CC2K’s Big Ross got his hands on a somewhat dated script for Men in Black III and offers his thoughts on this third film in the MiB franchise. Here is what he has to say.
POSSIBLE SPOILER
Disclaimer: The script I read is somewhat outdated. It has been confirmed that the script has gone through rewrites, and I have no idea what all has been preserved and what has been changed, though given some of the info on IMDB and other sites it seems that much of the story in this script has remained intact.
Okay, so the first thing I will say is that I was extremely pleased to see that MiBIII seems to actually go somewhere; this isn’t just another retread as MiBII was. We actually get some nice character development, particularly with respect to Agent J, and the relationship between J and K is the cornerstone for the whole story. That’s the good news. Now for the bad.
As you may have read elsewhere, MiBIII’s schtick is basically a time-travel story. And that’s a problem because time travel is always a tricky thing to deal with in fiction, and if not handled properly can lead to headache-inducing paradoxes. Even in skilled hands this is possible; look no further than the Terminator films. And, no disrespect intended, MiBIII screenwriter Etan Cohen is no James Cameron.
The script opens with the daring prison escape of Yaz, “and evil hippie/biker badass right out of Easy Rider” helped by his lover/partner Devil Girl, an “R. Crumb drawing come to life.” This opening action sequence wildly veers in tone as it attempts to misdirect the audience and evoke a “whoa, that is SO cool” moment that (for me at least) utterly failed due to the fact that if you consider the setup for more than 2 minutes you realize the whole thing just doesn’t make any sense. See, Devil Girl shows up at prison to visit Yaz literally with cake in hand, and is granted an albeit controlled, monitored visit with Yaz. After they make their escape, with the help of some vicious aliens concealed in the cake, the big reveal is that the prison their busting out of is the INTERGALACTIC DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, LUNAR DIVISION. The prison is on the moon!