I remember really enjoying the Men in Black movies when I was younger. They’ve got explosions, aliens, flying saucers, Will Smith. They’ve got everything that makes a movie great. However, the movies are missing one very important thing: good ethics.
It slipped by me when I was watching the movies as a kid, but humans in the Men in Black universe are kind of the galaxy’s village idiot. In the first movie it’s explained how television, computers, and basically every other technology was given to us by aliens. We’re apparently not capable of developing any of these things ourselves.
In a universe where its easy to travel from one planet to another and there are all kinds of interesting planets with interesting life to visit, we humans are stuck on earth. We get the alien technology that they don’t want: television. They keep their faster than light travel for themselves.
The culture of craft and making that’s seen a resurgence in the past decade or so has me very excited. It shows that people are creative, interested in learning, and willing to build things that make the world a better and more exciting place to live. It’s humans making these inventions, and we celebrate those past humans who invent. People like Philo Farnsworth, the Wright Brothers, and Alan Turing.
When movies like MIB cast humans as incapable of inventing, they do a disservice to our culture and our history.