The X-Files, le film : Combattre le futur

Originally known simply as "The X-Files" but now as "The X-Files: Fight the Future," this 1998 film is essentially an elongated episode of the TV series with a bigger budget. I've never been more than a casual viewer and, to me, this film represents the best the series had to offer.

Everyone knows that creator Chris Carter was inspired by the Night Stalker TV Series when he formulated The X-Files. Whereas that brief 70s series was overt and almost cartoony with it's depictions of the paranormal, The X-Files always took a more subdued, realistic approach. To some, this made it boring; to others, fascinating; to many, a mixture of both.

The way the plot in the movie unfolds is similar to "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark," albeit more serious and quasi-believable. After an explosion reminiscent of the Oklahoma City bombing, FBI agents Mulder and Scully stumble on an otherworldy virus and an intricate governmental cover-up. Their investigation leads them all over the map and, ultimately, to Antarctica, with numerous mysterious happenings.

Other than the paranormal, the appeal of The X-Files has always been Gillian Anderson. What a uniquely beautiful redhead!

The film runs two hours and was shot in California, British Columbia, Texas, New Jersey, London and Washington DC.

GRADE: B+

The X-Files movie really is as good a big screen adaptation as you could possibly hope for.

It helps that it's entirely controlled by the people behind the series, and that the programme had cinematic qualities in the first place. On repeat viewings, however, the story is revealed to be thin, and lacking in incident. Its need to tie into events of the series makes it not wholly satisfying as a stand-alone vehicle, though it should still be understandable to those that have never seen an episode.

David Duchovny as Mulder seems surprisingly at ease in his limited way, while Martin Landau is good as far as plot devices go. Gillian Anderson is unfortunately encouraged to overstate her lines, particularly in the beginning, while a cameo by The Lone Gunmen is perhaps the only indulgence that would be lost on non-fans.

There are inevitable concessions to the cinema format, of course. Not the touted mild use of expletives, which happened from time to time on TV anyway. But the alien presence that mutates to owe a debt to Ridley Scott's Alien, or the near-kiss between the two leads. Thankfully, the first point actually makes a logical sense and carries the story forward. The second is something that was also long overdue, and silly that it took so long. For two people who obviously feel about each other the way Mulder and Scully do, to go five years without even kissing is stretching credulity.

Ultimately, though, it lacks any clear focus for a casual film audience, and flits repetitively from action sequence to sloppy exposition and back again throughout its duration. Creator Chris Carter, like Gene Roddenberry with Star Trek before him, is not the smoothest writer of his own series, though he does adequately most of the time. Worst example is the opening Mulder/Scully scene which is laughably trite, and there are plenty more examples of Carter's trademark purple prose. Yet it does have a beginning, middle and end, and can be watched back-to-back with a TV episode with no noticeable jumps in style. In that sense, then, it is a most successful big-screen adaptation of a television series.

Hard-core X-File fans will be inclined to award an extra mark to the total, then. But for a non-committal audience, this is a "6" as they would have no idea from watching this that the frail, fag-smoking pensioner is the series' major villain.

The X-Files' first movie is great. It has a clever, yet complicated, plot. The movie tackles the alien conspiracy head on, connecting some plot details from the show. But like an episode of the show, only a small piece of the puzzle is explained. The movie is a scary and thrilling sci-fi movie. All that's missing is a sequel.

In 35,000 BC northern Texas, two men enter an ice cave to find shelter. They battle a mysterious creature. A black substance oozes from the creature and infects one of the men. In the present day, a boy falls into the cave and is infected by the black ooze. Firefighters climb in and are also attacked. One week later, the FBI is checking on a bomb threat in Dallas. Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) go to the building across the street on a hunch. They find the bomb and barely escape. The pair is made the scapegoats. Alvin Kurtzweil (Martin Landau) tells Fox that FEMA has a secret isolation ward in the building. The boy and the firefighters are found in the rubble presumed to be killed by the blast.

Mulder and Scully's banter is back almost immediately. Everything that is beloved about the show is present in this movie. They are the outsiders. There is a conspiracy. There is something creepy. This is what true fans of the show love. For non-fans, this can be a bit of a climb to understand everything.

Rob Bowman(frequent TV series director) was chosen to direct this first feature film spun-off the popular TV series that stars David Duchovny & Gillian Anderson as Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, who are assigned to Texas on a bomb-threat detail that proves to be no hoax, and after investigating, it turns out to be connected to the ongoing syndicate conspiracy led by their nemesis the Smoking Man(played by William B. Davis) to cover up an alien virus related to the very aliens they had been searching for in the past five years. Martin Landau costars as Alvin Kurtzweil, a doctor who knows something of the incident. Plot climaxes in the Arctic, where Mulder must rescue a kidnapped Scully from a spaceship...Killer Bees also play a part. Good film fits in well with the series, and also works as a stand-alone tale. Exciting action scenes, and was nice to see these characters on the big screen.

Really just a big-scale version of a typical two-part episode though.