Will Smith’s Best Sci-Fi Movie Got a Forgotten Sequel 29 Years Ago, And It Should Have Stayed the Only One

Across his career, Will Smith has not only been one of the most prolific blockbuster actors of a generation, but one who specifically has taken the science fiction genre by storm. Though we can forgive movies like Wild Wild West and its steampunk ideas or even the totally forgotten After Earth, Will Smith still gave us I, Robot, Hancock, I Am Legend, and Independence Day, where his performance cemented a film’s premise in a way that made it fully accessible to the general public. He remains one of our most prolific stars for a reason: the audience loves him.

Given his history, one might argue about which Will Smith science fiction movie is the best, but there’s genuinely no contest: the answer is 1997’s Men in Black. Featuring a perfect script by Ed Solomon, great performances by Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, and Vincent D’Onofrio, and special effects for its aliens that still hold up in 2026, it’s one of the rare summer movies that’s perfect. Naturally, the time since Men in Black has been imperfect, with a slew of sequels that failed to live up to even half the standard of the first movie. That said, 29 years ago today, the movie actually got its best follow-up, even though it’s somewhat lost to time: the animated TV spinoff Men in Black: The Series.

Men In Black: The Series Was the Best Sequel to the Movie

Premiering on October 11, 1997, Men in Black: The Series does a few things that one might expect, namely, the unexplained return of Agent K, who left the organization at the end of the first movie. As a result, across the series, the relationship between the two agents largely feels like it does in the first movie, an experienced agent schooling a rookie any chance he gets, especially if it means embarrassing him with knowledge of an alien that might make him look silly. The show would run for four seasons, premiering just four months after the movie and ending a year before the second film arrived.

It’s easy to see why the show would take a somewhat reductive approach like this for a series, though, even if it comes at the expense of their arcs in the movie. The series is designed to appeal to the young audience that flocked to see the movie and bought the toys that were licensed from it, as such it has to hit the benchmarks that the movie itself set. That includes not only the two agents at the center of it, but fan-favorite alien characters like Frank the Pug and the Worm Guys; the series even continued the storyline that the first movie’s ending set up, with Linda Fiorentino joining the MIB (Jennifer Lien and then Jennifer Martin voiced her in the series). For the most part, though, it’s all about self-contained stories that are built around aliens and gadgets, the things kids liked about Men in Black.

Now there are some places where Men in Black: The Series stumbled, though they’re to be expected with the animated spinoff of a hit series. The big one is that the voice cast is largely totally different. It’s no surprise that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones don’t reprise their roles of J and K in the series, but Keith Diamond does a great approximation of Smith’s mannerisms enough that it’s not too obvious, while the voice actors for K (Ed O’Ross in the first season and Gregg Berger for all episodes after that) maintain the gruff exterior of Jones from the first movie. The biggest downgrade for the series, though, is that it has its own theme song that isn’t the one from the feature film. Though a cover plays over the final credits, it doesn’t scratch the same itch as the original.

That said, some stars from the film did return to reprise their roles. Tony Shalhoub returned as pawnbroker Jack Jeebs (though only for the first season), but even more exciting is the return of Vincent D’Onofrio. Though his “Bug” character Edgar died in the first movie, his sibling seeks out revenge in a later episode, with D’Onofrio providing the voice. D’Onofrio is one of the many high points of the original film, and his return for the series not only gives the show some legitimacy, but a continued performance that defined the first movie in a way no other feature film sequel was able to match. Furthermore, the episode that acts like a sequel to the first movie is a better follow-up than the actual Men in Black II that the world got.

Men In Black Never Needed a Sequel

The box office success of the first Men in Black meant that franchising the film was inevitable. Not only did the movie make nearly $600 million at the global box office, but became the foundation for merchandising to a major degree, plus a major component of the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida, which remains in operation today.

There were problems immediately, though, with making a sequel to Men in Black, one being Will Smith’s busy schedule, but specifically finding a story that could build on what came before it and still satisfy audiences. This meant not only taking away K’s ending and bringing back Tommy Lee Jones into the fold, but also introducing another alien threat that would be as menacing as D’Onofrio’s bug.

It’s also worth noting that even when Men in Black II finally got in front of cameras, the movie had to be altered in major ways later on since the original ending was tied to the World Trade Center and production on the sequel wrapped at the end of September in 2001. The result of this was a wholly unsatisfying sequel, one that cost even more money but made way less. It would take a full decade for Men in Black 3 to get made and bring sliver of life back to the series, even if it was intended as the ending for Smith’s character, but 2019’s Men in Black: International basically killed it.

All that to say, 29 years ago today, the actual best sequel to Men in Black arrived. Though the series is something of a footnote in the larger franchise’s existence, it still managed to at least try to scratch the itch about what fans liked about the first movie, even delivering an episode that followed up on the action of the original unlike any other actual sequel. If you’re eager to try it, the whole series is streaming now on Tubi, and you could do worse with your time, like watching the actual Men in Black sequel movies.

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