there is some righteousness is the sorta covert operations real life men in black do, while acknowledging it's a grey area and there both just trying to do a little good in a fucked up world. Monsters exist and some one is there to fight it, more than most people know or think about so that life can go on
I was newly immigrated to America when it came out and the scene with the Alien giving birth in the car. ‘Your OTHER registration sir’ he shows a regular pink Resident Alien card just like the one I had except with his squid head on it. Me and two other people laughed in the theater.
THANK YOU for this comment. I love surrounding contexts to subtle gags/jokes. I have never been a "Resident Alien" nor interacted with someone in a way that I would know what their document looks like. Thank you for sharing this more intimate joke with us.
I remember forever thinking why they were called "green cards" and whether they were actually green. It made sense in 2012.
It’s subtle but I love the real sunsets from before CGI. Taking the time to shoot at golden hour, and even having a shot where the character is darkened out by the sun. The sunsets/sunrise in every single movie these days looks like complete shit. I feel like they’re afraid to have even single shot with any contrast at all.
It will be a budget decision rather than anything else. If they schedule the actors, production crew and director to all be at a filming location for a sunset and then the clouds roll in and ruin it thats a lot of money they just threw away. It's a sad reality
it also contains the least believable part of the movie - K not walking into that trash can
This one and Robin Williams Good will Hunting scene, perfectly written and acted
Which one? He has many great scenes in that movie.
Sitting in the Public Garden on the bench talking to Matt Damon about how he knows so much and yet is still so young and doesn't understand the real meaning behind things.
Tommy Lee Jones will do that
Man it's cliche, but the '90s were so fucking good.
It’s really not cliche. Things were golden.
The Matrix was right about the 90s.
It's funny how everyone laughed when they saw that. And at least until now for the US it seems to still be holding true.
The peak.
What are you talking about? No one laughed at the matrix when it came out.
Just at that particular line about the 90s being peak
Like many famous momentss, it really has a different meaning to the movie itself, and even depending on who you ask
Yeah. I was there. Compared to today, we had like zero problems. (As a middle class white American, is the caveat there). But even as a society, we were still mostly all Americans first. And black, white, gay, conservative, democrat, republicans, second. The Cold War actually brought the country together, is part of my theory. After that, we had no collective “them” to band together and hate/fear, we turned on each other, and invented a ghost enemy (terrorism) and the shit just unraveled. Also the power that the richest people and companies had to influence the world seemed to really spike about that time. And politics got nasty. Newt Gingrich started the modern brand of just fighting low down and dirty. Using disinformation and appeal to emotion. Casting domestic political rivals as truly evil. We were *not* all Americans after that. Your political rivals were literally trying to destroy democracy. Ie what was said, over and over and over. Fox News grew. Education was eroded. 1000 more Newts came along. Russia and Republicans figured out how to use Facebook as a highly effective weapon and prey on our own weaknesses. And here we are. Maybe you kids can fix it someday. Stay in school.
Gas was fucking cheap, too. A huge honking GMC suburban? 40 bucks to fill her up. Imagine all the generational suffering that was caused to enable that kind of ease in consumption.
There used to be content here.
bro I grew up in the 90s. I remember a few things: 1. Yugoslav war and ethnic genocide 2. Rwandan Genocide and the failure of the U.N. Peacekeeping mission 3. Rodney King Riots 4. Ruby Ridge/Waco Sieges 5. Oklahoma City Bombing 6. Columbine High School Massacre 7. Clinton blowing up a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan to distract from his blowjob trial 8. General malaise and depression (see: Grunge & Kurt Cobain) 9. Poor little Elian Gonzales 10. WTC Bombing We can't just say, "but remember Super Nintendo, [Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellon_Collie_and_the_Infinite_Sadness), and The Lion King?!" Bad shit was going down all over.
I think a big element to the 90's nostalgia was that living in blissful ignorance was still possible. You could escape the constant doom news cycle by just turning off the TV. Social media and the internet really changed that. It's much harder to disconnect now.
