Corrected entry: In the pawnshop right after Jeebs' head grows back, K tells him, "I want you off the next transport off this rock or I'm going to shoot you where it don't grow back". Yet Jeebs appears in the next movie. (00:20:35)
Corrected entry: After they drive through the tunnel, they pass through a tollbooth. The sign on the toll says that it accepts the 1 cent coin, more commonly known as the penny. Illinois is the only state in which pennies can be used in tollbooths.
Correction: Look more closely at what the toll booth sign reads, it is not written that it accepts the 1 cent coin. It states that it accepts the 1 dollar coin.
Corrected entry: When the "Edgar" alien escapes from the building with the lady, he jumps very high out of window and up onto the street. But when he is trying to leave planet earth, why does he climb up the tower if he can jump that high or scramble up the side of buildings, like the alien at the beginning?
Correction: The alien at the beginning of the movie and Edgar are two different species.
Corrected entry: When Will Smith is chasing the alien in the beginning, it sounds like he says "LAPD, stop!" The movie takes place in New York City.
Corrected entry: When the Bug's spaceship floats over Shea Stadium and the NY Mets outfielder sees it and gets conked on the head by the fly ball, he is wearing number 23. In a later scene, when J picks up the tabloid newspapers, the photo of the ballplayer has number 20. (01:20:15 - 01:29:20)
Correction: Nope. The tabloid paper says the aliens made him miss a home run, referring to the batter, not the outfielder.
Corrected entry: The Arquillians threaten to destroy the Earth if they cannot retrieve the Galaxy. But where is Griffin's Arc Net Shield (MIB 3) which protects earth from alien invasions?
Correction: That arc shield was meant specifically for the Boglodites, not all alien species. Besides, the Arquillians aren't invading Earth, they just blow it up from orbit.
Correction: Griffin's Arc Net Shield did not exist in the first movie, nor in the second, because the Arc Net Shield was a plot device of the third movie only. There is little background continuity between the three films, so we cannot assume they share the same plot devices, especially in retrospect. One constant, however, was mentioned by Agent K in the first film: "There's always an alien battle cruiser, or a Corellian death ray, or an intergalactic plague intended to wipe out life on this miserable little planet. The only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they do not know about it!" In this way, director Barry Sonnenfeld set up a sequel universe in which there could be any number of independent threats against the Earth that the MIB simply addressed one at a time without overlapping plots. Multiple threats and appropriate defenses were seldom discussed but were just routine for the MIB.
There is continuity between the 3 films. Frank the Pug as a picture on J's wall. J complaining about false promises K made when he recruited him. The alien battle cruiser you mentioned. Why shouldn't there be no continuity? Who said MiB movies are standalone episodes?
I agree there is continuity. The supposed constant helps keep things small and reset them almost completely (same goes for the neuralizer), but that doesn't mean there is no continuity. Its also a fact J doesn't know a tenth of what K knows, including the existence of the arc shield.
My comment was "little or no background continuity," such that there are sequential references to Frank the Pug, et cetera. But MIB3 is its own story, and the first two films didn't anticipate or acknowledge the Arc Net Shield. That was purely an MIB3 plot device.
But it fits in the first 2 MIB movies just fine, so its irrelevant.
Well, by that reasoning, you could just as easily say that the first MIB film and MIB2 ceased to exist throughout most of the third film. Early in MIB3, Agent K was killed in Florida in 1969, he never launched the Arc Net Shield (so why didn't the Boglodites invade the Earth), Agent K never met J again in New York City years later, J never became an MIB Agent, et cetera, et cetera. Yet the present hardly changes at all after Agent K is killed in 1969. As long as we're "fitting" things together in retrospect, there are a LOT contradictions and continuity problems with the whole trilogy. Which is why I still think the trilogy is supposed to be a series of stand-alone films with no over-arcing continuity.
Nothing wrong with the timeline in that aspect. The Boglodites didn't invade earth until the present day, just hours after Boris escaped and killed K, that was the scheduled invasion, which would have failed had the shield been there (and killed off the boglodites). Without K someone else obviously recruited J, seeing his potential just as K did, as you might recall J was just an agent in the alternate present day and not seen as a stranger. Any other things that might have gone different we simply don't see in the little time we spend in the altered present day (before J goes back).
But Agent K did not just pick J "for his potential; according to MIB3, Agent K took the very young J under his wing, giving him a specific direction in life (probably spying on J regularly as he grew up, and intending to recruit J to the Men in Black. Assuming that J was always going to be an MIB agent (without K's intervention) is a pretty huge assumption. And then, of course, there's the matter of J being the only one who remembered K in the present. How did that work?
Again, even though K wasn't there to take J under his wing some other agent could have picked up on J's capabilities, its not that huge an assumption. J remembers K in the present because, according to Jeffrey, he was there, in the past his young self was present when the time change occurred and therefor he retains his original self (which is just a plot contrivance, but whatever, its a time travel movie).
