completely unspoilery title about the X-Files movie
1. Completely unspoilery preamble to the fact that I have watched the X-Files movie. A serious review follows - I actually do write reviews for films, though I'm about fifteen films behind on my total right now (urk, never going to catch up), but as you can tell from my backlog, I'm out of practice. This took me ages. But anyway, I wrote my 'serious', objective review for this first, which is actually rather unspoilery, so you can read it if you want to risk it...
2. AND THEN OF COURSE THERE IS ALSO SOME FLAILAGE. Which I will mark off with a huge honking warning, because obviously there be spoilers at THIS point.
3. BTW. Stay through the end of the rather random credits, okay, guys?
4. OMG OMG OMG. US FOLKS. ENJOY THE MOVIE.
5. Review beneath the cut, because people who don't cut are made of epic fail:
Serious review:
It's been years - six, to be precise - since The X-Files went quietly into the night with a ninth season that was, frankly, a confusing and disappointing finale for a show that had otherwise been truly groundbreaking in redefining just where serialised television could bring its audience. At its best, the TV series set the world alight when it exploded onto TV screens in 1993, reflecting or perhaps, more accurately, creating a demand for smart, dark drama that questioned everything from religion to science and faith and belief. But that was then, and this is now - and the world is at least fifteen years older and more jaded. Aside from the legion of loyal fans the show has cultivated over the years, is there really a need to revisit the adventures of intrepid FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully? Where can a story that already ended go, and can it please old fans while attracting new ones?
Series creator and director Chris Carter's answer is simple - unlike the first XF movie, Fight The Future, which unusually and (more or less) successfully served as a narrative bridge between the fifth and sixth seasons of the television series, I Want To Believe dispenses with the baggage of all that deeply troubling and completely nonsensical alien backstory to tell a creepy standalone tale in the grand tradition of some of the show's best episodes. It's an ambitious project, to say the least: for, on top of the hunt for the literal monsters in the night are added the ones that are haunting Mulder and Scully now, in their work (or lack thereof) and in their lives and in their relationship. Unfortunately, Carter's gambit doesn't quite pay off as I suspect he hopes it would - what he has created here is a mediocre, at best good, extended episode of the show, one which soldiers on in a reasonably entertaining fashion but doesn't even begin to approximate the brilliance of the series at its absolute peak. But more on this later.
Six years later, and we open on an FBI manhunt in the driving, icy snow - as two agents, Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Drummy (Xzibit), trail after Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly), a fallen priest excommunicated from the Catholic church who claims to have picked up psychic clues to the whereabouts of a kidnapped FBI agent. The not quite disbelieving Whitney, faced with Father Joe's uncanny but suspicious ability to find severed body parts that have nothing or maybe everything to do with the growing spate of abductions, decides to rehabilitate the disgraced Mulder (David Duchovny) and get his help on the case. This, of course, means that the reluctant Scully (Gillian Anderson) finds herself increasingly distracted from her duties as a physician at a local hospital to again question her faith and her commitment to Mulder as he embarks on another quest for a truth he still wants to believe is out there. Can she follow him, again, into the darkness that he clearly misses - into a world of shifting morals and far too human monsters she had hoped she could leave behind?
I've kept my description of the plot deliberately vague, because one of the joys of this movie is to have it unfold around you in its rather creepy splendour. I still stand by my assessment that the film's plot is very far from its strong point - there have been far more terrifying monsters and far better ways of examining crucial themes in the XF canon. And without a doubt it feels rather as if Carter and co-writer Frank Spotnitz came up with a checklist of "everything that is classic-X-Filey" and tried to create a plot out of THAT: from a doubtful psychic source who challenges Scully's beliefs while reaffirming Mulder's, through to a monster tale that turns out to be all the scarier for the fact that it involves humans rather than genuine creatures of the night, etc. But there's something to be said for the squick factor in this: when you realise just what kind of awful enterprise the FBI has stumbled upon in its quest to rescue one of its own, there are schlocky B-horror movie moments as gasp-inducing as any on the series. With surprise deaths and foot chases and severed body parts littered across the film's landscape, you might not be scintillated at every point of this film, but there's definitely enough to keep IWtB bubbling along at a nice boil until it reaches its climax.
