X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)
dir. Rob Bowman (Elektra, 2005)
CAST
David Duchovny (Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, 1991)
Gillian Anderson (The Last King of Scotland, 2006)
Martin Landau (City of Ember, 2008)
Mitch Pileggi (It's Pat, 1994)
Blythe Danner (1776, 1972)
Terry O'Quinn (Young Guns, 1988)
Armin Mueller-Stahl (Eastern Promises, 2007)
Lucas Black (All the Pretty Horses, 2000)
Michael Shamus Wiles (Conspiracy Theory, 1997)
Jeffrey DeMunn (The Green Mile, 1999)
Tom Woodruff (Hollow Man, 2000)
John Neville (The Fifth Element, 1997)
Gary Grubbs (JFK, 1991)
Steve Rankin (Men in Black, 1997)
Michael Krawic (Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, & Blonde, 2003)
William B. Davis (Behemoth, TV 2011)
The first X-files movie fits in between the fifth and sixth seasons, so in my quest to complete the complete 9 season series, this was a critical step. When we last left our heroes, the sinister Syndicate had conspired to destroy the X-files and put a stop to Agents Mulder and Scully's quest to uncover the truth about a vast government conspiracy against the American people. The concerns mostly a particular part of the show's mythic arc that I've been having trouble with. You see, there's this stuff called "Black oil," because that's what it looks like, which infects a human body in order to control it. This has something to do with an impending alien colonization and Russian and the U.S. are in a biological arms race to create a vaccine. Until the virus mutates and starts feeding off of human bodies in order to gestate big ol' alien monsters (Alien- style) that pop out of their tummies. The movie also goes deeper into the projects with bees that have been broached in the show, but while when bees on the TV show were carrying a variation of the smallpox virus, in the movie they infect Agent Scully with some sort of alien virus. Much like the show's story arc where Mulder has to race to deliver the cure for Scully's brain cancer, Mulder has to race in order to deliver the cure for this new biological foe. Which reminds us all of how scary viruses really are, as expressed by movies like The Andromeda Strain, Outbreak, or that new one I haven't seen yet, Contagion (plus any zombie movie post-28 Days Later).
The ending is rather inconclusive, and segues directly into season 6 of the TV show. All in all, the movie achieved more plot development than would be possible in any single episode, but we are left with little expansion into the greater mythology than the introduction of non-human beings who feed upon humans. One of the greater questions raised in the program is whether there are, indeed, actual extraterrestrials, or whether the government has some even more sinister agenda. At this point, I think the aliens are pretty clear, but what their intentions are, and what the intentions of the Syndicate are, have yet to be answered.
Does this mean that I'm a nerd?
No comments:
Post a Comment