Men in Black II

IMDb 6.2/10 (428,899 votes) | 2002 | USA | Action, Adventure, Comedy | 88 min | English

Men in Black II (2002) is a science-fiction action comedy directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and the sequel to Men in Black (1997), with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones returning as Agents J and K. Several years after K had his memory erased and returned to civilian life, J has struggled to find a partner capable of replacing him. A new crisis begins when Serleena, a shape-shifting alien played by Lara Flynn Boyle, arrives on Earth searching for the mysterious Light of Zartha. The problem is that K is the only person who knows what happened to it, forcing J to track down his former mentor, restore his memories and bring him back into the Men in Black. Rosario Dawson joins the cast as Laura Vasquez, whose connection to the Light becomes increasingly important. The sequel retains the original film’s playful vision of New York as a city overflowing with extraterrestrials hiding behind ordinary faces, while pushing the comedy, creatures and elaborate effects even further.

Men in Black II (2002) was filmed extensively in New York City and on Long Island, with additional production and studio work in California. The familiar exterior of Men in Black headquarters once again uses the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel ventilation building at Battery Park, while Agent J’s investigation begins at Famous Ben’s Pizza at 177 Spring Street in SoHo, where Laura works and Serleena kills the alien owner, Ben. J later takes Laura to the stainless-steel Empire Diner at Tenth Avenue and West 22nd Street, where she tells him what happened. One of the film’s best disguised locations lies well outside Manhattan: Fire Island Lighthouse on Long Island becomes the supposedly Massachusetts post office where K, now living as Kevin Brown, works as postmaster until J arrives and reveals that most of his employees are aliens. After K regains his memory, a clue leads the agents to Grand Central Terminal, where they discover Locker C-18 and the tiny alien civilisation inside that worships K as a god. Other New York filming included Central Park and the area outside the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, while interiors, effects work and additional sequences were completed at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City. The film’s production was also directly affected by the September 11 attacks. The climax had originally been designed around the World Trade Center, but after the destruction of the Twin Towers the sequence was rewritten and reshot, with the Statue of Liberty becoming the major New York landmark associated with the ending. K ultimately activates an enormous neuralyzer concealed in the statue’s torch, allowing the film to finish with another characteristically absurd twist on one of the city’s most famous landmarks.

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Will Smith