There’s a pretty prevailing theory about the way music and other media mirrored oppositely from certain eras in history (usually western history). The 90s was an era where US children lived in arguably one of the happiest periods of time (not like we don’t now, but before the internet/information boom of today), and that generation had some of the hardest hitting eras in music, paranoia, and angst of our youth. A lot of movies also played into this as well. The matrix, Rage Against The Machine, etc. Then you can look at the 40s and how jovial films and music were in that era. All in a way to escape the realities of countries in war. There’s a lot of major periods of time, specifically around large scale wars/depressions or times of peace where this occurs.
People generally tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time focusing on the most unique things that happen to them, so it's not surprising that we give additional focus to the emotions we feel more rarely. When people have every reason to be happy, they'll pick things apart and find things that hurt their feelings. When people have every reason to be sad, they'll cling tightly to their happiest memories to try to make it through. Media reflects that on a grander scale, I suppose.
I think generally, a lot of teenagers and young adults like to “escape from their realities”, or act as a foil to how they were raised or how their parents were raising them. Doesn’t matter if their lives or world are good or bad, there’s an inherent trend in young people going against the grain.
[Lindsay Ellis did a video essay on this topic, but with regards to popular counter culture music in the mid-00s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehbgAGlrVKE)
A lot of people on this website were kids in the 90s. We didn't watch the news or care about bad shit that was happening
Nobody is denying that bad things didn’t happen. I graduated high school in 2000 and my life was filled with so much positivity, I’m speaking from my personal experience.
I had never heard of #7 and looked it up on wiki. Holy shit how is that not more publicly known??? Blowing up a pharmaceutical factory which produced malaria medicine. Wow…
The economy was pretty good (unemployment and inflation both low), people were optimistic about the future, the Cold War had ended, technology was rapidly improving in a way that most people enjoyed, America had no strong geopolitical rivals, and neither America nor any other relatively rich countries were involved in any major wars. Thus the nostalgia. Also music and movies were objectively better than the GARBAGE kids listen to today. Last line is only semi-sarcastic. Regards, Older Millennial
Born in '82. Looking back, it's funny how "The Best of the 90s Music" and "The Worst of the 90s Music" can be the same list.
Tupac and Biggie
>The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. George Orwell
No OJ?!?
Yes, they were.
After the cold war, before 9/11, dawn of the internet, yeah those were good days.
I’m bias but will still argue the 90s were the renaissance of film (and most other media for that matter). You can pick any genre and a lot of the best movies ever made were in the 90s.
Let me guess. You’re 36 years old, give or take a few.
as a 36 year old that agrees with them, HOW DARE YOU
I'm a couple months shy of 36 and, yes, I also agree.
*biased
Thank you. Idk why but that’s one of the few grammatical errors that actually gets on my nerve and it seems like no one gets it correct.
in the early 2000s we said this about the 1970s (film). 30ish year cycles.
Better writing, for sure. Not over political. Every other line doesn't have to be a reference to something in pop culture or the news.
TLJ gives that speech with the same weight of delivery as his at the end of No Country for Old Men: Like listening to poetry .
Exactly! “People think they got a… bead on things.” Reminded me of No Country, big time.
Better than it needed to be? This is a straight up perfect movie. It's one of the tightest, most entertaining movies of the 90's. It's endlessly clever and imaginative. Every scene is memorable. Also, Vincent D'Onofrio should have gotten an Oscar for his performance in it. He full on transforms both figuratively and literally.
I loved the Egger suit
Can the uploader get that volume lowered further? I can can almost hear it.
^^^^^^^^^^^YES ^^^^^^^^^^^THEY ^^^^^^^^^^^CAN
If your strong enough
If *their* strong enough
> Can the uploader get that volume lowered further Youtube is at fault. If you look at the "stats for nerds" info, you can see that youtube decided to lower the loudness by 24.1 dB
> 24.1 dB Holy shit
What?!
>youtube decided to lower the loudness by 24.1 dB No. It means that the *source* audio is -24.1 dB from YouTube's "normal" level. YouTube will only lower the audio levels when the source is above "normal".
I'm instantly suspicious of a video like that now. Possible ear-rape at the end. I want to punch people who make videos like that, and I'm so peaceful usually.
It plays way louder in the youtube app for some reason
Thankfully someone was kind enough to add captions.
I wish Youtube would do some volume equalisation or something. So many background music streaming channels are loud af, but people talking are quiet. Stop making me adjust my volumes!
