X-Files: I Want To Believe
 

so I am now going to declare myself as the local X-Files nerd on the forum. Anyone else here actually excited to see this movie? I have been following it quite extensively and so far, for a movie which has barely been screened, it is garnering all these negative reviews centered around how similar the movie is to the tv show, how it feels "old-fashioned." Since when is that a bad thing? I'm personally excited to see a movie produced 5-6 years after production ended that actually feels like the tv show. I think they really did this one for the fans, it seems to really focus on character arcs and exploring where Scully and Moulder are as people with the X-File as more of a back drop to kind of contrast and parallel what they are going through, much like many episodes o the television show.

anyways....so they are saying if this movie does well enough they want to make more movies, maybe in a serial nature, maybe do an apocalypse kind of movie where they actually explore the myth story line of the show, the one with alien invasion and colonization. What with Batman and Step Brothers this weekend I'm kind of nervous to see how it performs at the box office....

anyways....so am I out there alone? who else is with me? I'm totally going twice.

I'm quite a huge X-Files fan. I have every season on DVD. I'm looking forward to the movie, and I think if your expectance of the film is realistic you'll have a good time. With such a low budget, I never expected much more than an extended episode of the TV series. This is what fans want. But if they want to make enough to fund more it has to appeal to the masses. From what I've gathered, it works well as a standalone movie which is good.

I think it was a silly idea to keep the plot so secretive. From what I've read, it's standard X-Files fare with no mega revelation which is fine, but because it was kept a secret people expected something huge to be happening. I've read two reviews spinning it's secrecy into a negative due to a lack of pay-off. Heck, even Jay Leno when introducing Duchovny the other day said "Nobody knows anything about the plot because they have some big surprise or something". No, they don't. Literally this is the plot they kept a secret: An FBI agent has went missing so they enlist the help of a psychic priest to help find her.

My other problem with that is that it isn't that paranormal. Since it didn't follow the mythology, I didn't expect it to be about Aliens, but I expected something out of the ordinary. A killer like tooms, or a vicious monster attacking a town. Old school shit! Still, I'm happy to go back to the franchise and I'm sure I'll love it. I just hope enough people do to warrant another one. I always imagined Carter would want to create another standalone movie in 2010 and then do the big invasion movie in 2012, when the invasion is actually supposed to take place in the show. Since the movie is in real time (6 years after the show ended, and it's 6 years after in the movie) that would make sense.

It has the weird guy from Independence Day in it right?

Who? The only guys that I know are in it are Duchovny, Billy Connoly and Xzibit. I hope you're not confusing the scientist in ID4 who gets taken over by a tentacle around his throat with Billy Connoly. Billy Connoly is brilliant!

the guy with the long silver hair I guess i am. They arent the same?

edit: Well then! He looked totally different in the X-files trailer!

That would be Brent Spiner, who is more recognizable as Data, from Star Trek: The Next Generation. His Phenomenon persona wasn't much different from his Independence Day persona. The guy in the X-Files trailer totally isn't him.

And no, I didn't use the intarwebs or any movie credits to make that association.

Wow, I haven't seen ID4 in so long but now that you mention it, even my memory of him in my head... it totally is data :lol: How did I never pick up on that? He was in something else I watched recently too, but I can't remember what.

And Billy Connoly (the guy in the X-Files trailer) is a fantastic Scottish stand-up comedian. One of the biggest and best in the world.

yeah i know who he is, he just didn't look like himself in the tv spots. :lol:

that isn't the top secret part of the plot they wanted to keep under wraps. It has to do with some people doing experiments on women and the general idea of what is going on with those women and the experiments etc are what they wanted to keep secret because seeing as it was written in a serial nature, if they released too much information a tv show could take the idea and air the episode before the movie was ever released. However, once they started to keep it all a secret they seemed to have fallen in love with the idea of keeping everyone in the dark. I have to admit this is the first time I'm going in to see a movie with almost no knowledge of the plot of the film. I know a little basic filler but not very much.

It seems to be getting panned by critics because it resembles the tv show too much, but I don't personally see why that is a bad thing. I would love for this to be raved about and make boatloads of cash and warrant a big Alien mythology 2012 movie, but I'm not so sure if that will happen, and personally, I'd rather watch the characters interact and see a movie more focused on character arcs and drama/dialogue than any kind of action fest. Unfortunately they are marketing this as kind of something larger than it is I think, with the secretiveness and action in the trailers.

I guess no one will really know until the see it for themselves. But I'm maintaining my positive outlook.

That's my major worry. The X-Files as a format is obviously hugely successful, and it is one that I think can make a decent transition to the big screen. But if you market it as more than it is -- a long episode of the show -- and keep the plot a secret not because there is some huge revelation but just "because we can" you're going to end up with a lot of "Is that it?". As it stands, as a decent $30million episode I'm sure it does more than enough to stand out as a good X-Files episode, and definitely enough to please us X-Philes but not enough to convince critics that it's existence is really necessary. That bode's well for me as a fan, but not for the future of the series.

Ebert likes it!

Edit: Nice little 3 minute retrospective to watch before the movie.

X-Files - A Retrospective