always
I only realised today that it's ten years since the first X-Files movie.
I remember I went to see Fight The Future in my first year of uni. And woah, released almost to the day! I was living with the Family Friend in Canberra, we all went to see it. Her son and me sat in the very first row and then climbed into the second to ease the strain on our necks. Which is why I will always remember the ice shot as a total WOOOAAAAAWWWW moment.
This morning the weather and the buses and the box office queue conspired so I was five minutes late for the start of the very first session. So I cut my losses and decided to opt for the Gold Class uber-expensive but an hour later session.
And oooooooooohhhhhh boy do they treat you absolutely awesomely for the extra almost ten dollars. Had wedges and water before I went in which totally made up for the horrible start I had to the day, sitting in the leather recliner wif my feet up, grinning and bouncing a little like a five year old.
I theenk I was a little too close to the humongous screen. And for a while, it seemed like I would have the cinema all to myself. Not so, not in Sydney, not on George Street. Prolly would have been about twenty of us all up.
It was very, very satisfying. How they've aged, how they've changed but stayed the same. How the script introduced them with delayed shots and that same great lack of special effects that I loved so much from the show. Scully's long gorgeous sleek hair. Mulder's mountain man beard! BWAHAHAHAHHAAA!!
I think Duchovny has had just the right amount of time away from Mulder because that light was back in Mulder's eyes. You could tell in the last few years of the show that David was bored and feeling trapped, there was a certain heaviness to his performance then. This time Mulder turned around and got up from the desk and there was that wonderful light in his eyes, that affectionate curious sparkle that makes me adore him all over again.
I was thinking there's a purity of innocence to the heart of Mulder and you so totally feel it, you know it if you've paid enough attention to him. That light isn't quite there in Hank Moody's eyes, he's so much more beaten down by the world than Mulder. He lost his Scully! *nods sagely* But Mulder, oh he's so beautiful, that marvellous combination of incisive intellect and quirky sense of humour and passionate idealism and such a sweet pure heart underneath it all.
And they worked all the classic character quirks in! The messiness, the poster, the pinning up of articles everywhere, the sunflower seeds, the pencils in the foam ceiling, the aquarium! Of course they couldn't work in the tape on the window cos this wasn't a conspiracy story. And there was no pornography mention although there was definitely a moment. Hee hee. And the little injokes about trust and the basement.
Oh my Mulder. *hugs him and hugs him and hugs him*
The good old character dynamic was there between him and Scully and yet how carefully they changed them. Because yes, she changed and he didn't. She left the cop behind and became a doctor, learnt to live with the loss of William. She moved on and built a life. He didn't. Which is why this was so much more difficult for her than it was for him. Always simple for our Mulder. *sighs, pets him*
I'm so glad Frank Spotnitz co-wrote it with Chris Carter. Because only the writer of Memento Mori could have worked the faith and religion theme with such complexity that it bordered on the squicky even for me. And it's always such a great way into the heart of Scully, to challenge her faith. I kept expecting Christian to turn out to be William and so there was always the ghost of William through the film which was prolly even more heartbreaking than if we actually saw him.
Oh hell no. If they had shown Scully and Mulder with ten year old William, I would have burst into tears right then and there ... argh, I'm tearing up even now. For fuck's sake. *flaps*
As it was, Mulder said something absolutely lovely about the emptiness in their hearts that I didn't quite catch because my brain was still with the "omgthey'reinbedtogether, OMIGOD THEY REALLY HAD SEX, omigodAMIACTUALLYSEEINGTHIS?!" No entry yet in the memorable quotes section on IMDB but I'll keep checking over the next week. And that moment when Mulder says "I've got a little something for that" and Scully goes "A little?!" and he replies so gravely "Thank you" totally cracked me up.
