Updated

Updated · CNN · Sep 10

Sonnenfeld Rewrote Men in Black II Ending, Cutting Twin Towers From 8-12 Shots After 9/11

Updated

Updated · CNN · Sep 10

Sonnenfeld Rewrote Men in Black II Ending, Cutting Twin Towers From 8-12 Shots After 9/11

Q: What secret details of the original Men in Black II climax remain hidden in the unreleased World Trade Center footage?

The hidden details are only partly known: Barry Sonnenfeld has revealed the original *Men in Black II* climax was staged atop one of the Twin Towers, where Agents J and K, played by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, would battle the alien villain and use the tower itself to send Rosario Dawson’s character — ultimately revealed as a space princess — back to her home planet. Beyond that, the unreleased footage remains largely unseen and undescribed in public. Sonnenfeld has said he chose the World Trade Center deliberately because the towers looked “like a magnet” and because they were meant to serve as a natural, surprising payoff within the film’s New York-based “MIB” mythology. He indicated the setup had been planted earlier in the movie so audiences would realize, in hindsight, that the towers were the obvious destination for the finale. What remains hidden, then, are the exact visual mechanics of that sequence: how the confrontation was choreographed on the roof, how the tower functioned in launching Dawson’s character home, and how the scene was framed to deliver that planned reveal. Sonnenfeld has also said the replacement rooftop ending reused many of the same storyboards, suggesting the broad structure survived while the landmark setting — and much of the scene’s emotional and symbolic force — was lost. No full public release of the original World Trade Center climax has been reported, so the finer details remain locked in unreleased footage and production materials.

3 articles · Updated · CNN · Sep 10

Barry Sonnenfeld said 9/11 forced him to scrap a “Men in Black II” climax set atop the World Trade Center, where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones were to send Rosario Dawson’s character back to her planet.
The sequel had shot in New York in summer 2001 and treated the towers as a key reveal, but their destruction made that ending unusable and prompted wider edits across the film.
Sonnenfeld said the replacement finale was reshot on a generic rooftop using many of the same storyboards, yet “never worked” and left the production emotionally drained.
He said the towers were erased from 8 to 12 shots, echoing post-attack removals from projects including “Friends,” “Sex and the City,” “Zoolander” and the first “Spider-Man” teaser.
The director called the film’s troubles a “small sadness compared to the big sadness,” underscoring how the attacks reshaped even fictional depictions of New York.