The X-Files, le film : Combattre le futur

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.

I've met a LOT of people who whine that this is just a two-hour episode with a big budget. I don't see how that's a complaint. I mean, if one of the best-written, best-directed, most atmospheric shows on television makes a movie-length episode that can stand on its own...what's the problem? That still makes it more intelligent than 90% of the movies put out this summer.

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.

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.

There are two types of people in this world: Those that watch "X-Files," and those that do not. I, like many other critics who walked into "The X-Files" movie, fall into the latter category. But it doesn't matter, because I don't believe that there are any real twists in the plot or "revelations" like the extended title implies there may be. In fact, I think that even the strict fans of the television show may be a bit in the dark by the time the credits start to roll. I got lost about 2/3 of the way through, but I still had a fun time.

Scully and Mulder, the two FBI Agents (I think) from the famous television show of the same name, make their big-screen debut in a feature-length, theatrical film release that plays much more like a clever science fiction film than a stupid one. I do not claim to be a huge fan of the science-fiction genre -- I like softer sci-fi such as "The Terminator" -- but I admire the hard sci-fi films that make an effort to reach those of us who many not be the most enthusastic sci-fi geeks. "The X-Files" has a harder task -- it has to reach those who not only have never seen the show, but also those who may not love sci-fi too much, and it does a good job. I admire it above all else for being able to do this.

It strikes a chord that good sci-fi films have struck in the past. It gets down to the meaty bits, although sometimes the plot left me in the dark and the ending started to get a bit crazy, which lowered my overall pleasure regarding the film. It's like a mystery set in the world of UFOs and alien encounters. It is, at times, quite chilling in a subtle way, and at other times quite humorous and fun and thrilling.

It starts off with a boy falling into a pit and being attacked by hundreds of small, slug-like creatures that crawl into his eye sockets and over his eyes (don't bring the kids to this one). More people enter into the pit in an ill-fated attempt to rescue the boy, and they wind up being knocked unconscious (or put into a deep sleep) like the boy. The bodies are all transported to a hospital, and that same hospital later blows up after Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Mulder (David Duchovny) are unable to stop an implanted terrorist bomb from detonating inside a coke maching.

But then Mulder is told by a mysterious man outside a bar (Martin Landau) that the bomb was never attempted to be defused. It was all an elaborate cover-up to hide the bodies of the pit victims. Mulder shrugs off the old man at first before he realizes that the man used to be a friend of his father's, and that he has some interesting true stories to tell.

"The X-Files" intrigued me, kept me interested for the most part, and gave me a few good chill sequences, and yet I haven't seen a single full-length episode of the FOX TV show (only little tidbits here and there). From what I can tell from my short experiences with the television show, this film carries a much more "mainstream" feel to it. I don't really take an interest in TV shows because I find them pretty corny. But "The X-Files" movie wasn't that corny.

The sight of the aliens themselves is only touched lightly, and the secret promised to be revealed by the trailers and ads isn't. (I assume most people thought it would be in regards to Mulder's alien-abducted sister from his childhood.) But Duchovny is very interesting and often humorous in his role, and I would like to see him in more films than he is in. Gillian Anderson is a bit weak in her role -- in fact, my mother saw her on stage in London and reported back to me that she was so bored by her dull, lifeless performance that she nearly left the theater. But Duchovny carries along the film by himself, and the film has some good sequences. Overall, even people who have never laid eyes on the TV show will be able to appreciate this.

3.5/5 stars.

• John Ulmer