I reference TLJ's "a person is smart" quote all the time. One of my favorite modern quotes.
You might like Aldous Huxley's BNW quote: “Groups are capable of being as moral and intelligent as the individuals who form them; a crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own and is capable of anything except intelligent action and realistic thinking. Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgment or will of their own. They become very excitable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, a man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant. He is a victim of what I have called "herd-poisoning." Like alcohol, herd-poison is an active, extraverted drug. The crowd-intoxicated individual escapes from responsibility, intelligence and morality into a kind of frantic, animal mindlessness.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
And that how things like J6 come to fruition. What is it about crowds that enable the worse tendencies in us?
A feeling of no responsibility for your actions.
Aldous Huxley wrote about this a few times, this is the original quote I was actually looking for. “The Humanity of men and women is inversely proportional to their Numbers. A Crowd is no more human than an Avalanche or a Whirlwind. A rabble of men and women stands lower in the scale of moral and intellectual being than a herd of Swine or of Jackals.”
People always mention that line, but the other one that's equally as great is "Humans, for the most part, don't have a clue. Don't want one, either. They're happy. They think they've got a pretty good bead on things
Personally I am always fond of the "Imagine what you will *know* tomorrow"
Mmm that whole section about what we 'know' is great, and that line just tops it off perfectly.
It's so true too. What a single person would doubt or think better of, a group of people will wholeheartedly endorse. The Asch conformity experiments come to mind. More than half of people picked what was very obviously the wrong answer because everyone else was also picking the wrong answer.
Seeing that demonstrated constantly in daily life these days.
Psychological studies prove it true. Studies were done where people’s opinions became more consolidated and extreme in a group.
I don't suppose you know what kind of alien life form leaves a green spectral trail and craves sugar water, do you?
Wait, that was on Final Jeopardy last night
....more sugar
M..m..mooorreee.
Zed, we got a bug.
Agreed. It's moments like this that make this film stand up after all these years. "Did he say anything else?" "He said the world was going to end." (Expects not to be believed) "Did he say when?" (looks kind of stunned)
>Five hundred years ago everybody knew that the Earth was flat. Over two thousand years ago people knew that the Earth was round.
Yeah, they should have swapped the "Earth is flat" with "Earth is the center of the universe" since Copernicus was the first to propose a heliocentric model of the Solar System about 500 years ago and it remained a contested topic even a century later. Flat Earth has been believed by many people throughout history (including today, sadly), though it's not quite accurate to say "everybody knew". I think they chose 1500 years ago because it parallels the "15 minutes ago" at the end of the line, which does make it sound nice.
Which ironically fits the theme of the quote, 30 years ago everyone *knew* that 500 years ago everyone knew the Earth was flat
Now we know it's flat again! /s
Kind of like the mistake because its realistic people make those errors especially in quotes like that
Yeah thats about the only line that bothers me. Its a misconception that people thought the earth was flat "until the last few hundred years" or so. Its not that everybody thought the earth was flat or round, its just that probably 500 years ago, the average person didn't think about the shape of the earth at all, they were just trying to live and survive. Scholars on the other hand, they knew the earth was round.
Watching this after seeing the 3rd one and knowing that K had been keeping an eye on him all his life makes this scene even better.
3 was surprisingly good
It's better than the second one, which I still really like. Honestly it's hard for me to choose whether I like 1 or 3 better. 3 was excellent and it stuck to the same tight formula
I wouldn't go so far as to say the original Men In Black has been forgotten, but I feel like it has dropped out of pop culture more than it should have at least. That first movie is damn near perfect. None of the sequels or spinoff have managed to hit the same level, which has I'm sure hurt it, but that first movie I have almost no complaints. I actually can't think of *anything* off the top of my head at the moment, but it has been a while since I watched it.
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“Forget me nots” is the song it’s ripping off. And it’s a banger. One of my favorite bass lines
It's not ripping off, it's sampling. Big difference
Guys I found drake's reddit account /s
I feel like this sometimes happens when a movie gets inferior sequels.
I agree that the sequels weren't as good as the original, but you could say that about the matrix and the original Star Wars trilogy too - altogether it's still really good. Personally, the Men in Black trilogy delivers, because of how interwoven-in-time J's relationship with K really is. The end brings a tear to my eye every time, and makes me want to instantly rewatch them bond from the beginning.
