Fight the Future! (This Message Brought to You By the Past and Present)

Sorry for the delay and the strange site stuff happening yesterday – domain renewal troubles! (Aka, this is a funny way of celebrating this site’s first anniversary…) But first, if you missed it, an update to the About Me section.

So, for those of you who don’t know, from season eight to season nine, my friends Jay, Steve, Christina, and I ran a site making fun of the X Files. We were, you see, that strange variety of fan that watches a television show religiously in order to complain about all the inconsistencies and horrible plot devices and teeth-grindingly bad writing and convulse in laughter at everything else. But, gentle reader, we weren’t always like that. Alas, there was a time when we used to genuinely like the X Files. But that was in the days of Clyde Bruckman and Queequeg, when the conspiracy seemed like it might make sense, when neither the Cigarette-Smoking Man nor Mulder had died even once, and when, you know, both leads were still actually on the show.

When we went to see the new X Files movie (I Want to Believe), I had just enough memory of the stuff I actually enjoyed about the X Files and enough selective amnesia about the stuff I didn’t that my hopes were up. (Mild but marked SPOILERS under cut!) Revisiting characters you once adored is sort of like meeting up with your best friend from when you were ten whom you haven’t seen since fifth grade: they’ve changed, because you’ve changed, but there’s still that familiar sense of connection that can never change. And I have to admit, another reason I went into I Want to Believe with higher hopes is because it was supposed to be a frickin’ Monster of the Week. All my favourite episodes are MOTWs, and, let’s face it: while those virus-carrying bees and alien rebels and Supersoldiers are never gonna make sense, Eddie van Blundht* and the ghosts who stole Christmas have a fair shot at it**. Also, I was kinda secretly hoping that there’d be some dramatic scene between Mulder and Scully and their given-up-for-adoption-for-his-own-protection son William. Because William had enough psychic powers that he could totally be a MOTW. Anyhow.

Now, I wrote that introduction earlier this week (before succumbing to a really awful bout of strep throat), because I knew I’d be seeing the movie on Saturday night and would need all the help I could get to have this review ready for Sunday (although, as it turns out, this wasn’t necessary). I expected to be panning the thing: “Last time we saw Mulder and Scully, they were on the run from the US government and Mulder had been convicted of murder! You really expect us to believe that they managed to start THIS plot?” I expected to be laughing hysterically. I expected to be able to do a brand-new MST3K, complete with robots and corny jokes.

Alas, no such luck.

The movie is actually decent, with a few provisos. Basic plot looks like this (SPOILERS):

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Mulder and Scully have been living a contented but boring life in a small, boring American town. But, when an FBI agent disappears, and a so-called psychic is the only clue to finding her alive, the FBI wants Mulder back to help them figure out what’s really up with this guy. Scully, however, doesn’t want to do it.

The first proviso is, if you care at all about plot stuff like “who took the FBI agent?” and “is this guy really psychic? If so, how?”, then this isn’t the movie for you. None of this stuff is well explained, and the answers we do get are either silly (uh… most inefficient way of obtaining bodies with particular characteristics ever! And I’m pretty sure most pediatricians don’t become qualified for neurosurgery by looking it up on Google) or somewhat offensive (gay married immigrants = perverted and teh EBIL***!) Then again, if you really cared about this stuff and still managed to get through one or more of the nine seasons of The X Files, you’re probably okay for the movie, too. (And if one of those seasons was season eight or nine, you can probably dredge up a long list of WAY, WAY more nonsensical plots.)

Also, yeah, the acting was a little shaky at times, as was the writing, and, on the whole, everything was a lot more “on the nose” than I expect from Chris Carter. (Characters discuss their feelings openly and succinctly; people say exactly what they think.) And the script had the annoying!dialogue thing I hate the most: when two characters in a room by themselves KEEP using each other’s frickin’ NAMES. Look, there’s nobody else there! OK, yes, say “Mulder” or “Scully” once for emphasis, but not every time you open your mouth! Not to mention the handful of conversations that basically went, “You know what I’m thinking about? [episode] from season nine.” “Me, too. Let’s recap it in case some of our viewers never saw it.”

The second proviso is, to care at all about this movie, you must already have a strong emotional stake in what happens to Mulder and Scully and their relationship with one another. Because, despite all the severed arms and bodies-buried-in-the-ice, what the REAL plot boiled down to was this:

MULDER: Hey, remember when we were the lead characters on a sci-fi TV show? I miss that. Let’s do it again.

SCULLY: All sorts of horrible shit happens to the lead characters on a sci-fi TV show, and I’m sick of it. Can’t we just pursue our lives****?

