The latest trailer for Men in Black: International has crash landed to Earth, bringing with it the sequel’s biggest gun: the unbeatable chemistry between Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson. The fourth film in the MIB franchise capitalizes on the playful banter that made the duo so much fun as Thor and Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok.
MIB: International give us a lead female agent in Thompson’s Agent M, who has been tracking the agency ever since they failed to wipe her memory after a childhood alien encounter. Instead of being recruited, M has been actively pursuing the agency for employment. She’s assigned to London, where she teams up with her new partner, Hemsworth’s cocky Agent H, to uncover a mole in the agency and handle The Hive, an alien threat that can shapeshift into anyone (is this a Skrulls crossover? Probably not, but one can dream).
There’s a lot of eye candy to enjoy in the trailer: international vistas, cool new alien designs, and the signature MIB toy arsenal. The film, directed by F. Gary Gray (The Fate of the Furious, Straight Outta Compton) is written by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, who wrote the script for Iron Man, another movie that knew how to balance comedy and action. In many ways, they set the standard for the MCU’s legacy of comedic, crowd-pleasing action films.
And that’s really what made 1997’s Men in Black so much damn fun: not just the aliens and the action, but the comedic chemistry between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Both sequels tried to recapture that magic, but struggled under overly complicated plots and uninspired writing. Here’s hoping that International can inject some fresh blood into a franchise that deserves better. Joining the duo are Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation) as Riza, a multi-armed alien, and Kumail Nanjiani voicing Pawny, a pocket-sized alien. Liam Neeson will play London MIB head High T, with Emma Thompson reprising her role as Agent O.
Hemsworth has recently been flexing his comedic chops with great success, from his goofy turn as Kevin in Ghostbusters to his reimagining of Thor in Ragnarok, which gave us not only the best Thor movie but one of the top entries into the MCU thus far.
Hemsworth said of his partnership with Thompson, “I think there’s a familiarity of working together before which is really beneficial in that instance. You know each other’s rhythms and you’re stomping over each other’s lines and there’s a bit of chaos to it.” Thompson followed up by adding, “You have a healthy disrespect for each other because you know each other …. You’re not trying to impress each other anymore.”
MIB: International hits theaters on June 14, 2019.
(via Collider, image: Columbia Pictures)
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