Nearly 25 years later, there have been three follow-ups if you count 2019’s failed attempt at a semi-reboot within the Men in Black franchise. There’ve also been action figures, video games, a cartoon series, and a theme park ride at Universal Studios. And yet, to date there has never been a Men in Black adventure to capture the charm and ingenuity of that first movie. Sure, Men in Black II made money, but a quick perusal of its Rotten Tomatoes score—currently at 39 percent while the original sits at 92 percent—tells you how it was received, critically. And, honestly, by audiences too. There’s a reason we’ve yet to see a serious concerted effort at building an MIB shared universe. All of this was on our minds when our culture editor Tony Sokol sat down with screenwriter Ed Solomon. Now happily working in niche crime thrillers and medium-pushing concepts with director Steven Soderbergh, Solomon is a long ways off from Men in Black headquarters. In fact, he hasn’t worked on a single word in that franchise since penning the story and screenplay of the original film—back when it wasn’t so uncommon for a blockbuster to have only one attributed scribe in the credits. “I always felt like the secret to Men in Black was not the sunglasses and the big guns and the coolness, and the other surface level coolness of it,” Solomon says. “I always thought the secret of Men in Black was the generosity of spirit… It was the attitude of the film and its relationship to the audience, which was more of a ‘Hey, everyone check this out, come join us on this journey. Take a look into this world that other people don’t know exists. Let’s go in it together.” For Solomon, the heart of the movie’s appeal is the relationship between Smith’s young hotshot Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones’ weathered Agent K. However, it isn’t just the buddy cop dynamic of the funny guy/straight man dynamic that made it work; it was the dawning sense of humility in J as he finds the perspective to fully appreciate his place in the universe. “It seems to me like the sequels weren’t dealing with the humanity of the [first] movie,” Solomon says. “The other thing that I really loved in writing the first Men in Black was that it really was about how we humans think we’re so important, but in fact we don’t know anything that’s really going on. And so that was a very human experience, and to me, the story of Men in Black was about a cocky human being who gets humbled and realizes that he ain’t even close to the center of the universe. In fact, the universe, the world, what’s important, is nothing that he ever thought about. Reality isn’t anything like he ever thought. It’s a humbling blow. It’s a very human experience.” Solomon continues, “So I just don’t know. I didn’t get that experience watching the sequels. I think their priorities were slightly different and, I’m not an expert on why a movie works or doesn’t. Sometimes, I’ll think something’s going to be a giant hit and it isn’t, and vice versa. I can’t say for sure, all I can say is that during my own personal experience of writing [Men in Black] that was what was important, and I didn’t get those elements as much from the other movies. That was my own takeaway from being the writer of the first and an audience member of the others.” Still, he’s quick to add that even if he didn’t think the sequels worked as a whole, there were still things to like. Solomon’s latest film with Soderbergh, No Sudden Move, is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max now. We discussed that film and Solomon’s larger career at length right here.