And while the movie was definitely not a work of astounding genius (or even unastounding genius), I was intrigued by the fact that, unlike most typical stories, Hollywood or otherwise, I Want to Believe makes the strongest case for coming down on Scully’s side. Mulder’s enthusiastic attempts to step back into his old shoes arguably cause pain and destruction in ways his indifference would not have done. I was surprised to find that this story was more or less about both characters discovering they couldn’t go “home” again (eg. Mulder can’t just go back and be the hotshot, irresponsible young FBI agent he was in season 3 or 4 or 5; Scully can’t just live a happy life with a husband, kids, and a house with a white picket fence as though none of the X-files phenomenon ever occurred) but at least they had each other.

In some ways, I think, the idea that life happens and you can’t turn back time is more disturbing when applied to fictional characters than to real people. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote,

One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott’s heroes still may strut, Dickens’s delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray’s wordlings continue to carry on their reprehensible careers.

I agree: no matter how real people change , one of the comforts of fiction is that it doesn’t.

Twenty years from now, Harry Potter will still be Harry Potter. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are perpetually taking the Enterprise where no man has gone before, no matter whether another Original Series movie is ever made; somewhere in happily every after, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are still married; Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin still snipe at each other and solve mysteries. I think Victor Starrett’s poem on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, “221B”, captures the idea best:

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears–
Only those things the heart believes are true.
A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five. (Victor Starrett)

But, I Want to Believe seems to be saying, it isn’t always NINETEEN ninety-five. And it can never be again, not for us, and not for Mulder and Scully, because they just don’t wanna be in the story anymore, OK? After cancer, multiple abductions, ostracism, losing a child, losing several relatives and friends, and everything but the kitchen sink, they’ve finally had ENOUGH.

In other words, the movie could better have been titled X Files: The Mid-Life Crisis. (A point also interestingly made by the choice to cast two relatively young actors as the FBI agents with whom Mulder and Scully had to interact – every shot of them together reminds you, hey, these guys aren’t the thirty-somethings they once were…) Judging by the dismal returns at the box office, not entirely undeserved, I doubt there will be a third movie, but, if there is, I think this is a good emotional set-up. The third movie would, presumably, be about stopping the aliens from taking over the world in 2012 as we discovered they were going to in the series finale. So, just as Mulder and Scully have finally learned their lesson about leaving the past behind them, the past suddenly comes rushing up to bite them with a vengeance. (And maybe characters like Doggett come back? And we actually have William in the plot? Oooh, oooh, and because it would be the last in the series, Mulder or Scully might die FOR REAL at any point??? Pfft, forget this “novel”, I’ve got a screenplay to work on.*****)

Anyway, while the movie is deeply, deeply flawed, I still found it deeply interesting, and, more importantly, it had that sense of joy you only get when the actors and the crew are having fun. In the last season of the series, the overwhelming atmosphere from the entire cast was “When will this thing be OVER???”. In this one, the atmosphere was more like “Yay! Whee! Remember when we used to work on a TV show together? Hahahahaha! That was awesome! Let’s put in secret details for the fans! This is so much more fun than The Last King of Scotland and Californication!”

Bottom line: if you think you’d enjoy 90 minutes of Mulder and Scully arguing about their relationship, this is a movie you will like. If not, go see Dark Knight, which I hear is completely amazing. But I need to see Batman Begins first!

* PS While I was Googling to make sure I’d spelled that correctly, I came across this: The X-Files wiki??? There’s a wiki site entirely dedicated to the works of Chris Carter???

** Also, all the romantic stuff happens in MOTWs. Don’t judge me!

*** While I understand where they were trying to go here – mirror one of the recurring themes of “how far is it okay to go to save a life, even of someone you love?” – I agree with many that it was irresponsible of the writers to associate the twisted, depraved way with gender-bending body switching and gay men, and Creepy (TM) Immigrants. A foreign accent! Run away!!one!

**** “… with our children and our wives?/Till that happy day arrives/ How do you ignore/ all the witches?/All the curses?/ All the wolves, all the lies,/The false hopes, the good-byes, the reverses?/All the wondering what even worse is still in stooooooore…” OK, no more Into the Woods, I promise. (Get it? Get it? “NO MORE” Into the Woods??? OK, I promise for real this time.)

***** The X Files: OMGWTFBBQ PEOPLE DIE!!!!!! by S. R. Kriger

MULDER and SCULLY: *are disillusioned and have been running away from the X Files for years now* BUT THEN!!!!
MULDER: Scully, compelling plot reasons compellingly compel us to protect this random boy who is clearly important to the plot! Even though we are totally done with crap like plots!
SCULLY: I am also compelled, like for serious.
DOGGETT : I will protect him, too! Because I am also in this movie!
EVIL ALIENS: As are we!
RANDOM BOY: Not while I’m around! *is magic and possibly Jesus and destroys aliens*
EVIL ALIENS: OMG WTF?
RANDOM BOY: BTW, I’m William.
MULDER and SCULLY: (dying from all that compellingly compelled protection stuff) OMG, you were our son all along…
MULDER and/or SCULLY: *dies*
SKINNER: They finally found the truth, BUT AT WHAT COST??????!!!!!
DOGGETT: I am more antique Roman than a Dane.
THE END