Will Smith wears a Hamilton Ventura

Barry Sonnenfeld directed Men in Black (1997), based on the Lowell Cunningham comic. Will Smith plays James Edwards, an NYPD officer recruited into a secret agency that monitors extraterrestrial activity on Earth. Once recruited, Edwards loses his identity and becomes Agent J. Tommy Lee Jones plays Agent K, the veteran who brings him in. Linda Fiorentino plays a morgue worker who gets pulled into the alien crisis. The film made $589 million worldwide and turned Smith from a TV actor into a movie star.

Before joining MIB, Edwards wears a Breitling Chronomat in two-tone gold and steel, a flashy choice for a young cop with ambitions. Once he becomes Agent J, the Breitling disappears and gets replaced by the Hamilton Ventura, the standard-issue MIB watch. Hodinkee covered the placement in their Watching Movies series, noting that the Ventura was released in 1957 with a shield-shaped case designed by Richard Arbib, made famous by Elvis Presley in Blue Hawaii and Rod Serling on episodes of The Twilight Zone. The asymmetrical, boomerang-like geometry made it instantly recognizable, which is exactly why Sonnenfeld's prop department chose it. The watch features in the "I make this look good" scene where Agent J straps it on for the first time.

Smith wore the Hamilton Ventura as Agent J in all three Men in Black films, spanning 1997, 2002, and 2012. The watch outlasted everything else about the character's look. The sunglasses changed, the suits changed, the alien threats changed, but the Ventura stayed on his wrist. Hamilton later produced MIB-branded Ventura editions to capitalize on the partnership.