The film's strongest point - and selling point - is its cast. Looking only a little bit the worse for six years of wear, Duchovny and Anderson continue to prove in this film that they have some of the most combustible chemistry of any onscreen couple ever. They trade banter with the same familiar, charming spark as they had throughout the television series, and make real people out of characters who could easily be paper-thin stereotypes, especially in a movie that needs to explain - succinctly - to a new audience backstories that have built up over nine years and hundreds of hours of television. They are onscreen at the same time far less than I would like, but when they are together, you are convinced somewhat of the movie's merits in placing their relationship as close to front-and-centre as it can without sacrificing its focus on the mystery at the core of its plot. That some of the writing is hackneyed and character motivation lost in the shuffle doesn't seem to matter so much when, with little more than a touch or a shared glance, Duchovny and Anderson hint at a wealth of emotions and possibilities that the script fails to fix into place for either of their characters.
Connolly, meanwhile, easily comes off as the best of the new cast members drafted into the movie. His Father Joe is, technically, a stock X-Files character, the kind that pops up to throw a few doubts about her faith into the resolutely skeptical Skully's face. To be sure, Father Joe doesn't impress or scandalise quite the way more original incarnations of this character have - one that springs to mind would be the stalkery Philip Padgett from a Season 6 episode, Milagro. But Connolly somehow manages to make Father Joe a conflicted bundle of emotions and faith and sin, as flawed as he is hopeful that his regret for his past wrongs can redeem him.
So, in the final analysis, what do we have here? Sadly, if this movie is anything to go by, the X-Files franchise is highly unlikely to set the world aflame or capture the public imagination in quite the same way as it did some fifteen years ago. What we have is a good, not great, not bad, extended episode of the show - encumbered by a plot that falls a little flat in comparison to what has preceded it in the superior television series, IWtB will have to be remembered for the great chemistry between its leading man and lady. Unlike with FtF, X-Files virgins will not be confused, though they might be bored at points. Diehard fans, on the other hand - well, at least there are in-jokes aplenty (pencils in the ceiling, anyone?) and that all-consuming central relationship to focus on... two things that have always rescued even the most mediocre of episodes in the series from fandom oblivion.
~~~~~
SPOILERS WILL ENSUE BELOW THIS GORGEOUS PICTURE OF GILLIAN ANDERSON. RUN AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED.
- TOTALLY FLAILY CAPSLOCKAGE: OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. THEY MADE US THINK THEY WEREN'T TOGETHER. WHAT WAS ALL THAT CRAP ABOUT MULDER BEING IN ISOLATION AND THAT AWFUL BEARD AND WTF. AND THEN THERE WAS THAT GORGEOUS SCENE WHEN SCULLY IS IN BED AND MULDER IS TALKING TO HER AND THEN HE SPOONS UP AND OMG. SPOONING. AND HE TELLS HER TO GO TO SLEEP AND LET HIM WORRY FOR THEM, BASICALLY. WTF. WTF IS THAT AWESOME.
- AND WTF IS THAT LAST SCENE BETWEEN THEM. THAT LAST SCENE OF FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE GORGEOUS WHEN THERE IS FINALLY A KISS AND SUCH A BEAUTIFUL ONE TOO, AND OMG HE SAYS HE'LL TAKE HER AWAY IF SHE NEEDS IT. BECAUSE HAI, THAT'S TOTES WHAT HE DOES AT THE END OF THE CREDITS OF INCREDIBLE RANDOM, Y/Y?!
- MY HEART STOPPED, FOR SERIOUS, THE MOMENT I SAW THEM ONSCREEN AT THE SAME TIME FOR THE FIRST TIME. IT WAS INCREDIBLE.
- I LOVED IT, FUCKING LOVED IT, THAT WE GOT KICKASS!SCULLY. SHE SAVED MULDER. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES. SCULLY WAS A KICKASS MOTHERFUCKER, AS WE ALL KNOW SHE IS AND CAN BE BUT ISN'T WHEN THEY MAKE HER WIMPY AND ALL VICTIMY, AND TOTES PWNED CREEPY "I WILL SAVE YOUR BOOODY" ORGAN TRANSPLANT DUDE.