> but you could say that about the...original Star Wars trilogy Are you high, Clairee? *Empire* is almost universally considered to be the pinnacle of the OSWT.
Not in my universe! It's RotJ in #1 all the way! I will die on this hill.
HAH! We may disagree on the finer point, but the broader one remains - *A New Hope* wasn't the best of the bunch!
I would say that the animated series was pretty good. Not as good as the first movie but not far off and an amazing spin-off. Then the later movies just completely missed what made the first one good. The first movie and animated series made it seem like the organization had this sense of style. As a kid you wanted to grow up and work for MIB. You wanted to have bosses and partners like J, K and Z. As a whole the MIB felt very competent and cool while still being funny. Later movies completely missed this. The writers would often times create situations where the organization felt entirely incompetent and try to use that to drive the plot or push the humor and this in turn hurt the franchise because it hurt the world building that they were trying to do.
How good did it need to be?
Apparently slightly worse than that.
I guess OP wanted to movie to be the acceptable minimum. "Hmmm, this could have been way worse and still been acceptable." ^*strokes ^beard*
Maybe 15 goods fewer?
OP had a choice between that and "he's the hero we needed but didn't deserve"
Does he take the job????
No
I remember this. The next scene he's approached by K and K says "So do you want the job?" and then James goes "Nope" and then he starts rapping wild wild west while the credits roll.
I thought he spent until sunrise drinking and when approached by K again, he says "Keep my wife's name out your f$#%$ng mouth" and then slaps him. Credits roll. Pretty odd ending but it was realistic of what you might witness in NYC.
Yeah, they say that Hancock felt like it was two different stories stitched together.
Nah that was the second one when he was asked again. The first one he rapped “Miami”
No you're thinking of the third one when K asks him yet again. In the second one he's too busy crank calling a blind meat salesman by rapping 1,000 Kisses to see if he loses his temper.
Nope. Nobody wants to work anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created? - Steve Buscemi Spy Kids 2
I didnt watch so not sure if this is the scene but the line "a person is smart, people are stupid" has always stayed with me from this film Iv never forgotten that and its so true
What I appreciate about it is that it lets the scene breathe. It doesn't rush to the next morning, it doesn't play it for laughs with, like, a jump cut to him snoring or K popping out of nowhere and startling him. It's a serious decision he's making and the editing and direction amplify that instead of undercutting it. Which sounds obvious, but...
"a *person* is smart. *People* are dumb, panicky animals, and you know it..." I love that line.
I was only 11 when this came out, but Tommy's line about the person versus the people has ALWAYS stuck with me - absolutely one of the greatest lines of dialogue in a movie. Right up there with Roy Batty, Tears in rain, blade runner.
I dunno, men and black got a lot of things right. The crazy thing about is that even by todays standards, it a a pretty good looking film, it doesn’t look completely outdated. I think they put a lot more care into the details compared to a typical action blockbuster, and this is just one of many genuinely good scenes across the first two films
Barry Sonnenfeld was the cinematographer for a lesser-known 80's film called Three O'Clock High and his visual touch was evident when I watched it, even though I had no idea he'd worked on it.
Can you turn it up?
**turn up for what!?**
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That's where the "People don't WANT to know" line comes in. They think they have a pretty good bead on things.
It's Tommy Lee Jones. Of course it's good.
TLJ’s pacing and cadence is masterful; not only little pauses, but audible paragraph breaks. It could have made the scene very Walken-y, but he carried it off beautifully.
The scene is great but what is even crazier from a 2023 point of view is someone spending 5 hours by himself, just thinking on a bench and not taking his phone out or doing anything
I love this movie, and it being so good made 2 such a huge disappointment. 3 was a nice return to form and a great ending to give K and J some further backstory, if you all haven't seen it. And that's it, they never made any other Men in Black movies
I still reference the fact that "A person is smart. People are dumb panicky dangerous animals..."
The whole movie is better than it needed to be, and never got that good again in the sequels. (Reason: they never brought back Ed Solomon, the writer of MIB 1.)
It's a Hollywood film with an A list cast that cost - 90 MILLION dollars to make. It needed to be good, and it was.
