10 Films With Awesome Animated TV Shows You Forgot Existed

7. Men In Black: The Series

Okay, so the Men in Black series was actually fab.

I mean, it didn't have Tommy Lee Jones or Will Smith behind the roles of K and J, or even Rip Torn in the role of Z, but it did capture the magic of Barry Sonnenfeld's sci-fi spectacular with ease. Not so much its bombast, but the quirky atmosphere was there, and again, it exemplified a trend in cartoon shows adapting relatively mature properties for a younger audience.

The series does away with the ending of the 1997 original, instead opting to keep the K and J partnership running until its cancellation in 2001, though Dr. Laurel Weaver does maintain a role in the organisation. It ran for four seasons, and featured a whole host of aliens, characters and storylines over the course of its duration. It also actually had a role in the overall canon of the film series, surprisingly, considering the amendment to K's fate at the end of the first film. In the first sequel, when J squares off against Jarra in MIB headquarters, the agent references the time he stopped him from stealing the Earth's ozone layer - the main premise of the show's second episode.

So, not only was the show influential in forming the MIB universe going forward, it also managed to adapt a fairly mature sci-fi comedy for a different audience. It also had a stellar voice cast, featuring the A-List talents of Billy West, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ron Perlman and Tony Shalhoub to name but some.

If you're after an MIB fix and you've played Black Suits Comin' just one time too many, then it might be just the thing you need.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.