go be a doctor?
Internet, let me tell you a story.
It's a story that I've seen at least two other places on my f-list today, one that will probably pop up a few more times before the next couple of days are over, I think. It is a story about a "ground-breaking," exciting supernatural thriller teevee show with the most fucked up, convoluted, nonsense mythology ever. And a little girl.
The X-Files was not my first fandom, but it was my second and it was my first "grown-up" teevee show. Prior to watching TXF, I watched Nickelodeon almost non-stop. Sure, I would watch syndicated reruns of Murder, She Wrote and MacGyver when I was about six or so, and when I was eight or ten we started getting Cartoon Network and the SciFi channel, which I added to my repertoire, but aside from the occasional TGIF on ABC, I didn't watch network teevee.
Then The X-Files came along. I watched it obsessively. I was in love from the end of S1, when my dad started to let me watch it, all way up until Mulder left the show. Other shows came and went, but TXF was my mainstay for those years (Fun fact: the only show that I picked up during the run of TXF that stuck around was TWW, which has been my mainstay ever since). I wasn't particularly fannish about it; I would read the occasional fic, write the occasional crossover, but it never developed into a huge online obsession the way other shows did. It was there, though, for all those years.
All of that aside, that's not to say that it didn't have the most impossibly fucked up "mythology" that ever existed. I watched the show religiously and even I had no fucking idea what was going on half the time. I used to dread the mythology arcs and flail with glee whenever stand alone episodes came along. The show makes no sense, even looking back on it now, and sometimes I can even SEE the manic glee in Chris Carter's eyes as he twists the story around in order to hold out for one more season, one more buttload of cash that he can spend on hookers and coke and his money jacuzzi.
THE SHOW MADE NO SENSE. And I was expecting more of the same from the movie.
And I was... mostly wrong? Generally wrong.
First off, I've been avoiding spoilers, so I didn't know until like, three days ago that it was a stand-alone type story and not something convoluted that involved the mythology arc. So that was a relief. And there were parts of it that WERE convoluted and made no sense. Parts that were completely dragged out and boring. But in the end, there I was, waving my hands with glee, because I am a dirty, dirty whore for Chris Carter. Or, well, I guess I'm paying him so it's more like he's my dirty whore, running out in the middle of the night and leaving me with only soggy sheets and syphilis.
I kind of loved it. I can't lie. I wanted to hate it. There were a million things wrong with it, things that made no sense and that I pretty much loathed, but at the end of the day, I walked out flailing my hands a little and grinning, stomach sinking with the knowledge that not only did I just pay to watch this, but that I would probably pay again, would probably go so far as to buy it on dvd, and would love it.
This is what addiction is like, folks.
I say all this to emphasize the fact that I enjoyed this movie, but that it was not, necessarily, a good movie.
The plot was predictable to any fan of the show. There's a psychic! Maybe he's helping to solve the crime, or maybe he's involved! Mulder believes him! Scully doesn't! But something he said to Scully is crucial right at the 90 minute mark, which leads Scully to break the case, save Mulder, and want to believe in the psychic! Mulder is saved at the last minute! At the end, Scully still isn't sure she believes!
I mean, it was basically every episode of the show that ever involved a psychic. The movie actually did itself a disservice by referencing these very episodes about midway through. But even knowing that, maybe because I knew that, I embraced the movie anyway. It felt like old times, gathered around my teevee with a snack and my jammies. The plot was twisted around, made no sense at parts, and kind of left you going, "Wait, what's going on again?" If someone asks you to recount the plot in detail after seeing it, you'll probably have to sit there for a few minutes and think about it before going, "Well... I don't know, I guess there's this guy? And he's stealing all these women? To give his boyfriend a new body? A female body? Even though that doesn't make much sense? And there's something with a pool? I don't know, Amanda Peet is in it."
But really, let's put all those things aside, because those are things that I come to expect from The X-Files, not surprises. There were things that genuinely made me scratch my head, and made me disgruntled. Mulder and Scully didn't spend nearly as much time together solving the case as I would have liked. Sure, they did some stuff together, but I wanted Mulder and Scully investigating, not Mulder and Amanda Peet. I was able to overlook it kind of because I knew at least they were ~*in love*~, but I still wasn't thrilled. The whole thing where Callum Keith Rennie was gay-married to that other duded and was trying to get him a lady's body was just... weird. Aren't there any guys with AB blood? Like... wait, what?
Scully's subplot, while I understood its purpose, was at times tedious. And by "times" I mean "most of the time."