- DUDE. SCULLY FREAKING SAID THAT THE REASON SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH MULDER WAS HIS DETERMINATION. THE PHRASE 'FELL IN LOVE' WAS USED. BY AGENT DANA SCULLY. FOR THIS ALONE I HAVE TO WATCH THE MOVIE AGAIN. ASKJDLAJSLJDALDJASLDALS.
- DID I MENTION SPOONING? THERE WAS SPOONAGE, KTHX.
- AND OMG. THAT SCENE IN THE LOCKER ROOM WHEN SCULLY SAID SHE WOULDN'T BE GOING HOME. WTF. A BIT RANDOMLY WRITTEN BUT GILLIAN MADE IT WORK, AND SHE SAID, 'WE'RE PEOPLE WHO COME HOME NOW, AT THE END OF THE DAY'. AND MY GOD, IT WAS KIND OF SAD, BECAUSE THAT'S ALWAYS WHAT SCULLY WANTED, YOU KNOW? BUT MULDER DIDN'T. AND I KIND OF LIKE HOW HE GAVE IT TO HER IN THE END. WITH THAT TOTALLY RANDOM OVERHEAD SHOT OF THEM IN A BOAT IN THEIR SWIMSUITS.
- SWIMSUITS. GOOD TIMES. SEXY TIMES. SEXY SEXY TIMES.
- SO YEAH. I THOUGHT THE MOVIE WAS OKAY AND THE PLOT WAS KIND OF NOT QUITE AWFUL. BUT I THOUGHT THE SHIP WAS OMFG-AHMAZING SO I HAVE TO WATCH IT AGAIN, JUST FOR ALL THIS AWESOME.
- AND AGAIN, AFTER SIX YEARS, I GET TO SAY: GILLIAN ANDERSON. WHY ARE YOU SO FUCKING GORGEOUS. ALSO, YOU'RE SO TALENTED. *FLAILS*
- DD WAS NOT BAD EITHER. ;)
6. I do think I actually need to see this movie again. When I will do it is beyond me. But I will try. Harrumph.
2. AND THEN OF COURSE THERE IS ALSO SOME FLAILAGE. Which I will mark off with a huge honking warning, because obviously there be spoilers at THIS point.
3. BTW. Stay through the end of the rather random credits, okay, guys?
4. OMG OMG OMG. US FOLKS. ENJOY THE MOVIE.
5. Review beneath the cut, because people who don't cut are made of epic fail:
Serious review:
It's been years - six, to be precise - since The X-Files went quietly into the night with a ninth season that was, frankly, a confusing and disappointing finale for a show that had otherwise been truly groundbreaking in redefining just where serialised television could bring its audience. At its best, the TV series set the world alight when it exploded onto TV screens in 1993, reflecting or perhaps, more accurately, creating a demand for smart, dark drama that questioned everything from religion to science and faith and belief. But that was then, and this is now - and the world is at least fifteen years older and more jaded. Aside from the legion of loyal fans the show has cultivated over the years, is there really a need to revisit the adventures of intrepid FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully? Where can a story that already ended go, and can it please old fans while attracting new ones?
Series creator and director Chris Carter's answer is simple - unlike the first XF movie, Fight The Future, which unusually and (more or less) successfully served as a narrative bridge between the fifth and sixth seasons of the television series, I Want To Believe dispenses with the baggage of all that deeply troubling and completely nonsensical alien backstory to tell a creepy standalone tale in the grand tradition of some of the show's best episodes. It's an ambitious project, to say the least: for, on top of the hunt for the literal monsters in the night are added the ones that are haunting Mulder and Scully now, in their work (or lack thereof) and in their lives and in their relationship. Unfortunately, Carter's gambit doesn't quite pay off as I suspect he hopes it would - what he has created here is a mediocre, at best good, extended episode of the show, one which soldiers on in a reasonably entertaining fashion but doesn't even begin to approximate the brilliance of the series at its absolute peak. But more on this later.
