Subject: Review: The X-Files (1998)

From: [email-masked] (Cheng-Jih Chen)
Date: 1 Jul 1998 04:28:14 GMT

I'm not sure how many TV series have been moved to the big screen before
the end of its small screen run.  Actually, I'm not sure if there are
that many TV series that are brought to the big screen at all: it seems
to be an 1990s phenomenon, though there was Star Trek all those years go.
Mostly, what we see are nostalgia trips ("Flintstones", "Lost in Space",
the "Avengers") ironic revivals ("The Brady Bunch") or Ideas That Should
Not Have Been Thought ("Dennis the Menace").  But we'll probably never
see (thankfully, actually) a "Friends" movie, though it may feel like
that each and every Jennifer Aniston or David Schwimmer romantic comedy
is an alternative history of the TV show.

So, on Friday, "X-Files" has joined "Beavis and Butthead" and "MST3K"
as the three TV shows I can name off-hand to have made it to the big
screen before their runs have finished.  It should be more successful
than its two predecessors.  While it may not make the American Film
Institute's Top 100 films (not exactly an authoritative list), it isn't
disappointing, like "Beavis and Butthead", or why-bother like "MST3K".

I had hoped "X-Files" would have been more ambitious.  Considering the
series internal mythology and its threads of continuity, my idea of an
"X-Files" movie would have been a movie that could have been dropped into
the existing series as-is.  It would have been a vehicle to carry the myth
arc from the season finale, and leave questions for the season premiere.
The series would have torn down the increasingly tattered curtain between
small and big screens.

Yes, this would have shut out people who don't watch the series, but it's
unclear if it'd be that much of a loss.  I don't think that many non-fans
will see the movie, and there are some 20 million people following the
series.  At $5 a pop, you have a $100 million movie.  Plus repeats,
because people will watch it several times to dig out the myth-arc
clues or the tiniest indicators of the Mulder-Scully relationship.
The strength of the fan base depends in large part on exploring these
mysteries.  Yes, it'd make less than "Godzilla", but Chris Carter et al
wouldn't have staked $200 million in a movie that'll make $150M.

The "X-Files" movie, as it turns out, was made to be more accessible to
general audiences, and this robs it of a lot of punch.  Whether the movie
will be well-referred to next season is open to question.  Certainly,
the elements of the past finale aren't present, beyond an off-hand
reference to the closing down of the X-Files as semi-organized activity.
A recurring character does die, so I suppose they have to say something.
He, however, was not as significant as Deep Throat, Mr. X or the
Cancer Man.

In any case, the centerpiece Conspiracy plays a little like a Monster of
the Week.  The uninitiated have perhaps heard of the Conspiracy, would
expect to see it in the movie, but it feels there more for scares and
chills than for advancing the myth-arc.  Yes, things are revealed about
the nature of the black oil and what the Conspiracy is up to, but not
much more than we know already.  The main datum is that the Conspiracy
itself, in setting up a double-cross, has itself been double-crossed.
Besides this, Scully has to be rescued by Mulder.  At the end, Cancer
Man is talking to someone else, and there's a "curses, foiled again by
Mulder" moment.  General audiences may wonder why they don't just kill
Mulder -- they've offed others.  I suppose, in the space of this movie,
it was too much to go into the Mulder-is-an-unwitting-pawn (i.e., "Luke,
I am your father") thread that was touched on in the past two seasons.
Yes, the speculation was wrong, but there still seems to be something
special about Mulder.

One thing that surprised me was the apocalyptic themes in the film.
While apocalypse and millennium may have lurked in the background of
the "X-Files" (and is the centerpiece of Carter's other series), there
has never been a sense that the Conspiracy would lead towards an almost
Biblical end of the world scenario.  Yet that is what the movie implies,
in no unclear terms.  I think it's an interesting change, though I'm
not sure if it's a good one.

The movie, being a summer movie, isn't the height of originality.  There
are clearly bits and pieces from "Aliens".  Actually, this reduces the
extraterrestrials a fair amount.  Prior to this, the aliens lurked in the
shadows; it wasn't clear if they even existed outside of Mulder's mind.
Now, we see them a bit more clearly: not quite men in rubber suits,
but they've lost the sense of the sinister, the diabolical.

There are also Lovecraftian influences.  "X-Files" has had Lovecraftian
stories before, but mainly having to do with funguses hiding deep in
the ground.  This is similar: underground viruses that have existed for
eons, a trip to Antartica.  Perhaps it's more fitting for the end of the
century: viruses and things that violate internally, rather than Great
Old Ones menacing externally.

Oh, one somewhat cute thing: Mulder and Scully finally lock lips, but
only in a Xena-Gabriel or Xander-Buffy sort of way.  This is actually
unrelated to any Shipper revelation.  As a tease, a bone was tossed to
Shippers earlier.  It's unclear if this bone will lead to anything else
in the upcoming season.  The Scully-Mulder interaction is fairly good
in the movie, a bit looser than it has been for most of this season.

There's a personal-crisis-must-happen-in-movies theme, of Scully being
transfered to Utah.  It, of course, is resolved by re-opening the X-Files
as an investigative unit at the end of the movie, but I thought it'd make
for a nice way to move the series to Los Angeles: Mulder and Scully are
sent out there as a condition of re-establishing the X-Files.

All in all, I liked the movie. I thought it could have been more
ambitious, but I was entertained.  It's nice to see scenes unfolding in
Washington or Texas, instead of South Vancouver or East Vancouver.

"The court determined that Fox TV does not impede free and fair
competition in the teen-angst soap-com genre, therefore Party of Five
need not be broken into five 'Parties of One,' one being distributed to
each of the other networks."

-- 
"The court determined that Fox TV does not impede free and fair
competition in the teen-angst soap-com genre, therefore Party of Five
need not be broken into five 'Parties of One,' one being distributed to
each of the other networks."