The plot... never made much sense. I felt like, after making fans wait this long for something new, they could have actually ironed out some of the plot holes? Or written a story that was pertinent and that we could follow? They don't even bother to really explain what was going on or why Callum Keith Rennie was killing (apparently!) dozens and dozens of people. Why was his boyfriend dude even at the girl lady's house? What was going on? Where did these doctors come from? How was this supernatural, save for the psychic party? What was the point of this movie?
The movie... basically ignores (as far as I can remember) everything that happened from the point that Mulder left the show onward. I mean, I'm kind of fuzzy on those last couple of years, but with the exception of the random mention of Scully's magical baby, I feel like they were just... handwaved. Which... I'm tempted to put this on the "plus" side of the review, because... let's face it, who even watched those episodes AND remembered them AND understood them? No one. At all. Even Chris Carter was too drunk on power to care what the hell was going on in those last years.
But there were things I loved. I liked that you couldn't really tell, at the beginning, if Mulder and Scully were together. That brought me back to the days of the show. But then they were in bed together! And, okay, first OTP, guys, I flailed my hands and barely restrained myself from making tiny high-pitched noises. Consequently, every time they were together after that I flailed my hands happily, except when Scully was breaking up with Mulder because... wtf was that? Pointless tension. Scully would not leave Mulder over something that stupid. I mean, he locks himself in a room during the day and cuts things out of newspapers. He is LESS CRAZY when he is working. That was totally engineered to make sure all be sad that they were going to break up.
I loved how concerned she was for him when they pulled her car out of the ditch, though ♥
I loved SKINNER. Oh my GOD, I loved Skinner. At first, when he stepped out and you could only see the back of his head, I thought, "Oh great, they couldn't get Pileggi, so they got some bald head double? But then it swung around! And it was Skinner! And I did the flailing and high-pitched-noises thing again. Because! Skinner!
I loved Skinner and Scully in the car together and Skinner and Mulder hugging in the snow. Skinner/Scully was my sekrit side ship on the show, and I'm glad the movie brought us both Skinner/Scully and Skinner/Mulder while also having Scully and Mulder canonically fucking.
(Also, I'm glad the long time question of what Mulder and Scully call each other in bed was finally answered. MULDER AND SCULLY IT IS.)
Um, I secretly loved the ending credits. CHEESIEST ENDING EVER. And yet. I couldn't help myself.
I mean, overall, the movie was a train wreck. But as a fan, I will pretty much be happy forever. I feel dirty and used, but I've gotten used to that with this franchise, and I'm man enough to admit it on the internet.
It's a story that I've seen at least two other places on my f-list today, one that will probably pop up a few more times before the next couple of days are over, I think. It is a story about a "ground-breaking," exciting supernatural thriller teevee show with the most fucked up, convoluted, nonsense mythology ever. And a little girl.
The X-Files was not my first fandom, but it was my second and it was my first "grown-up" teevee show. Prior to watching TXF, I watched Nickelodeon almost non-stop. Sure, I would watch syndicated reruns of Murder, She Wrote and MacGyver when I was about six or so, and when I was eight or ten we started getting Cartoon Network and the SciFi channel, which I added to my repertoire, but aside from the occasional TGIF on ABC, I didn't watch network teevee.
Then The X-Files came along. I watched it obsessively. I was in love from the end of S1, when my dad started to let me watch it, all way up until Mulder left the show. Other shows came and went, but TXF was my mainstay for those years (Fun fact: the only show that I picked up during the run of TXF that stuck around was TWW, which has been my mainstay ever since). I wasn't particularly fannish about it; I would read the occasional fic, write the occasional crossover, but it never developed into a huge online obsession the way other shows did. It was there, though, for all those years.
All of that aside, that's not to say that it didn't have the most impossibly fucked up "mythology" that ever existed. I watched the show religiously and even I had no fucking idea what was going on half the time. I used to dread the mythology arcs and flail with glee whenever stand alone episodes came along. The show makes no sense, even looking back on it now, and sometimes I can even SEE the manic glee in Chris Carter's eyes as he twists the story around in order to hold out for one more season, one more buttload of cash that he can spend on hookers and coke and his money jacuzzi.
THE SHOW MADE NO SENSE. And I was expecting more of the same from the movie.
And I was... mostly wrong? Generally wrong.
First off, I've been avoiding spoilers, so I didn't know until like, three days ago that it was a stand-alone type story and not something convoluted that involved the mythology arc. So that was a relief. And there were parts of it that WERE convoluted and made no sense. Parts that were completely dragged out and boring. But in the end, there I was, waving my hands with glee, because I am a dirty, dirty whore for Chris Carter. Or, well, I guess I'm paying him so it's more like he's my dirty whore, running out in the middle of the night and leaving me with only soggy sheets and syphilis.