Six years later, and we open on an FBI manhunt in the driving, icy snow - as two agents, Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Drummy (Xzibit), trail after Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly), a fallen priest excommunicated from the Catholic church who claims to have picked up psychic clues to the whereabouts of a kidnapped FBI agent. The not quite disbelieving Whitney, faced with Father Joe's uncanny but suspicious ability to find severed body parts that have nothing or maybe everything to do with the growing spate of abductions, decides to rehabilitate the disgraced Mulder (David Duchovny) and get his help on the case. This, of course, means that the reluctant Scully (Gillian Anderson) finds herself increasingly distracted from her duties as a physician at a local hospital to again question her faith and her commitment to Mulder as he embarks on another quest for a truth he still wants to believe is out there. Can she follow him, again, into the darkness that he clearly misses - into a world of shifting morals and far too human monsters she had hoped she could leave behind?
I've kept my description of the plot deliberately vague, because one of the joys of this movie is to have it unfold around you in its rather creepy splendour. I still stand by my assessment that the film's plot is very far from its strong point - there have been far more terrifying monsters and far better ways of examining crucial themes in the XF canon. And without a doubt it feels rather as if Carter and co-writer Frank Spotnitz came up with a checklist of "everything that is classic-X-Filey" and tried to create a plot out of THAT: from a doubtful psychic source who challenges Scully's beliefs while reaffirming Mulder's, through to a monster tale that turns out to be all the scarier for the fact that it involves humans rather than genuine creatures of the night, etc. But there's something to be said for the squick factor in this: when you realise just what kind of awful enterprise the FBI has stumbled upon in its quest to rescue one of its own, there are schlocky B-horror movie moments as gasp-inducing as any on the series. With surprise deaths and foot chases and severed body parts littered across the film's landscape, you might not be scintillated at every point of this film, but there's definitely enough to keep IWtB bubbling along at a nice boil until it reaches its climax.
The film's strongest point - and selling point - is its cast. Looking only a little bit the worse for six years of wear, Duchovny and Anderson continue to prove in this film that they have some of the most combustible chemistry of any onscreen couple ever. They trade banter with the same familiar, charming spark as they had throughout the television series, and make real people out of characters who could easily be paper-thin stereotypes, especially in a movie that needs to explain - succinctly - to a new audience backstories that have built up over nine years and hundreds of hours of television. They are onscreen at the same time far less than I would like, but when they are together, you are convinced somewhat of the movie's merits in placing their relationship as close to front-and-centre as it can without sacrificing its focus on the mystery at the core of its plot. That some of the writing is hackneyed and character motivation lost in the shuffle doesn't seem to matter so much when, with little more than a touch or a shared glance, Duchovny and Anderson hint at a wealth of emotions and possibilities that the script fails to fix into place for either of their characters.
Connolly, meanwhile, easily comes off as the best of the new cast members drafted into the movie. His Father Joe is, technically, a stock X-Files character, the kind that pops up to throw a few doubts about her faith into the resolutely skeptical Skully's face. To be sure, Father Joe doesn't impress or scandalise quite the way more original incarnations of this character have - one that springs to mind would be the stalkery Philip Padgett from a Season 6 episode, Milagro. But Connolly somehow manages to make Father Joe a conflicted bundle of emotions and faith and sin, as flawed as he is hopeful that his regret for his past wrongs can redeem him.
So, in the final analysis, what do we have here? Sadly, if this movie is anything to go by, the X-Files franchise is highly unlikely to set the world aflame or capture the public imagination in quite the same way as it did some fifteen years ago. What we have is a good, not great, not bad, extended episode of the show - encumbered by a plot that falls a little flat in comparison to what has preceded it in the superior television series, IWtB will have to be remembered for the great chemistry between its leading man and lady. Unlike with FtF, X-Files virgins will not be confused, though they might be bored at points. Diehard fans, on the other hand - well, at least there are in-jokes aplenty (pencils in the ceiling, anyone?) and that all-consuming central relationship to focus on... two things that have always rescued even the most mediocre of episodes in the series from fandom oblivion.