Corrected entry: At the diner, after the Edgar/Bug leaves the restaurant, you can see him push one guy down outside, and pass another guy wearing a tan overcoat. When the camera cuts to outside, the guy with the tan overcoat has disappeared.
Correction: He actually went to go aid the man that was pushed down with the rest of the crowd.
Corrected entry: When Jay and the woman in the morgue are feeling around in the body and Jay takes his hand out, there is no blood on his glove. The woman, in another shot has blood on her gloves.
Correction: Actually, if you pause the film at the moment he takes his hand out of the body, you can see blood on a few of his fingers.
Corrected entry: When Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones are going to the jewellery store, the bug/Edgar is pointing the shotgun at the tow truck person. How come K & J don't notice that? (01:03:00)
Corrected entry: When Edgar stabs the Arquillians in the neck, they appear to die instantly from their wounds. However we see later at the morgue that the bodies are controlled from a control room in their heads. A neck wound to the robot body would not appear to be fatal to the operator in the robot's head.
Correction: The alien's robot was obviously designed to emulate human appearance and function. More than likely, it was designed to emulate bodily functions as well in respect to operations and keeping the inhabitant alive. A breach of the neck would have most likely compromised the life support system of the robot, thus exposing the alien to Earth environment unprotected, and that would have been what caused him to die. It is shown that the alien and robot are indeed connected, as the blue lights and functions turn off as soon as he passes away when talking to J.
Corrected entry: When the Edgar alien first pulls up in front of the jewellery shop before the diner scene, it shows him turning the corner in the pest control truck. The "Zap 'Em" logo on the hood is backwards. (00:38:50)
Correction: Logos on the hood are often printed in reverse so that a driver ahead of the vehicle can read the logo in the mirror.
Corrected entry: When Dr Laurel Weaver (the coroner) is making a statement on a tape recorder about the oddities of the "body" of Gentle Rosenberg, J and K never bothered to erase the tape, so neuralizing Dr Weaver by itself was not enough to cover the tracks. (00:51:15)
Corrected entry: When Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are walking through the hallway, right after they're done with the gun test where Smith shoots the little girl, Tommy Lee Jones says "this way" and they turn into the hallway. If you look closely on the right side of the screen, you can see the door that leads to the shooting test, which shows that it's the same hallway that they passed through before.
Correction: Or there are multiple rooms where the shooting test could take place. Or, even better, it's a door leading to one of the other areas of the complex.
Corrected entry: In the beginning of the movie when Will Smith first meets Rip Torn with all the other recruits, after he hands them the tests, look and listen very carefully. When Will pulls the table the noise for the table actually starts before he even pulls the table.
Correction: It starts at the exact moment that he starts pulling it, just as it should.
Corrected entry: When K reveals MIB's existence to J, J replies that K has been reading too many supermarket tabloids. K's response to this is to praise such tabloids as great journalism. These publications reveal information that is, in the film's universe, highly classified. Logically, K would see this as a threat and seek to neuralize, not praise, the staff of these tabloids.
Correction: Who ever said the movie was logical? The joke is that no one ever believes the tabloids except for MIB, and that is where they can get additional information. No need for neutralizing.
Corrected entry: When K and J are leaving the NYPD station, J says he has to write a report. Then his boss walks past and compliments him on a good report. Who wrote the report? J was the only person who witnessed the whole chase.
Corrected entry: When Will Smith accidentally releases the whizzing SpaceBall thing into the MIB work areas, you can see computer monitors exploding and people ducking out of the way before the SpaceBall thing gets anywhere near them.
Correction: The ball may not be near them but they can see and hear its destruction. It's only instinctive to duck and cover. Think about it, if YOU saw in the room next to you something flying around smashing everything, wouldn't you duck and try to protect yourself?
Corrected entry: When "Edgar" walks into the morgue, he's carrying a shotgun. He sets it down by the side of the window. Later, J walks in and starts ringing the bell. You can clearly see there is no shotgun there. Also, when he has the revolver to the lady's head, he doesn't have the gun. So where did the shotgun go?
Correction: In between the scene of Edgar walking into the morgue and J arriving, Edgar does other things, like "taking care of" the clerk at the morgue, meeting and threatening the doctor, etc. Even if we don't see him putting the shotgun someplace else, he had plenty of time and opportunity to do it.
Corrected entry: When Edgar/Alien is pulling the woman scientist out of the car she is wearing boots but when she falls from the tower she is wearing shoes.
Correction: Doctor Weaver wears the same dark brown shoes from when the Bug Alien kidnaps her until the end of the scene when the Bug Alien is killed.
Corrected entry: In the scene when all the top guys are doing the written test, the guy in the navy blue suit with the combover straightens his test out and it flops back down. If you watch carefully, you can see that he waits for it to flop down.
Correction: He doesn't wait for it to flop down, he starts to read the questions and it flops down.
Correction: So Jeebs clearly ignored K's threat. Suits his character-type just fine.
Phixius ★