Well, I received this review from Film-Watching Man about the X-FILES feature. Overall it's not bad, and it's not great. It's disappointing. And quite frankly that's the same reaction I have been getting from people who have read the script, seen dailies and so on. I wish I could say it ain't so, but the thing that keeps coming back is that it's a great big tease. Now personally a tease can be a wonderful thing, but only if it captures your brain and prompts endless conversations about the nuances of the series. However, as you read this review realize this most likely came from a very inside insider, who may of been expecting too much. BUT WHO ISN'T EXPECTING TOO MUCH? I know I am. I want this film to make me afraid of the streets, to look at streetlights and know that there is a camera watching me. I want to be so paranoid that I can't think straight. Hopefully, something like this can bring us down, lower our expectations to just the right level that the film works perfectly. Keep your fingers crossed and hope and pray... But for now Film-Watching Man has the screen...
Okay, I'm not going to describe the plot to you, as I'm sure you've read enough spoilers from various emails and web postings. I can, however, say that a lot of them were amazing accurate. All I'm gonna do is tell you what I think of the movie, and leave you to draw your own conclusions.
Overall, I thought the movie is totally in keeping with the TV series, and is a climax to the very set-up of the series when it started five years ago. And that's part of the problem, I felt. Overall, the movie looks great: the bigger budget shows, it's shot on a whopping 2:35:1 widescreen frame, with great sound -- all the booms, whooshes and blammos totally rocked. The acting is good. Martin Landau is great as a is-he-for-real-or-not conspiracy nut who feeds info to Mulder. SLIGHT SPOILERS (well, maybe not, as these have been reported in lots of official places already): yes, Mitch Pillegi appears as Assistant Director Skinner, the Lone Gunmen do appear, but only have one scene where they help out Mulder; William Davis appears as the Cigarette Smoking Man. The action scenes are great! Good scary stuff involving the aliens and the mutation of the living black oil (these are already mentioned in the trailer) that'll make your skin crawl.
But overall, I was disappointed. Now I'll tell you why.
Don't get me wrong. If you were to broadcast the movie on TV, it would be a perfectly good three-parter -- the movie runs for two hours. And that's the problem. If we're gonna pay eight bucks to see an X-files movie, we want a movie that goes further than the series. We want to see major developments in the mythology the series has been slowly leading us up to for five years. The problem with the movie is it has too much ominous, oblique talk about the Conspiracy, rather than show us more. It doesn't give us enough! We're seeing very, very little. I'm afraid fans might be disappointed by how little the movie gives us after all the hype it's been building up.
I'll give you a bunch of anti-spoilers (ie stuff that is NOT in the movie, and should have been -- they would have made the movie a kick-ass X-Files rather than a run--of-the- mill TV episode given big money and production values):
- The Cigarette Smoking Man is just his old self like in the series. He has no big scenes. Just wanders around looking menacing again. This is a big let-down after all the character-revealing stuff he was given in the last 2 seasons.
- Mulder's sister doesn't appear in the movie, just explained away. Wayyy unsatisfying!
- The last 2-parter in the current season had a lot more happening plot-wise than in the movie. That is not a good sign. It set up really cool stuff that doesn't show up in the movie, namely the war between two alien species, whose revelation was the biggest turning point in the series' mythology ever. Not used here, which deprived the movie of a hell of a lot of drama and cool stuff.
- The unstoppable alien bounty hunter played by Brian Thompson in the series doesn't appear in the movie. That means we don't have a strong, scary bad guy in the movie, just puddles of black oil and a couple of nasty gray aliens.
All in all, I don't think this movie is going to attract non-fans or anyone who hasn't seen the series. It feels like Chris Carter put the premiere episodes of next season into a theater. There's definitely plenty of room for a bunch of sequels, and that's probably gonna go into the series for the next five years or whatever. Like Chris Carter decided to save the really cool stuff for either the sequel or the next season.
That's my review, Harry. Wish I had more positive things to say about the movie, but there you have it.
All the best!