I'm rather glad we didn't get a sex scene. I like that there's much more tenderness between them than overt raunch. And them talking in bed about the toxicology report rang so so true, I always knew that's exactly how it would be! *lol* And Scully said exactly what I was thinking and in exactly the same tone as in my head, "Eee, scratchy beard!" Hee hee. *claps squeefully* And oh the absolutely wonderful subtlety of the script that they're talking the case as Mulder gets up to shave right there and then but there's no need to point it out. Awww Mulder, awww Spotnitz, awww Carter! *hugs the lot of youse*
Quietly amused too that they pretty much got together, broke up and got back together again in the space of the film. On one hand, it took a bit of the tension away to see them together. But then we've been waiting so damned long that most of me was just so happy for them, so happy to see them together. Even how they broke up made them like any other couple where one person changes and the other doesn't and that's why they can't be together. Oh, the angst, perfectly controlled and emoted just enough so we felt for them and that it fit right into the case, why she couldn't work it with him like he wanted, like he always wants. *sigh* Good stuff, man. Good stuff.
What really shocked and unnerved me was Billy Connolly's character. I mean, I knew he would be the Catholic priest which I found amusing enough seeing as how I'm fairly certain he's a rabid atheist. But then when it turned out Father Joe was a convicted pedophile, I got really upset on Billy's behalf and wondered what the fuck possessed him to take such a role. Took me a while to arrive at the realisation that if he's fine with it, I should be too. Still. *hugs Billy too*
Frankly, I did think that was a bit overkill, to have the psychic not only be a Catholic priest but a convicted pedophile too, a pederast specifically. But then they used it brilliantly in terms of Scully's own Catholicism and how time away from the job had made her more reactionary, less of the coolheaded cop we knew back then. Good god, when she laid into him, I totally recoiled with the startlement. Woah hey, Scully, hold on there! And of course how it panned out in the end with his connection to the killer made perfect sense. It was just a bit much at the start and I don't have quite as much faith in Carter as I do in Whedon. Which is only right.
What did make my eye twitch was that the bad guys only turned out to be gay and married to each other. O rly? What the fuck are you saying, Spotnitz and Carter? It makes me want to cast a suspicious eye over the nine seasons, wondering if there's a subtle or not so subtle thrusting of the heterosexual norm. I'd hate to think one of my favourite shows was so fucking puritanical.
Callum Keith Rennie looks an awful lot like Daniel Craig, doesn't he? There again, my eye spasmed a bit at the East European accents of the bad guys. And I'm fairly certain that is a trend from the show. I mean, yes, we do get the redneck white AngloSaxon depraved bad guys as one-offs but it's beginning to irk me that more often than not the morally corrupt are Russian or German or some other equally Cold War paranoid American stereotype. Makes me mutter "why can't we for once have an absolutely fiendish monster of a bad guy who is not Jewish, not European, not Asian, not Middle Eastern, some nice white AngloSaxon fuckwit and no, Charles Manson doesn't count!" *grumbles*
Woah, wait a second, how could I forget? Spender so totally was the nice white AngloSaxon morally corrupt bastard, wasn't he? Omigod. I take it all back. Mea culpa, mea culpa.
Other than that, there were about two lines by Scully that I wanted to rewrite. And I admit to being somewhat disappointed by the ultimate Frankenstein reveal. Not nearly clever or creepy enough as I expected from the guys who gave us Tooms and Donnie Pfaster and the fat sucking vampire guy. It was a bit crude, really. Perhaps if they had more time, they would have come up with something much more elegant and creepier.
But oh, the editing was unbelievably dizzying and so effective, the way they intercut between two simultaneous scenes, one no less with the rapid action sequence. Almost as overwhelming as the first half an hour or so of Serenity but without the rapid fire dialogue obviously. And that great darkness of the colours was back, the wonderful use of torch glow and that incredible contrast of vast vast ice, so painfully cold and bright.
The emotional resolution was a leetle heavyhanded with the repetition of "Don't give up", kinda almost made me want to break into a Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush chorus. But the use of sunlight on their lovely lovely kiss was so healing, so effective.
I was surprised at the stem cell thing, though. Certainly haven't been following the debate cos I was under the impression it's still a way taboo subject in America and possibly discussed more in Australia. Makes me curious as to whether Carter and Spotnitz were making a political point or just illustrating Scully's philosophy as a doctor and a mother. And of course there's a great ambiguity there, contrasting the risk and moral grey of stem cell therapy advocated by Scully against the barbaric Frankenstein transplant methods of the bad guy. Ah, grey's such a good texture for art.
