X-Files: Fight the Future

“He is but one man. One Man alone cannot fight the future.”

I don’t always like quotes that shamelessly use the movie’s title. I recently re-watched Roger Moore’s last turn as Bond in View to a Kill for my podcast, and we all had a laugh when Christopher Walken and Grace Jones had this delightful exchange:

Jones: Wow. What a view.

Walken: … To a Kill!

I’ll give the original X-Files movie a pass because it worked on a couple levels. For one, everyone just called it “The X-Files movie,” anyway, and it’s entirely possible that they stuck the subtitle on after they wrote the script and it was just a cool line… To a kill!

The other reason the line works is because they kind of were fighting the future. It was 1998, and while the show had been on for five seasons, and was very popular, people didn’t really make movies from TV shows that were currently running. Perhaps the Dawson’s Creek movie (The Wraith of Pacey!) would have made millions, but I guess we’ll never know.

Show creator Chris Carter wanted to communicate the mythology of the show on a larger scale, which meant a feature film, but he also wanted to tell a story that would entertain fans and non-fans alike. I’m sure the studio thought that was great, too, because it would sell more tickets. I remember seeing it with my brother, who was one of those non-fans, to test if people who didn’t watch the show would like it. He said he did, but he likes everything, so who knows?

It was an interesting idea, because the movie wasn’t just a longer episode of the show. Events happened that would change the direction of future episodes, or at least, call into question some of the elements (Basically, “Does Scully believe in this shit now?”) But they could have just as easily done a longer episode of the show, because The X-Files frequently aired episodes that some back then referred to as “Monster of the Week” episodes, which had nothing to do with the show’s mythology but were great character pieces for Mulder and Scully and their colleagues. Looking back, the MOW episodes are actually some of my favorites (Check out “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” for a good time.) It’s not something you really see anymore, since most series that stream have seasons that are 8-10 episodes long. There’s not a lot of time for fun, character-building. No wonder it took me so long to get into Game of Thrones. There’s a billion people on it and, except for Peter Dinklage, they all kind of look the same.

That’s another cool thing about The X-Files, though; there were only two main characters, so you didn’t need Wikipedia open to figure out who was who (Also, there was no such thing back then.) Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) was The Believer: he was pretty sure his sister had been abducted by aliens when they were kids, and was on a quest to find her. His quest led him to join the FBI, and since he had solved some high-profile cases, he was given his wish to open his own department: The X-Files, whose job it was to investigate the unsolved and unexplainable cases that came alone. Special Agent Dana Scully (the great Gillian Anderson), MD and skeptic, was assigned to The X-Files to essentially debunk Mulder’s work and solve the unsolved cases through logic. In a lot of episodes, she had lines like,“Mulder, that’s not a wolf-man. He just has a rare skin condition and grows a lot of hair and sharpens his teeth.” And then something would happen that would make it ambiguous if guy really was a werewolf.

But the movie was different. First of all, the X-Files had been closed at the end of the previous season, and Mulder and Scully were basic FBI agents (I know. How pedantic.) However, as they had always done, the two agents endeavor to unravel a mystery of wild, experimental bees and some missing firemen (or are they abductees? Ok, they are. I thought I would be cryptic.) Turns out the missing people’s bodies are basically being used as cocoons to grow alien life forms (ALF?) in. And obviously, there are rogue government agencies at work trying to stop Mulder and Scully. You all remember the Cigarette-Smoking Man, right? (Can people even smoke on TV anymore?)

Scully is basically doing all this as a favor to Mulder because, with the X-Files shuttered, she feels like she has been fighting an uphill battle for years and wants to go back to just saving lives in medicine. Unfortunately, she is stung by one of those bees and abducted. And just before she and Mulder were actually going to kiss! In case you weren’t a fan, Mulder and Scully rivaled Ross and Rachel at the time on the “Will They or Won’t They” scale. And since Ross was such a putz, this one was way more compelling.

Mulder, with a little help from his friends and even rogue-r government agents, finds out she and the other abductees have been taken to Antarctica, so he goes to rescue her, armed with a vaccine that will cure her. He finds her in a giant chamber with hundreds of others who have been infected, and because it’s a sci-fi movie, injecting her with the vaccine causes a chain reaction that causes the whole place to start shaking. Mulder carries her outside, and as they begin to run away, the ground beneath them lifts, and they fall along with the ice and snow to the actual ground. As they lay in the snow, exhausted, the giant space ship that they were just in takes off, and Scully actually sees it. Proof that aliens exist! Or maybe it was just those pesky government agents.

Scully is then seen giving a testimony of her ordeal, and the committee before her concludes that without concrete evidence, the FBI can’t investigate further. Scully hands them a vial containing the bee that stung her, and tells them,

“I don’t believe the FBI currently has an investigative unit qualified to pursue the evidence in hand.”

She then goes outside to tell Mulder that she’s back, and it’s basically on to season six. It’s so perfect because, here she was, about to quit the FBI entirely, and now she’s all-in. And the show must go on. Until David Duchovny decided he didn’t want to do it anymore. Even though the show continued for a couple more seasons and there was another movie and then a revival a few years ago, I pretty much call that the end. The network brought in Robert Patrick to be the new star, but not too many shows can creatively survive the exodus of one of the main characters. Maybe they would have been better off if they went the Star Trek route and just did movies.

I believe they would have, because despite what I said about this movie not simply being a long-ass episode of the show, it definitely felt like one, but in a good way. The dialogue and characterization were spot on, despite the creators best efforts to also make the movie accessible to people who have never watched the show. I thought they did a good job, but a funny thing happened after the movie was released. I did some Googling, and the AI overview said season 5 (pre-movie) “was the highest-rated in the show’s history,” averaging 19.8 million viewers per episode, which is pretty amazing. I know it was a different time, but just by comparison, Sunday Night Football last week pulled 23.87 million viewers, and NFL games are considered ratings juggernauts. Meanwhile, Alien: Earth averages 589,000 viewers per episode, and that’s a pretty successful show. Point is, even for 1998, The X-Files was doing pretty well.

However, season 6 of the show saw the average ratings drop to 16.9 million viewers per episode, and according to Google, it began a downward trend for the rest of the series. Now this is AI talking, and Mulder probably wouldn’t cotton to this, but this is what I have to work with:

Season 6 received mixed reactions from fans and critics due to a shift towards a more humorous and lighthearted “monster-of-the-week” format after the production move to Los Angeles. Some episodes, such as “Triangle,” were highly acclaimed, while others were criticized for being too comedic or generic.

Earlier I said that the standalone, MOW episodes were some of my favorites, but I have to agree with Google and wherever they got this information from that moving the production of the show to Los Angeles was the beginning of the end. Obviously, that didn’t have anything to do with the movie, but the whole vibe was different, and it honestly felt like a completely different show. But that’s probably the reason that they didn’t make another movie for another ten years.

Still, I’m glad we got this one, as I have fond memories of seeing it, and watching the show. I know they are streaming now, and maybe some day when I’m retired I’ll watch the series again, but for now, I like to keep it in its time. People toss words like “groundbreaking” and “revolutionary” around a lot, but I think it fits The X-Files. Basically every police or medical procedural show borrows from it, and doesn’t do it nearly as well. I was also the perfect age to enjoy it when it was on, and like Mulder, I cannot fight the future. But I can revel in the past.

Thanks for reading as always. Be sure to check out my other stuff, including my comic and printify shirts on my ebay page. If that’s too much, toss me a buck on Buy me a Coffee. The holidays are coming!

Excelsior!