I kind of loved it. I can't lie. I wanted to hate it. There were a million things wrong with it, things that made no sense and that I pretty much loathed, but at the end of the day, I walked out flailing my hands a little and grinning, stomach sinking with the knowledge that not only did I just pay to watch this, but that I would probably pay again, would probably go so far as to buy it on dvd, and would love it.
This is what addiction is like, folks.
I say all this to emphasize the fact that I enjoyed this movie, but that it was not, necessarily, a good movie.
The plot was predictable to any fan of the show. There's a psychic! Maybe he's helping to solve the crime, or maybe he's involved! Mulder believes him! Scully doesn't! But something he said to Scully is crucial right at the 90 minute mark, which leads Scully to break the case, save Mulder, and want to believe in the psychic! Mulder is saved at the last minute! At the end, Scully still isn't sure she believes!
I mean, it was basically every episode of the show that ever involved a psychic. The movie actually did itself a disservice by referencing these very episodes about midway through. But even knowing that, maybe because I knew that, I embraced the movie anyway. It felt like old times, gathered around my teevee with a snack and my jammies. The plot was twisted around, made no sense at parts, and kind of left you going, "Wait, what's going on again?" If someone asks you to recount the plot in detail after seeing it, you'll probably have to sit there for a few minutes and think about it before going, "Well... I don't know, I guess there's this guy? And he's stealing all these women? To give his boyfriend a new body? A female body? Even though that doesn't make much sense? And there's something with a pool? I don't know, Amanda Peet is in it."
But really, let's put all those things aside, because those are things that I come to expect from The X-Files, not surprises. There were things that genuinely made me scratch my head, and made me disgruntled. Mulder and Scully didn't spend nearly as much time together solving the case as I would have liked. Sure, they did some stuff together, but I wanted Mulder and Scully investigating, not Mulder and Amanda Peet. I was able to overlook it kind of because I knew at least they were ~*in love*~, but I still wasn't thrilled. The whole thing where Callum Keith Rennie was gay-married to that other duded and was trying to get him a lady's body was just... weird. Aren't there any guys with AB blood? Like... wait, what?
Scully's subplot, while I understood its purpose, was at times tedious. And by "times" I mean "most of the time."
The plot... never made much sense. I felt like, after making fans wait this long for something new, they could have actually ironed out some of the plot holes? Or written a story that was pertinent and that we could follow? They don't even bother to really explain what was going on or why Callum Keith Rennie was killing (apparently!) dozens and dozens of people. Why was his boyfriend dude even at the girl lady's house? What was going on? Where did these doctors come from? How was this supernatural, save for the psychic party? What was the point of this movie?
The movie... basically ignores (as far as I can remember) everything that happened from the point that Mulder left the show onward. I mean, I'm kind of fuzzy on those last couple of years, but with the exception of the random mention of Scully's magical baby, I feel like they were just... handwaved. Which... I'm tempted to put this on the "plus" side of the review, because... let's face it, who even watched those episodes AND remembered them AND understood them? No one. At all. Even Chris Carter was too drunk on power to care what the hell was going on in those last years.
But there were things I loved. I liked that you couldn't really tell, at the beginning, if Mulder and Scully were together. That brought me back to the days of the show. But then they were in bed together! And, okay, first OTP, guys, I flailed my hands and barely restrained myself from making tiny high-pitched noises. Consequently, every time they were together after that I flailed my hands happily, except when Scully was breaking up with Mulder because... wtf was that? Pointless tension. Scully would not leave Mulder over something that stupid. I mean, he locks himself in a room during the day and cuts things out of newspapers. He is LESS CRAZY when he is working. That was totally engineered to make sure all be sad that they were going to break up.
I loved how concerned she was for him when they pulled her car out of the ditch, though ♥
I loved SKINNER. Oh my GOD, I loved Skinner. At first, when he stepped out and you could only see the back of his head, I thought, "Oh great, they couldn't get Pileggi, so they got some bald head double? But then it swung around! And it was Skinner! And I did the flailing and high-pitched-noises thing again. Because! Skinner!
I loved Skinner and Scully in the car together and Skinner and Mulder hugging in the snow. Skinner/Scully was my sekrit side ship on the show, and I'm glad the movie brought us both Skinner/Scully and Skinner/Mulder while also having Scully and Mulder canonically fucking.
(Also, I'm glad the long time question of what Mulder and Scully call each other in bed was finally answered. MULDER AND SCULLY IT IS.)
Um, I secretly loved the ending credits. CHEESIEST ENDING EVER. And yet. I couldn't help myself.
I mean, overall, the movie was a train wreck. But as a fan, I will pretty much be happy forever. I feel dirty and used, but I've gotten used to that with this franchise, and I'm man enough to admit it on the internet.