You have no idea why they were there, do you?
I like the fact that J, a member of the NYPD, sees a little girl in a bad neighborhood carrying books that seem too advanced for her, and he uses that to justify shooting her in the forehead! :dubious:
Great movie, great casting.
I know! That really seems more like LAPD thinking to me.
I had a whole serious paragraph typed up, hit Preview, saw this, and cracked up too hard to post it.
I think part of why they were there was to test J’s willingness to go against the herd. Would he still trust his instincts and judgment when the others are all doing something by the book.
But an important part of the scene is his analysis of why the scary monsters weren’t threatening. I don’t think anyone’s mentioned that yet. IIRC, one was sneezing. One was minding his own business doing chin-ups on a lamppost, etc.
It wasn’t just that he saw the girl as a threat. It was that he realized the monsters weren’t a threat.
Funny that so many people interpereted these scenes as Edwards obviously failing. I saw them as him obviously passing the tests. I did think Zed found him genuinely annoying, however, leading to his eyerolling and other negative reactions, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t see that Edwards was suitable for the job.
Zed’s the kind of guy who finds anyone under the age of 35 automatically annoying.
My take is that J goofed up two ways at first: Laughing at the gung-ho guy’s “best of the best” answer and doing Stupid Stuff during the written test (tearing the test, breaking the pencil and the table sliding noise). While a non-standard response to the “Why are you here?” question was hoped for, actually laughing at the standard response wasn’t probably a good thing.
The only thing he did right was ignoring the monsters and focusing on the little girl. So K had to persuade Zed.
Note that shooting the girl was also justified on the grounds that her name was “Tiffany” although that was learned ex post blasto.
The whole point of the testing scenes was to convince the viewing audience that the Will Smith candidate was doing the wrong thing, when he was actually doing the right thing.
So the reactions had to be convincing that it was wrong (so the audience is misled briefly), but ambiguous enough that when the plot seems to flip-flop, their reactions were OK after all, just misinterpreted.
It’s a common cinematic device (does it have a name?). Someone reacts one way (maybe horrified) but is really thinking the other way (pleased). Takes some good acting (and writing) to pull it off convincingly.
I don’t know - except for breaking the pencil (which it probably was designed to do), I didn’t see Jay goof once. It seemed obvious to me that he was passing the test with flying colors.
But then, I have some experience with psychological testing. I know what they look for.
Punching the pencil through the paper while trying to mark his answer, I think that put a hash in the “goof” column.
That wasn’t him - that was one of the Captain America types. J ripped the cover page trying to open the taped shut booklet.
The whole movie is (no doubt temporarily) up on youtube. The test scene is here, about 4 minutes in.
D’oh. It’s obviously been too long since I watched it. Sorry!
The goofs during the written test were because of the MiB. They made the testing environment extremely inconvienant in order to make the table an attractive alternative. They were testing his response to the difficult situation, not the written test. This makes me think that the other cadidates were real as well since they were having physical difficulty with the testing as well. They were simply pulled from the usual sources whereas J was added at the last minute.
Watching the scene again, the only screwup in Edward’s test performance is that while he’s explaining his actions on the shooting range to Zed, he’s waving his still-loaded gun around with his finger in the trigger guard.
I really loved this movie; the sequel, not so much. I always thought that Tommy Lee Jones should have made a guest appearance in Will Smith’s music video of the movie music. That would have been awesome to see Mr. Jones cut a rug. Or at least hire a look alike.
But Zed seemed unhappy every time J did those things, you could make the case that that was an act, but I think he already had the job just on K’s recommendation.
I haven’t seen it in a while, but did he even *try *to move the chair closer to the table? Because that would have been my first choice. The chair should have been easier to move. Failing that, I would have moved the table. But I don’t remember him trying to move the chair.
Zed seemed satisfied with all of J’s actions up until the point where J started acting all street on him and giving him attitude. For example, he listened carefully to J’s explanation of why he shot little tiffany with guarded approval up until when J followed up with “And to be honest, I’d appreciate it if you eased up off my back about it.” That’s when the eye rolling began. And when it happened, they’d cut to Agent K who was observing out of sight, clearly enjoying it.
At the end, though, it was K’s approval that got him the job. Zed tells K, “The kid’s got a real problem with authority,” and K quickly responds “So do I,” which I think shows J reminds K of himself. He knows J is rough around the edges, but because he’s not phased by the weird and is able to focus on the job, he has the potential to be a great agent.
Like K tells J at the end of the movie, “I haven’t been training my partner, I’ve been training my replacement.” His gut told him that J had what it took to be the top gun at MIB.
The only real problem I had with the plot was the seemingly easy and shallow way J caught K’s eye. K said something to Zed that amounted to “He chased down an alien on foot.” J’s chase with that alien in the beginning wasn’t even all that impressive, just a lot of running and, I think, a jump onto a moving bus from an overhead bridge.