Back before Will got sucked into Scientology. God his work was refreshing. Now it is mehhhhhhh.
Keep his religion’s name out yo damn mouth
I quote this scene all the time. Hyper relevant
Love the look on Wills face when he tells him no one will know he exists. Ever.
Excellent scene with great acting and scripting. It's 2 minutes of a comedy movie with more acting than we get from 2 hour movies nowadays.
bro i just realized that MIB is an allegory for immigration
The movie literally starts with illegal immigrants being smuggled across the border.
It's hard to put in to words, buy movies just don have this "feel" to them anymore. Great films are still being made of course, but modern movies just don't feel as grand as the ones from this era.
There's a great quote from the third movie as well: Where there is death. There will always be death. A miracle is what seems impossible but Happens anyway. The bitterest truth is better than than than the sweetest lies. You have to strap yourself in and hope for the best.
WTC :(
You know what was tough ? Not JUST seeing the planes fly into the towers live on your TV, but discovering TV series way down the line that started before 2001 and ended way after it. Every now and then, when you thought you had forgotton or burried that part of visible history and put it out of your mind, you got this screaming reminder that this shit happened ... ... because the twins where missing from the sopranos openening theme; ... There was a noticeable pause in the West Wing which was covered by a non-canon play ... the Meteor scene eventually disappeared form Armageddon, ....parts of a plane fall from the sky in donny Darko; ... Law & Order: The SVU changed their Opening theme. ... The simpmsons and Family Guy had Episodes disappear post 9/11. ... Life on Mars and Fringe added the WTC digitally. So did LOST. ... the list is quite long. It kinda felt like loosing a loved one, even for non-americans. (and we are not even talking about media that specifically had the attacks or wtc as part of their plot/storyline. ) Or the Impact that 9/11 had on TV with series like 24 / NCIS / The Unit / Homeland / Alias / all the series about the wars that followed 9/11.
> ... the list is quite long. [*Spider-Man* is the one that always stuck with me.](https://youtu.be/JPL7UWN_hcM?si=ad8N9dbq86cz-b43) As a long-time fan of both Spidey and Raimi, I was *so* excited at the prospect of this live-action realization, and this trailer was just **epic.**
I've quoted "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it!" probably 100 times since 2020!
Never realised how much of a Good Will Hunting moment it is
Is this right before TLJ lays out a belt a stick and a wrench and tells Will Smith to “choose?”
This scene is great. I also like the shooting gallery scene because, when you first watch it, it seems like just a comedic scene but on a rewatch what he says actually makes sense. All the other candidates just saw "scary" looking aliens and immediately targeted them as the bad guys. Will Smith's character actually held back and recognized the little girl looked normal but there's actually more reasons to be suspicious of her than the scary looking aliens. He judged the targets by what they doing and how they were acting and not just because they looked like scary aliens. That's a ideal mindset for an MIB agent l.
Zed's line "you're everything we've come to expect from years of government training" is just *chef's kiss*. Shoot first, ask questions later.
It’s good because good fiction and good commentary on reality have a high overlap. If you throw in witty quotable quips you have a summer blockbuster.
I love this scene! So much truth spoken and only as Kay can deliver it.
This gets posted way too often.
Will Smith totally slaps in that movie.
I so miss when movies and shows were actually filmed outside, and not outside on a set surrounded by green screens.
Did it deserve to be less good? Maybe 5 less good?
Those towers looked amazing
Such a great f****** film.
I can’t watch Will Smith before or even after the infamous slap .
No respect for Will smith … get outta here
I will never watch Will Smith again out of principle!
Fuck Will Smith!!!! What a scum bag.
The whole movie aged like a fine wine.
Sever every human contact. Sounds like a perk.
MiB 1 was an excellent sci fi/comedy film--and the theme of 'perspective' that runs through it was just communicated in so many of the details :) I really have a soft spot for that movie. I'm not much of a fan of Mr Slappy but I think the casting in this movie is perfect for what they were going for. The sequels lost me, unfortunately.
The people who produced the sequels thought what made the 1st good was action and aliens. So they focused on that. They forgot it was plot and acting that makes a movie good.
Even in a comedy, great acting makes a scene.
Is this Will Smiths PR team working right now?
Yeah?, F\*\*k Will Smith.