Amanda Peet did rather well, I thought, always a frisson of attraction between her and Mulder. And there was definitely a moment where Scully picked up on it too. Hee hee. Billy was so touching at the end after being absolutely wonderful in the final altercation with Scully. Vaguely amused to see Nicki Aycox as the second victim with her hair all brown instead of the slutty blond I remember from Rave Macbeth. And me, I totally squeaked and bolted upright when Skinner showed up, loved how they brought him right out of the blue cos I had totally forgotten about him. Also, omigod with the homo!yay cradling of Mulder in Skinner's arms and the petting of the hair and the "It's okay, I've got you." Awwww guys! I miss Krycek so much, that rat bastard.
I totally spotted a bit of trivia. When Mulder tries to call Scully, the names on the display above her name are Bowman and Gilligan. Rob Bowman and Vince Gilligan! The two shots went past too quickly for me to read the name below hers but omg, squeeeee flail squee!
And some little voice in the back of my head made me stay back all the way through the credits just to see if there was a little bit at the very end. Which normally makes me so impatient and so bored but these credits were so clever and fascinating, totally my kind of art video installation Doug Aitken sort of wankery.
Because I honestly couldn't figure out what the fuck the wonderfully creepy textured black stuff was until it started cracking and shading to colour and then I realised we were going from black core ice thawing and changing til all melted into gorgeous rushing vital ocean and over land and onto the sunswept waters to Mulder in the rowboat with Scully in a bikini, doing exactly what he suggested and escaping to the light. Which omigod, works on so so many levels of awesome because I was really feeling the bleakness of all that winter ice and this healed it beautifully, the sense of journey, the sense of transforming nature. So when they looked up and waved, my happiness turned to total glee. Still grinning about it. Awww Mully and Sculder! *crashtackles wif love*
Absolutely fucking marvellous music. I totally want that soundtrack. Cos the X-Files theme remixed over the ending credits was wonderful with the added violin. It may have been an Unkle remix, I'm not sure. And the song was very interesting too. No idea who the vocalist was and the credit went by too fast for me to see. Getting old, these eyes. Dangit.
All in all, yeah, a very satisfying experience for a sentimental fan like me. There was soppy smiling all the way to the State Library, yes.
What we need to do now is get that Millennium movie made. Sign the petition! Oh Frank and Fox ... two of the best characters in television history.
I remember I went to see Fight The Future in my first year of uni. And woah, released almost to the day! I was living with the Family Friend in Canberra, we all went to see it. Her son and me sat in the very first row and then climbed into the second to ease the strain on our necks. Which is why I will always remember the ice shot as a total WOOOAAAAAWWWW moment.
This morning the weather and the buses and the box office queue conspired so I was five minutes late for the start of the very first session. So I cut my losses and decided to opt for the Gold Class uber-expensive but an hour later session.
And oooooooooohhhhhh boy do they treat you absolutely awesomely for the extra almost ten dollars. Had wedges and water before I went in which totally made up for the horrible start I had to the day, sitting in the leather recliner wif my feet up, grinning and bouncing a little like a five year old.
I theenk I was a little too close to the humongous screen. And for a while, it seemed like I would have the cinema all to myself. Not so, not in Sydney, not on George Street. Prolly would have been about twenty of us all up.
It was very, very satisfying. How they've aged, how they've changed but stayed the same. How the script introduced them with delayed shots and that same great lack of special effects that I loved so much from the show. Scully's long gorgeous sleek hair. Mulder's mountain man beard! BWAHAHAHAHHAAA!!
I think Duchovny has had just the right amount of time away from Mulder because that light was back in Mulder's eyes. You could tell in the last few years of the show that David was bored and feeling trapped, there was a certain heaviness to his performance then. This time Mulder turned around and got up from the desk and there was that wonderful light in his eyes, that affectionate curious sparkle that makes me adore him all over again.
I was thinking there's a purity of innocence to the heart of Mulder and you so totally feel it, you know it if you've paid enough attention to him. That light isn't quite there in Hank Moody's eyes, he's so much more beaten down by the world than Mulder. He lost his Scully! *nods sagely* But Mulder, oh he's so beautiful, that marvellous combination of incisive intellect and quirky sense of humour and passionate idealism and such a sweet pure heart underneath it all.
