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THE X-FILES (1998)
Fight the future indeed - nothing ever changes on this show I watched this show for years before I had an epiphany, which went something like this: "Wait a sec...I don't like this show at all. Actually I think I hate it. I hate this fucking show! Why have I been watching this fucking show?" The X-Files in a nutshell: two of the most wooden actors in the history of recorded drama, his hands on hips, her arms crossed, standing close enough to smell each other's fillings and updating each other under their breath about the latest developments in the plot. That's like two-thirds of the series right there. I didn't mind the stand-alone "freak of the week" episodes, but the supposed long-term story arc about an alien plot to take over the earth, forget it. I found conspiracy theories interesting and amusing before this show - now, not so much. Like Sikozu in Farscape and the Cylons in the new Battlestar Galactica, the deception is so vast and complicated that nobody can be counted on to do or be anything - any behavior can come to pass and be explained later on as part of the increasingly unwieldy and unlikely conspiracy. Without knowing that going in, viewers unfamiliar with the TV show might actually dare to attempt to follow the plot here, woe be to them. No attempt is made to rope new viewers into the show - this is for fans only, and even the fans have been of pretty mixed opinions about it. The X-Files movie came out between seasons, uh...five and six I think. Said files (the division of the FBI that investigates spooky stuff) have been closed, and agents Mulder and Scully (David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson) are reduced to investigating things that really do endanger American lives, like bombs. A bomb threat has been phoned in regarding a government building in Dallas; the building is cleared but no bomb is found. On a hunch (which is arbitrary enough to suggest psychic ability), Mulder checks out the building across the street and, natch, finds the bomb. (So why the bomb threat at all?) The building goes down Oklahoma City-style (three years later, this still felt a little...pornographic) and we later find that the building was destroyed to cover up the real cause of death of three bodies stored inside, who were killed by an alien oil slick. (Won't the parents from out of town ask why their ten-year-old son was in an office tower in Dallas?) Before we see that, we go back thirty-seven thousand years when an alien fights a caveman, and then to the modern day when the alien oil slick slimes that kid. What's the connection here? As we are told later in a typical conversation: "The virus has mutated." "Into what?" "A new extraterrestrial biological entity." "My...GOD!" This is from the cabal of super-rich white people who are working for the aliens in order to secure their own survival in an alien-dominated earth. (If they refused to cooperate, would the aliens be boned?) I'm asking a lot of questions, I know. I suppose the only way The X-Files (show or movie) can work is if the viewer doesn't ask any, or at least assumes that any inexplicable behavior is only part of the larger conspiracy. Personally, the bigger conspiracies get, the less seriously I can take them. Considering the lengths to which the cabal has consistently gone to keep things hush-hush, why not just kill Mulder? "Kill Mulder, we take the risk of turning one man's quest into a crusade!" They've been coasting on that excuse for years, though they didn't seem to have a problem discrediting Martin Landau's character. "They never make mistakes! How far will they let you get?" is asked. Answer: obviously, as long as they're not willing to kill him, as far as he wants to get. A couple of the effects are bigger than would be expected in the series, but the big thing for fans of the show is probably the drawn-out moment where Mulder and Scully finally, at long last, after all the sexual tension between them (yeah right...wood doesn't have sexual tension), they aaaaaaalmost kiss, but it's interrupted by a bee that's been hiding in their clothes which haven't been changed in like two days, so it must've been eager to escape. There are some more impressive actors to watch - Terry O'Quinn makes the most of a brief, coldly saddening appearance. Landau and John Neville both show up basically to drop some top-secret information the story couldn't possibly proceed without, and then die. Jeffrey DeMunn and Blythe Danner appear in a couple of scenes each. By the time the movie is over, the big alien-invasion-conspiracy story arc is moved forward mostly in that the X-Files are re-opened again, so we're basically still at where we were like a year before. Scully still barely escapes seeing anything that would convince her that aliens might exist (despite being abducted by them and being stored in an alien slime-tank in Antarctica), she and Mulder still haven't done it or suggested that they ever will (and they never did), they still bluff their way into fortified secret areas by depending on the idiocy of the guards (or the absence of locks on the doors), the aliens still plan to invade and the cabal is still helping them, Cancer Man still stands around smoking looking ominous, the Lone Gunmen are still dorky and handily show up when needed, Mulder's still a thorn in the cabal's side, Skinner still defends him more than he wishes he had to, and everything that was secret before is still a secret (even from the audience). We learn that the alien slime was "the original inhabitant of this planet", though whether "original" means "before everything" or just "before man" is in question and probably doesn't matter. I guess if you liked being jerked around for the previous six years, chances are you liked it for another two hours here. I don't mind being jerked around so much, as long as there's a payoff at the end. The payoff for me was that there was only a few episodes left before I would have that epiphany. (c) Brian J. Wright 2005 BACK TO THE X's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |