First off, yes, I am an X-Files fan. Well, the first seven seasons, anyway. And I think Chris Carter is a pretty talented guy. But why anyone would think it was a good idea to continue a show when the main character, the driving force of the show, decides to leave? I mean, really, did anyone stick around after the first half of the first season without Mulder? Not many.
I loved pretty much all of the episodes. I especially liked the ones that pertained to the whole continuing plot about the aliens and the conspiracy and such. But I liked the stand alone episodes, too. They were so well written.
Ok, I’ll say right now that there will be a minor spoiler here; nothing about the end of this film, but only in general. And here it is: if you go to see this X-Files movie, you will not see anything about the big alien conspiracy plot. At all. Zip. This movie is more like one of the stand alone episodes of the show.
I read that Chris Carter, the creator of X-Files (which you should know if you call yourself a nerd, and if you don’t know then you must live in a box under the freeway. Hey, how are you reading this?), wanted to make this movie for this “whole new generation of X-Files fans” as well as the long-time fans. Well, I got news for you Carter, if you were trying to satisfy your long-time fans, like me, this is probably not the movie you should have made. It’s great for people that have little knowledge of these characters and only a general idea about what they do, but people like me are going to be left feeling a little short changed.
The way I see it is if the future of X-Files is going to be limited to only the occasional film, then you better give me some meaty story involving the overall alien story line. That’s what I think we hardcore fans want. That seems to be all we’re going to have time for, apparently. If you only make an X-File movie every five years, you really don’t have enough time to get into and wrap up that story. I don’t see them making more than say, three, maybe four of these, tops. I’m just saying.
However, that being said, as a stand alone X-Files story, it isn’t bad. Mulder and Scully are a couple, living together. She’s a doctor at a Catholic hospital, he’s just kinda holed up in the house a fugitive from the FBI. He’s doing his thing cutting out newspaper clippings of weird phenomena and cultivating a beard that says “I don’t get out enough”. The FBI come looking for him through Scully because they have a case of a missing agent and a psychic is helping them look. They need the kind of help only Mulder can give them. Ok, it’s a little flimsy, but I’m a fan.
They manage to throw in a bit of humor, once at George Bush’s expense. And I laughed. There’s also some timely references to stem cell research and same-sex marriage, the last of which was pretty random.
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are great. They know these characters so well now that they slip into them like your favorite pair of slippers. Amanda Peet is good, too, as the agent in charge of the investigation. And I always tend to like Billy Connelly in anything. Here he’s the psychic priest who also happens to be a convicted pedophile. Yeah, that might be a bit much, too. But in the context of the script, in makes sense. We even get an appearance by our old pal, Skinner. What I want to know is, where the Hell are the Lone Gunmen? (Editor’s Note: Fellow Film Nerd Dean Haglund had that exact same question.) I loved those guys. It’s like with the Star Trek movies never once using “Q”. Why the Hell wouldn’t you put one of the best characters in the Trek universe in one of the movies?
Nevertheless, this really does have much the things you need and expect in an X-Files episode. It’s just that it seems like a long way to get to what might’ve been done in 60 minutes instead of almost two hours.
The truth is out there, but let’s get to it, shall we?
— Neil T. Weakley wants to believe…there will be another, better, X-Files movie.