And they worked all the classic character quirks in! The messiness, the poster, the pinning up of articles everywhere, the sunflower seeds, the pencils in the foam ceiling, the aquarium! Of course they couldn't work in the tape on the window cos this wasn't a conspiracy story. And there was no pornography mention although there was definitely a moment. Hee hee. And the little injokes about trust and the basement.
Oh my Mulder. *hugs him and hugs him and hugs him*
The good old character dynamic was there between him and Scully and yet how carefully they changed them. Because yes, she changed and he didn't. She left the cop behind and became a doctor, learnt to live with the loss of William. She moved on and built a life. He didn't. Which is why this was so much more difficult for her than it was for him. Always simple for our Mulder. *sighs, pets him*
I'm so glad Frank Spotnitz co-wrote it with Chris Carter. Because only the writer of Memento Mori could have worked the faith and religion theme with such complexity that it bordered on the squicky even for me. And it's always such a great way into the heart of Scully, to challenge her faith. I kept expecting Christian to turn out to be William and so there was always the ghost of William through the film which was prolly even more heartbreaking than if we actually saw him.
Oh hell no. If they had shown Scully and Mulder with ten year old William, I would have burst into tears right then and there ... argh, I'm tearing up even now. For fuck's sake. *flaps*
As it was, Mulder said something absolutely lovely about the emptiness in their hearts that I didn't quite catch because my brain was still with the "omgthey'reinbedtogether, OMIGOD THEY REALLY HAD SEX, omigodAMIACTUALLYSEEINGTHIS?!" No entry yet in the memorable quotes section on IMDB but I'll keep checking over the next week. And that moment when Mulder says "I've got a little something for that" and Scully goes "A little?!" and he replies so gravely "Thank you" totally cracked me up.
I'm rather glad we didn't get a sex scene. I like that there's much more tenderness between them than overt raunch. And them talking in bed about the toxicology report rang so so true, I always knew that's exactly how it would be! *lol* And Scully said exactly what I was thinking and in exactly the same tone as in my head, "Eee, scratchy beard!" Hee hee. *claps squeefully* And oh the absolutely wonderful subtlety of the script that they're talking the case as Mulder gets up to shave right there and then but there's no need to point it out. Awww Mulder, awww Spotnitz, awww Carter! *hugs the lot of youse*
Quietly amused too that they pretty much got together, broke up and got back together again in the space of the film. On one hand, it took a bit of the tension away to see them together. But then we've been waiting so damned long that most of me was just so happy for them, so happy to see them together. Even how they broke up made them like any other couple where one person changes and the other doesn't and that's why they can't be together. Oh, the angst, perfectly controlled and emoted just enough so we felt for them and that it fit right into the case, why she couldn't work it with him like he wanted, like he always wants. *sigh* Good stuff, man. Good stuff.
What really shocked and unnerved me was Billy Connolly's character. I mean, I knew he would be the Catholic priest which I found amusing enough seeing as how I'm fairly certain he's a rabid atheist. But then when it turned out Father Joe was a convicted pedophile, I got really upset on Billy's behalf and wondered what the fuck possessed him to take such a role. Took me a while to arrive at the realisation that if he's fine with it, I should be too. Still. *hugs Billy too*
Frankly, I did think that was a bit overkill, to have the psychic not only be a Catholic priest but a convicted pedophile too, a pederast specifically. But then they used it brilliantly in terms of Scully's own Catholicism and how time away from the job had made her more reactionary, less of the coolheaded cop we knew back then. Good god, when she laid into him, I totally recoiled with the startlement. Woah hey, Scully, hold on there! And of course how it panned out in the end with his connection to the killer made perfect sense. It was just a bit much at the start and I don't have quite as much faith in Carter as I do in Whedon. Which is only right.
What did make my eye twitch was that the bad guys only turned out to be gay and married to each other. O rly? What the fuck are you saying, Spotnitz and Carter? It makes me want to cast a suspicious eye over the nine seasons, wondering if there's a subtle or not so subtle thrusting of the heterosexual norm. I'd hate to think one of my favourite shows was so fucking puritanical.
