In any film, genre theory is used to categorize films based on different factors such as audience expectations, storylines, and who the director is. For example, if you hear the name Spielberg you assume you will be watching a horror film or if you hear Stan Lee you think of action-comic films. In a genre such as science fiction, viewers expect films dealing with speculations about the future or scientific theory often set in outer space (Goodykoontz, Jacobs, Meetze, & Pritts 2019). In the sci-fi film Men in Black, they touch on key themes of this genre while crossing over elements from genres such as mystery, comedy, and action. In this paper, I will analyze this film to help the reader further understand the film itself, the make-up of the film's genre components, and how this film expounds the boundaries of science fiction.

In the 1997 film Men in Black, Tommy Lee Jones plays an "unsmiling, businesslike, veteran named agent K" (Ebert 1997). Will Smith, a witty, slapstick, with I can do bad all by myself attitude is recruited to be his partner, Agent J. Agent K meets, then named James, as he is running down the details of a criminal chase to his superior. After extensive training and introduction into what is known as the Men in Black, Agent K and Agent J are assigned to a case of unauthorized UFO landing on a farm in upstate New York. Here they discover that the body of the farmer was over-taken by an alien who is looking for a galaxy that was hidden on Earth. Now they must stop this alien from acquiring a way off Earth with this galaxy all before another race of aliens blows the Earth to smithereens to save themselves.

Science fiction is a genre of fiction literature whose content is imaginative but based in science. It relies heavily on scientific facts, theories, and principles as support for its settings, characters, themes, and plotlines, which is what makes it different from fantasy (Literary Terms 2015). However, in Men in Black, the director merely nods his head at science fiction by marking all the boxes that rightfully makes it so. They have alien wars, secret government agencies, and extraterrestrials living on Earth in disguise. So, at a glance, it is a sci-fi movie. But unlike most science fiction movies, Men in Black do not look at how the incorporation of speculative technology or space travel can alter our realities. In movies such as Star Trek or Independence Day, they show a broad spectrum ranging from peaceful or vengeful encounters. However, Men in Black does not take a stance on this matter to keep in line with the comedic aspect of the movie. So, one minute they could be granting clemency to a group of aliens who just arrived and the next they are fighting an 8-foot cockroach boarding the New York state pavilion to fly into space to destroy another alien race. These subtle differences leave room for the other elements such as comedy and action that are also a part of this film.

When you think of the film Men in Black, most tend to remember the comedic aspect of the film. The witty comebacks, the out of the way explanation for famous people deaths (E.g. "Elvis is not dead, he just went home"-Jones 1997), or even the Loony Tunes face stretch gag perform by the alien on its snatched body. Even alien childbirth is made lite by the spit up gag before Agent J can say it's cute. The movie is self-aware of the funny parts of the theories in science such as aliens and advanced technology, however, instead of trying to make the viewer turn a blind eye to the humor by disguising it with gore and suspense, they shined a light to it. One of my favorite scenes is when they went to get information from an alien informant, and there was a guy who by appearance most would have assumed was the alien, but instead, it was his pet dog, Frank. The entire time Agent K is shaking the dog trying to retrieve information and Agent J is trying to ease people's disgust by making up explanations for why he is shaking the dog. It's light and non-sensical, which gives everyone a laugh in between the alien hunt and direness of the situation.