Legendary monster make-up artist Rick Baker spoke enthusiastically at last summer’s San Diego Comic-Con about his alien creature designs for the upcoming Men in Black 3. As sizable chunks of the time-travel-themed movie are set in 1969, Baker said he had been allowed to indulge his passion for retro alien beasties, telling his Comic-Con audience:
“Right from the first movie, I was always saying to Barry [Sonnenfeld], ‘Let’s do aliens that look like aliens we’ve already seen... Let’s say that Paul Blaisdell, who did the effects for Invasion of the Saucer Men, actually had a real encounter with an alien and tried to recreate it on film, so there are saucer men in the Men in Black headquarters. And let’s have E.T. in there, operating the phone.' Barry didn’t like any of those ideas, he thought they were stupid. But when Men in Black 3 came along and I heard about the time-travel element, I said, ‘Okay, it’s set in 2012, so we’ll have aliens that look like 2012 aliens in that part of the film. But when we go back to 1969, wouldn’t it be cool to have retro aliens? Big brains, bug eyes, stuff like that?’ I thought they should have a totally different, retro feel. And they agreed to it, thank God. So I got to make a whole bunch of cool stuff.”
Well, here we are in March, 2012, with just two months to go before the movie’s release, and finally we’re afforded a glimpse at the fruits of Baker’s labour. These photos come to you via Russia’s Stark Industries...
It seems Baker has been true to his word about drawing inspiration from Invasion of the Saucer Men, which helped popularise the term “little green men” in 1957. 1953’s Robot Monster also gets a nod!
Men in Black 3 hits cinemas May 25.
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