Callum Keith Rennie looks an awful lot like Daniel Craig, doesn't he? There again, my eye spasmed a bit at the East European accents of the bad guys. And I'm fairly certain that is a trend from the show. I mean, yes, we do get the redneck white AngloSaxon depraved bad guys as one-offs but it's beginning to irk me that more often than not the morally corrupt are Russian or German or some other equally Cold War paranoid American stereotype. Makes me mutter "why can't we for once have an absolutely fiendish monster of a bad guy who is not Jewish, not European, not Asian, not Middle Eastern, some nice white AngloSaxon fuckwit and no, Charles Manson doesn't count!" *grumbles*
Woah, wait a second, how could I forget? Spender so totally was the nice white AngloSaxon morally corrupt bastard, wasn't he? Omigod. I take it all back. Mea culpa, mea culpa.
Other than that, there were about two lines by Scully that I wanted to rewrite. And I admit to being somewhat disappointed by the ultimate Frankenstein reveal. Not nearly clever or creepy enough as I expected from the guys who gave us Tooms and Donnie Pfaster and the fat sucking vampire guy. It was a bit crude, really. Perhaps if they had more time, they would have come up with something much more elegant and creepier.
But oh, the editing was unbelievably dizzying and so effective, the way they intercut between two simultaneous scenes, one no less with the rapid action sequence. Almost as overwhelming as the first half an hour or so of Serenity but without the rapid fire dialogue obviously. And that great darkness of the colours was back, the wonderful use of torch glow and that incredible contrast of vast vast ice, so painfully cold and bright.
The emotional resolution was a leetle heavyhanded with the repetition of "Don't give up", kinda almost made me want to break into a Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush chorus. But the use of sunlight on their lovely lovely kiss was so healing, so effective.
I was surprised at the stem cell thing, though. Certainly haven't been following the debate cos I was under the impression it's still a way taboo subject in America and possibly discussed more in Australia. Makes me curious as to whether Carter and Spotnitz were making a political point or just illustrating Scully's philosophy as a doctor and a mother. And of course there's a great ambiguity there, contrasting the risk and moral grey of stem cell therapy advocated by Scully against the barbaric Frankenstein transplant methods of the bad guy. Ah, grey's such a good texture for art.
Amanda Peet did rather well, I thought, always a frisson of attraction between her and Mulder. And there was definitely a moment where Scully picked up on it too. Hee hee. Billy was so touching at the end after being absolutely wonderful in the final altercation with Scully. Vaguely amused to see Nicki Aycox as the second victim with her hair all brown instead of the slutty blond I remember from Rave Macbeth. And me, I totally squeaked and bolted upright when Skinner showed up, loved how they brought him right out of the blue cos I had totally forgotten about him. Also, omigod with the homo!yay cradling of Mulder in Skinner's arms and the petting of the hair and the "It's okay, I've got you." Awwww guys! I miss Krycek so much, that rat bastard.
I totally spotted a bit of trivia. When Mulder tries to call Scully, the names on the display above her name are Bowman and Gilligan. Rob Bowman and Vince Gilligan! The two shots went past too quickly for me to read the name below hers but omg, squeeeee flail squee!
And some little voice in the back of my head made me stay back all the way through the credits just to see if there was a little bit at the very end. Which normally makes me so impatient and so bored but these credits were so clever and fascinating, totally my kind of art video installation Doug Aitken sort of wankery.
Because I honestly couldn't figure out what the fuck the wonderfully creepy textured black stuff was until it started cracking and shading to colour and then I realised we were going from black core ice thawing and changing til all melted into gorgeous rushing vital ocean and over land and onto the sunswept waters to Mulder in the rowboat with Scully in a bikini, doing exactly what he suggested and escaping to the light. Which omigod, works on so so many levels of awesome because I was really feeling the bleakness of all that winter ice and this healed it beautifully, the sense of journey, the sense of transforming nature. So when they looked up and waved, my happiness turned to total glee. Still grinning about it. Awww Mully and Sculder! *crashtackles wif love*
Absolutely fucking marvellous music. I totally want that soundtrack. Cos the X-Files theme remixed over the ending credits was wonderful with the added violin. It may have been an Unkle remix, I'm not sure. And the song was very interesting too. No idea who the vocalist was and the credit went by too fast for me to see. Getting old, these eyes. Dangit.
All in all, yeah, a very satisfying experience for a sentimental fan like me. There was soppy smiling all the way to the State Library, yes.
What we need to do now is get that Millennium movie made. Sign the petition! Oh Frank and Fox ... two of the best characters in television history.