teaberryblue | We went to Men In Black III (Reply)

Jess and I got tickets to see a preview screening of Men in Black III last night at the Museum of the Moving Image, followed by a talk by movie makeup legend Rick Baker.

Full disclosure: I found the first MIB movie enjoyable if a bit short to justify the cost of a movie ticket. I never saw the second one. But Jess had been talking about how disappointed she was that we got no MIB trailer when we went to see The Avengers, so I figured she might like this sort of thing, and I knew I would like listening to Rick Baker even if the movie was disappointing.

In the end, and without spoiling, I thought the movie was fine. There was one comic relief character whom I felt was way overused to the detriment of the film, and I think there was only one female character of note in the entire film, which is kind of…disappointing. There were lots of female bit parts, but only one woman who appeared in multiple scenes, and only one of the substantial bit parts was a female character. I also felt like the ending was a bit of a copout– there was a different ending that I thought that they were going for, that would have been a gutsy ending to the film, and they didn’t go there, which was sort of a letdown for me. But there were lots of pretty aliens and such, some very good comedy, and some good acting moments.

Rick Baker was fascinating, and he told wonderful stories. He is one of those people who can take questions from an audience and transform them– it didn’t seem to matter how irritating the question was, whether it was a question someone else had already asked, whether he’d already basically said the answer, whether it was clearly a question designed to show off the questioner’s knowledge more than to ask a question; he fielded them all with grace and with the kind of creative storytelling that made every single one of his answers fascinating. He talked about having to turn down the opportunity to work on Edward Scissorhands in order to do some movie that he didn’t find particularly good. He talked about doing monster makeup in his bedroom as a child. He talked about meeting Michael Jackson and working on Thriller, and actually seeing a crowd of zombies dancing, live.

The 3-D glasses we used were a cut above the ones you normally get at theaters. They had a security tag in them, and a warning not to steal them, and that they don’t protect from UV rays, because that is what I have come to expect from 3-D glasses. They were also, and I was most excited about this, the traditional blue-and-red style 3D glasses, just…amped up. But one lens was red and one lens was blue and I was very excited by that!