~~~~~
SPOILERS WILL ENSUE BELOW THIS GORGEOUS PICTURE OF GILLIAN ANDERSON. RUN AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED.
- TOTALLY FLAILY CAPSLOCKAGE: OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. THEY MADE US THINK THEY WEREN'T TOGETHER. WHAT WAS ALL THAT CRAP ABOUT MULDER BEING IN ISOLATION AND THAT AWFUL BEARD AND WTF. AND THEN THERE WAS THAT GORGEOUS SCENE WHEN SCULLY IS IN BED AND MULDER IS TALKING TO HER AND THEN HE SPOONS UP AND OMG. SPOONING. AND HE TELLS HER TO GO TO SLEEP AND LET HIM WORRY FOR THEM, BASICALLY. WTF. WTF IS THAT AWESOME.
- AND WTF IS THAT LAST SCENE BETWEEN THEM. THAT LAST SCENE OF FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE GORGEOUS WHEN THERE IS FINALLY A KISS AND SUCH A BEAUTIFUL ONE TOO, AND OMG HE SAYS HE'LL TAKE HER AWAY IF SHE NEEDS IT. BECAUSE HAI, THAT'S TOTES WHAT HE DOES AT THE END OF THE CREDITS OF INCREDIBLE RANDOM, Y/Y?!
- MY HEART STOPPED, FOR SERIOUS, THE MOMENT I SAW THEM ONSCREEN AT THE SAME TIME FOR THE FIRST TIME. IT WAS INCREDIBLE.
- I LOVED IT, FUCKING LOVED IT, THAT WE GOT KICKASS!SCULLY. SHE SAVED MULDER. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES. SCULLY WAS A KICKASS MOTHERFUCKER, AS WE ALL KNOW SHE IS AND CAN BE BUT ISN'T WHEN THEY MAKE HER WIMPY AND ALL VICTIMY, AND TOTES PWNED CREEPY "I WILL SAVE YOUR BOOODY" ORGAN TRANSPLANT DUDE.
- DUDE. SCULLY FREAKING SAID THAT THE REASON SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH MULDER WAS HIS DETERMINATION. THE PHRASE 'FELL IN LOVE' WAS USED. BY AGENT DANA SCULLY. FOR THIS ALONE I HAVE TO WATCH THE MOVIE AGAIN. ASKJDLAJSLJDALDJASLDALS.
- DID I MENTION SPOONING? THERE WAS SPOONAGE, KTHX.
- AND OMG. THAT SCENE IN THE LOCKER ROOM WHEN SCULLY SAID SHE WOULDN'T BE GOING HOME. WTF. A BIT RANDOMLY WRITTEN BUT GILLIAN MADE IT WORK, AND SHE SAID, 'WE'RE PEOPLE WHO COME HOME NOW, AT THE END OF THE DAY'. AND MY GOD, IT WAS KIND OF SAD, BECAUSE THAT'S ALWAYS WHAT SCULLY WANTED, YOU KNOW? BUT MULDER DIDN'T. AND I KIND OF LIKE HOW HE GAVE IT TO HER IN THE END. WITH THAT TOTALLY RANDOM OVERHEAD SHOT OF THEM IN A BOAT IN THEIR SWIMSUITS.
- SWIMSUITS. GOOD TIMES. SEXY TIMES. SEXY SEXY TIMES.
- SO YEAH. I THOUGHT THE MOVIE WAS OKAY AND THE PLOT WAS KIND OF NOT QUITE AWFUL. BUT I THOUGHT THE SHIP WAS OMFG-AHMAZING SO I HAVE TO WATCH IT AGAIN, JUST FOR ALL THIS AWESOME.
- AND AGAIN, AFTER SIX YEARS, I GET TO SAY: GILLIAN ANDERSON. WHY ARE YOU SO FUCKING GORGEOUS. ALSO, YOU'RE SO TALENTED. *FLAILS*
- DD WAS NOT BAD EITHER. ;)
6. I do think I actually need to see this movie again. When I will do it is beyond me. But I will try. Harrumph.