The truth certainly is “out there.” What a strange movie.
I need to locate Mark Snow’s score album. I want to listen to some of that again.
I think I’d have to watch the movie a second time for it all to sink in completely.
I’d give it a thumb and an eyebrow up.
A lot darker than I’d expected it to be. I’m surprised it got only a pg-13 rating.
Later:
All right — a more complete analysis. . .
Fight the Future is. . .well, dark. It’s much rawer, scarier, and more bombastic than the show ever has been. It’s good, but a little confusing and. . .strange. I’ll have to watch it again before it completely sinks in, I believe. I’d give it about 3.75 stars (out of five, o’ course), based on this one viewing. It starts out slowly, but after the first twenty minutes or so it picks up and becomes more engaging than I recall the series has ever been at any individual moment. After all that, the end drags on a little.
The big problem was really that everything seemed much more bleak than the actual show. The program is very character-based, and oftentimes is very light and warm. The movie kind of pushes the audience back away a little.
Also, the guy who plays the “other” main character in Millenium — not Frank Black, but the bald guy — is a minor-but-pivotal character near the beginning. This is very strange, seeing as how both shows take place in the same “universe,” and there have been a few cross-overs here-and-there. One reviewer described the casting of that guy as a notable figure other than the character he actually plays in his show as “distracting,” and that’s exactly the way I’d describe it as well.
The music was great. There’s one scene in the middle of the film where Mulder and Scully’re chasing down a couple of tanker trucks and, unexpectedly, a creepy, powerful variation on the X-theme comes up
Actually, the tone of Millenium — that much more violent, dark atmosphere (which disturbs me a little too much) is pretty much what the movie has, rather than the “safer” bleakness the X-files has always had as a contrast.
I want to locate Mark Snow’s score cd next time I’m in town. There were a couple other great things (though the music, I noticed, was almost subliminal. It was dubbed really very low in the mix) I noticed which I don’t individually recall at this moment.
As long as one goes into the movie with patience and is forewarned that the tone is a little uncomfortable, the thing will be great. I didn’t really know what to expect at all, and, of course, this being the X-files, anything I might have expected or anticipated didn’t take place or wasn’t done exactly as I thought it would be. Even just the editing of the thing — I’ll mention this, because it won’t detract from anything. . .
The title sequence — there really wasn’t one. Normally these days the credits last for about five or ten minutes, it seems. . .and even in the show, actually. I swear — the credits keep appearing at the bottom, even fifteen minutes into the program! Yeek. Here, however, the new X-logo just gradually forms and the six notes of melody are played exactly once, kind of trailing off. Then everything fades into the first scene. That’s it. Just a neat computer animation of the X-files logo and “twoo-twee-twih-too-twee-twooo. . .” and a scene fade. But at the end — me-yimminy. The Ending credits last for half an hour, it seems. There must be sixty pages of special-effects personnel. . .
It isn’t really until about when Martin Landau steps in that the movie starts to become involving. Until then, it’s just kind of a long setup (which tried my patience just a little, but, this being the first movie, I know it was needed for anyone who doesn’t watch the show as much as I do; thusly, I forgive the thing).
If the series didn’t exist, the movie could stand on its own devoid of that context — but in so doing, which is how I was kind of trying to watch it, it becomes an intrestingly complicated and bizarre film — something which would attract a cult following, for sure, but which would completely elude the mundane viewer, just from its strange, experimental-seeming nature.
That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to put my finger on — It seems very much like an “experimental” flick, like Citizen Kane (just to give an example of the unconventionality rather than precisely the quality) or something. It’s like a Jimi Hendrix album or Nine Inch Nails back before they became accepted and copied as much as they were. It’s hard to put a finger on whether it’s pleasing or not, because it’s so. . .well, unusual, and while obviously very well-done it has an unpolished, disorienting quality.
That’s a good thing, now that I think about it — it’s not a typical American Movie. Pretty much everything pumped out of the film factories over here is easilly classifiable and shiny and impressive, and then, every now-and-then, something strange crawls out which feels more like a single person’s idea which somehow made it through the system without being shined up. This film would definitely fit that description. As big as the show’s become, it still seems small and self-centered — Fox tried to screw with it early on, but eventually they just learned they wouldn’t get anywhere and, the thing being popular enough, just to leave the thing alone and let it run itself the way it wanted. The movie is exactly the same way — it’s not something a studio put out; it’s a project a small group worked on because they wanted to. It feels like an independant film.
It’s taken until just now for me to completely make up my mind about the movie. I wanted to like it, and I did to some extent, but something really bugged me and eluded my grasp. I’m satisfied now.