x-files

Midnight Mulling Moldy Mulder

  • Reading time:3 mins read

The X-Files‘ time really is past. When I was in high school and college I adored it as I had never adored a piece of pop culture — except maybe the Sega Genesis. Between “Shapes” (the werewolf episode, and the first I saw) and the middle of season eight, I only missed two episodes on first broadcast. Then I just stopped, and have never made up the final season and a half. I really liked the first movie, and I’ve got the full set of action figures. Three Scullies, even, in two outfits! Yet I can’t even watch the original show now.

In tone and pacing and theme, the show is such a 1990s phenomenon. A product of the Clinton era (which the new movie seems to wink at), and an age just before people figured out how to write for television. Yes, it helped to bring this age on; that doesn’t make it part of it. And the new movie is an epilogue to the TV show. It’s shot the same way; it uses the same subtitles; it’s got the same ambling Chris Carter pace and tone and cluttered sense of theme to it.

It works as a movie; it works as an afterthought to the TV show. It is distinctly not a relaunch of the franchise. It’s tired, and it makes no attempt to be current or vital, or even to reach outside its core audience. It’s basically just saying goodbye, and wrapping up some character threads. After an hour and a half of genial if not particularly interesting story, the best part is hidden after the credits. In context especially, it alone is near worth the admission — provided you care for the characters.

I went to the 9:45 showing at the Grand Lake. They had free popcorn, and a balcony! And flirtatious concession stand women. I think there were three other people besides me, and none who stayed through the credits for the Cracker Jack prize. One of the ushers came in toward the end and sat in the rear corner; when it was over and I stood up, he bade me good night. And… it was 11:40 exactly. It’s a twenty-minute walk from the theater. I walked in silence. Though I had my mp3 player, midnight in Oakland is no time for clouded senses.

Quiet is never so loud as when there is no noise.

I think work is progressing…

4.09

  • Reading time:2 mins read

“I have the two qualities you require to see absolute truth. I am brilliant, and unloved”

That goes well with:

“I like old places. They make me sad.”
“What’s good about sad?”
“Sad is happy, for deep people.”

You know that early X-Files episode, called something like “Darkness Falls”? The one about the man-eating tree mites that live in the darkness — as it turns out, released when people cut down old-growth forest?

…

In other news, in the commentary, Davies, Moffat, and Tennant discuss at length the issue that the Doctor is in fact both written and performed as if he’s putting on a facade. Everything that he does is intended to be just a little disingenuous.

Which is interesting, as largely Eccleston at least tried to play the character “for real”. That sincerity is the fascinating thing about his Doctor.

They also talk about Troughton’s sending up his own performance in his later appearances, and how when he was in the role he was actually a bit scary. Really, they discuss a lot of interesting things.

I wasn’t absolutely convinced by last week’s episode. The conclusion is good, though. I could probably pick at a few things, but I’m not motivated. It is indeed packed full of self-consciously “cool stuff” — like the snapping. Dear Lord, is that ever exhibit A. Unlike Lawrence Miles, this does not bother me. Rather, it fills me with a Davies-like glee. I’m a sucker for self-conscious structural shenanigans, though.

Triangle

  • Reading time:1 mins read

That was the best episode of X which has ever aired, no exceptions made. Third episode of season six — the real-time, letterboxed Bermuda triangle episode with the peculiar phrase in place of “trust no one.”

“Scully… I love you.”

There were no flaws. One of the best storylines. Great gimmick, and executed perfectly. Exactly the right characters used, and in exactly the right way. The “real space” which the characters occupy, and how they interplay in real-time, was terrific to see. The most imaginative episode ever shot. This is the episode to show people who’ve never seen the show before. This and “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space,” if that’s indeed the title. . .and “Night,” assuming that’s the first-season tree mite episode which came the week after the werewolf one. Those two, I think, remain my other favorites, but this one tops the cake. I have no clue how they could top it.

Luma

  • Reading time:1 mins read

You can tell The X-Files is being filmed in California, now; it doesn’t look drizzly and Canadian anymore. Plus, the music is much more thematic than it has been in the past. Rather than re-re-re-reusing the same synthesized “creepy noise” cues, it’s much more like movie score.

Cinematic Interlude

  • Reading time:6 mins read

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.

“The End,” indeed.

  • Reading time:3 mins read

This is actually feeling quite satisfying and warm, somehow. The show’s not going to be the same anymore — you can see it. Actually, X was, theortically, supposed to be over with this episode — before they, a few months ago, renewed, deciding in the process to move from Vancouver to Hollywood.

With all of that which happened therein, this episode really effectively ended the show. In order for a movie to work, it would have to be much more fast-paced and millitant, as opposed to the cerebral hover the show’s always tended to have. With the X-files destroyed, Samantha’s file in Cancer Man’s hands, and the “truth” all narrowed down to that one boy, the series has suddenly become strongly focused. From two FBI agents just running around covering cases, it’s turned into Mulder and Scully alone vs. the world.

Without the X-files as a tangible quest, a safe retreat in the basement and a path to follow, the two of them are forced to stop dinkering around, hopping from place-to-place randomly, wasting time, slowly investigating everything they see just in case it might be important somehow. It’s like that phase is over, now — the burning of the files was more symbolic than anything, because they are now, as of this episode, effectively useless to them, the path to Mulder’s “truth” right in front of them, outside of the FBI building. The files hold more an emotional value than a physical need for the agents, and the burning again helps to push Mulder and Scully to the action needed for the next step; now they’re motivated. Their “home” has been destroyed.

Also nice how the relationships amongst the characters have been cleared up. Okay; so Krycheck (or however you spell him. . .now I know why people call him “ratboy”) is in league with the “big guys” again, and Cancer Man is now their hired gun. Skinner is no longer Mulder’s boss, per se, but a connection within the FBI. Etcetera.

This episode was really effective in those two ways; cleaning up the plotline and spelling out in simple detail the characters and their associations.

The last few minutes of the show were almost a prologue to the movie. . .I felt all tingly. All I could think, aside from what Mulder and Scully were obviously thinking as they stood there, was “jesus. This is. . .this. . .this is. . .it’s over.” The fact there was no preview for the next episode — and, frankly, the title of the episode itself — kind of made my throat seize up a little. . .even though I know the show will now continue for at least a while longer (albeit, likely, in completely different way).