The X-Files: Just like old times
Jul 25th, 2008 by Butter
Waffles and I went to see the new X-Files movie. It’s essentially a long stand-alone episode, set in the series’s present, with Mulder And Scully both separated from the Bureau: Mulder hermiting himself up in an old cabin somewhere and Scully doing the Lord’s work(?) in Our Lady of Dimly-lit Creepiness Hospital. Chris Carter, who directed and produced, has revived everything in the formula that made the more modest and self-contained of the episodes compelling: we have the romantic uncertainty between Mulder and Scully, the rustic, sleepy, small-town America backdrop for the investigation (this one in particular is a visual homage to Fargo), the likable but ultimately forgettable Other Cop/Agent who helps out but doesn’t know whether to Believe, the wishy-washy God blather that tugs on Scully’s soul (I could do without this, but it fits with Scully’s character, and it provides a logical motivation for her actions), and, most importantly, the prolonged ambiguity about the supernatural. In this latter respect the film evokes the mood and structure of some early episodes of the series, in that we never explicitly see anything that can only be explained by woo (there’s no CGI spaceships here); instead, the storytelling skirts gracefully on the edge of it and never ultimately tells us whether to take Mulder’s side or not.
In addition, and spoilers will follow…there’s the Bad Thing that the local weirdo-villains are doing. This time it’s Russian mad scientists doing some organ harvesting, up to and including head transplantation. It’s appropriate, I think, that for the blow-up to the big screen, instead of inventing something silly from whole cloth (like the Fluke-man, say), they used as a basis or inspiration (one assumes) the work of Vladimir Demikhov, a Russian scientist who, in the ’50s, attempted to learn about transplantation procedures by grafting the head and forelimbs of one dog on another dog. A video of the result is available on YouTube. (Be warned that a little piece of your soul may die if you click that link.) Apparently this is real, and it inspired another doctor to do partially successful monkey head transplants.
Two other great bits in the movie were Dubya’s new leitmotif (they’re kind of hamhanded about it, but it’s funny anyway), and the triumphal return of Assistant Director Skinner, whose appearance caused a cascade of applause at our midnight showing.
I flickered my eyes over the last two paragraphs, in order to avoid the spoilers, but I didn’t see a general yes/no of the movie, so I’ll ask: should I go and pay $8 and see it? I don’t like being disappointed; and while I give the X-Files a helluvah lot of leeway, I’ve heard mixed things, and it doesn’t have the trump card of Heath Ledger.
I watched the first six episodes of Californication, which is David Duchovny’s latest show that he stars in, and it mostly sucks.
If there’s even a few nerd references from this movie that will reward my love of the show then I’ll be satisfied. Since you’ve seen it then let me know by email or something.
Yes, absolutely you should! I probably should have been clearer: Those early stand-alone episodes, where we don’t have CGI aliens or things exploding, and which the film successfully evokes, are the ones I really like. That ambiguity about whether anything supernatural actually happens is something I consider a plus for an X-Files episode; the script and the visuals have to be disciplined to pull it off, and here they succeed. There are a few moments where they almost walk off the path—the Proverbs 25:2 moment, for instance (you’ll see)—but overall the events could be explained either way. Also, the Creepy Bad Thing that the Bad Guys are doing (I think you’ll like my links about it when you’re at liberty to read those paragraphs you skipped) is remarkably plausible—certainly much more so than some of the Monster/Cult of the Week stories they’ve done. (I’m thinking Satanic high school faculty, for example. Though that episode was otherwise fun, and had Dan Butler.)
And we have a slight furthering of the Mulder-Scully romance, with a significant look at why Scully feels how she does about it.
K. Sounds good, I’ll see it this week. Really; I should have you preview my movie inclinations more often–if it pasts your muster then I’m almost sure to like it.
To the theater!