Christine CaruanaThe X-Files: I Want To Believe (That It Was Worth 104 Minutes Of My Life)
December 18th 2008 11:35
So I watched the latest X-Files movie over the weekend. At the end I could only think that somewhere out there a movie production company had given a buttload of money to a fanatical fan fiction writer with religious issues and a Frankenstein complex, and yet my Xena fic remains ignored by the world at large. How is that fair? But more importantly, how did this movie get made?
I’m sure fanatics around the world are happy to see their favourite paranormal investigators back in action. And good for them! I’m sure they’re happier to see them canoodling, and talking of being in love, and totally usurping ‘sub’ with ‘main’ in the -text associated around "They are TOTALLY DOING IT!" (and on both points, Xena! Come on!) but I still don’t completely comprehend why this movie was made. Well, maybe not why it was made, afterall the fan base for this show is still enough to fill a medium sized country, and unlike According To Jim and The Bold And The Beautiful, it was well written and intrinsically good television. So in that regard, I do understand why you would make an X-Files movie. But I don’t understand, in any context, why you would make it this way.
It’s 5 years since the series ended, in all it’s crazy batnuts glory. Since then, Fox Mulder has grown a beard reminiscent of the Apeman, and Scully is being an actual doctor in a hospital run by a priest still on the waiting list to have his ears trimmed back and who seems to harbour specific disdain for redheads. (Or maybe it’s just women in general?) Whatever his issue, he seems hellbent on Scully letting her patient die instead of trying wacky new ‘stem cell research’ (the repetition of those three words account for 68% of the entire script) to try and save a boy from dying. I don’t really know why he’s so eager to let the kid in the movie die, you’d think he’d want as many young boys alive as possible.
See what I did there? I made a joke about priests liking young boys. You know who else would do that? A comedian. You know who’s a comedian? Billy Connelly. You know who plays the actual boy raping priest in a totally non-comedic way? Billy Connelly. And props to him for it, because I believed his self hatred and conflicted psychic ways, as well as how convenient it was for him to die when he did. Which does go back to the original show and it’s philosophy of creating a freaky circumstance and then killing the person at the centre of it so the audience is left ‘wanting to believe’ but not necessarily having to. So again, props. I think.
What I don’t get, is the weird bullcrap story of Russian scientists hiding in the snow capped wilderness stealing prominent women (like an FBI agent, way to be subtle) so they can attach the head of some homosexual ex-priest-rapee onto her cos his other body was killed by The Cancer and his lover, who transports organs for a living, steals lady bodies to attach him to. Which again, is totally subtle, cos lord knows he’d never stand out buying bras and tampons for his VAGINA, nor wearing turtle necks for the rest of his life to cover up is giant fracking neck scar.
I was thinking, "Maybe the idea looked better on paper?" and you know what, it really doesn’t. Who came up with that storyline?! And who decided to drag it out in an hour and a half instead of inserting it in Supernatural where it deserved to be? If I was an X-Files fanatic I would be FURIOUS that after 5 years of waiting for my BFF FBI agents to come back to my screen it would be to total bullcrappery and a bunch of cryptic emotional exchanges between Mulder and Scully that’s resolved in tears and kisses WITHOUT tongue.
I rate this movie 8 WTFs out of 10, leaving 20% believability because I really did love this show, and I so wanted to believe that this would be good.
(See what I did there?)
I’m sure fanatics around the world are happy to see their favourite paranormal investigators back in action. And good for them! I’m sure they’re happier to see them canoodling, and talking of being in love, and totally usurping ‘sub’ with ‘main’ in the -text associated around "They are TOTALLY DOING IT!" (and on both points, Xena! Come on!) but I still don’t completely comprehend why this movie was made. Well, maybe not why it was made, afterall the fan base for this show is still enough to fill a medium sized country, and unlike According To Jim and The Bold And The Beautiful, it was well written and intrinsically good television. So in that regard, I do understand why you would make an X-Files movie. But I don’t understand, in any context, why you would make it this way.
It’s 5 years since the series ended, in all it’s crazy batnuts glory. Since then, Fox Mulder has grown a beard reminiscent of the Apeman, and Scully is being an actual doctor in a hospital run by a priest still on the waiting list to have his ears trimmed back and who seems to harbour specific disdain for redheads. (Or maybe it’s just women in general?) Whatever his issue, he seems hellbent on Scully letting her patient die instead of trying wacky new ‘stem cell research’ (the repetition of those three words account for 68% of the entire script) to try and save a boy from dying. I don’t really know why he’s so eager to let the kid in the movie die, you’d think he’d want as many young boys alive as possible.
See what I did there? I made a joke about priests liking young boys. You know who else would do that? A comedian. You know who’s a comedian? Billy Connelly. You know who plays the actual boy raping priest in a totally non-comedic way? Billy Connelly. And props to him for it, because I believed his self hatred and conflicted psychic ways, as well as how convenient it was for him to die when he did. Which does go back to the original show and it’s philosophy of creating a freaky circumstance and then killing the person at the centre of it so the audience is left ‘wanting to believe’ but not necessarily having to. So again, props. I think.
What I don’t get, is the weird bullcrap story of Russian scientists hiding in the snow capped wilderness stealing prominent women (like an FBI agent, way to be subtle) so they can attach the head of some homosexual ex-priest-rapee onto her cos his other body was killed by The Cancer and his lover, who transports organs for a living, steals lady bodies to attach him to. Which again, is totally subtle, cos lord knows he’d never stand out buying bras and tampons for his VAGINA, nor wearing turtle necks for the rest of his life to cover up is giant fracking neck scar.
I was thinking, "Maybe the idea looked better on paper?" and you know what, it really doesn’t. Who came up with that storyline?! And who decided to drag it out in an hour and a half instead of inserting it in Supernatural where it deserved to be? If I was an X-Files fanatic I would be FURIOUS that after 5 years of waiting for my BFF FBI agents to come back to my screen it would be to total bullcrappery and a bunch of cryptic emotional exchanges between Mulder and Scully that’s resolved in tears and kisses WITHOUT tongue.
I rate this movie 8 WTFs out of 10, leaving 20% believability because I really did love this show, and I so wanted to believe that this would be good.
(See what I did there?)
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