With Men In Black III about to land on us with its time travelling twist, the Spaceman looks into the past of sucky time travel themed sequels.
I liked the first Men In Black – 1997 (MIB), especially Vincent D’Onorfio who played the farmer guy possessed by a space roach. The second MIB – 2002 was ok too, lamer premise but ok.
The third MIB – 2012, which had its premier yesterday and (10 years after part 2) smacks of big payday cash in. Why? Well the premise is Will Smith going back in time to 1969 to save his partner bud – Tommy Lee Jones.
It is kind of an unwritten rule of movies that when they drop in a time travel scenario they are usually scraping the barrel by this point.
Take Escape From The Planet Of The Apes – 1971, with Charlton Heston having destroyed ‘the world’ in Beneath The Planet Of The Apes – 1970 by setting off the doomsday device, they zipped monkeyman Cornelius and his Chimpette back in time to 1970′s LA via Heston’s suddenly repaired and time travel capable crashed spaceship.
WTF? The apes having showed no previous understanding or inkling of human technology, suddenly find and hotwire Taylor’s ship so they can escape? Doesn’t this go entirely against the concept of the first movie?
Well the answer was simple, there was still too much money to be made from flogging this dead monkey franchise a few more times, as every preceding Apes film got progressively worse.
Shrek 4 is another good example, after 3 films where Shrek meets Princess Goblin, gets married and has baby Goblin’s where could the story go next? I know, let’s take it back to the beginning with Shrek on his own in an alternate reality time travel scenario.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 – 1993 is another example of a concept running out of steam spectacularly, the turtles having beat Shredder, Bee-bop and Rocksteady in the previous 2 parts now find themselves thrown back to Feudal Japan (via a magic lamp) to do battle with Samurai.
Of course, it isn’t the rule that a time travel sequel sucks balls all of the time, just mostly.
Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home, 1986 was a fun ecological 80′s comedy about saving whales and gave the ultra serious Star Trek franchise a new comedic branch.
If you can think of any more time bending sequel stinkers, drop me a message below.
So will MIB III add to this list of lame Time Travel sequels? We will have to see.
Men In Black III goes UK nationwide on 25/05/12