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WHY THE WORLD NEEDS THE X-FILES

Mulder and Scully are about to return to the big screen with this summer’s highly anticipated new movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe, and quite frankly it is about damn time. Films based on TV shows have been coming thick and fast this past few years, but if ever there was a property that needed another shot at the big screen, it is Chris Carter’s plot heavy paranormal investigations show. The X-Files was a huge part of my adolescence, and I remember a world stuffed to breaking point with all manner of X Files merchandise. The thing is, it wasn’t just a huge fanbase that the show garnered, or awards. It brought to the fore an interest in paranormal activity, aliens and more like the general public had never seen before.

Now we have things like Most Haunted, The Ghost Whisperer, Torchwood, and all manner of other programmes both fictional factual that owe their very existence to the X-Files. Those early years of the X-Files are some of the most entertaining and fascinating genre TV ever made, and when the movie came along in 1997 the world got a taste of what the show could look like with a proper budget. While that first film has its detractors and its faults, it was a great ride and a near-perfect transition for the characters and the situations that the show covered.

Something has seriously been missing from popular culture since Mulder and Scully stopped wandering around dark warehouses, dressed in trenchcoats and waving torches around, and that is a genuine sense of mystery. Many shows that have started since the X-Files ended have tried desperately to weld mysteries onto their core plotlines, be it LOST, Heroes or whatever, they have noticeably attempted to shove some depth into their otherwise paper thin stories in a rather clumsy manner. Backstory and depth feels tacked on.

Then there was the X-Files, which had depth to spare, and pretty much always struck the right balance of mystery and revelation. One problem many fans have is the amount of truth that was revealed at the climax of the show’s run. The truth should have stayed, at least partially, hidden. That said, the new movie doesn’t really feature the conspiracy storylines that much, although they are mentioned. The story this time around is a straight ahead X-Files paranormal tale, which is something the show did incredibly, and to this day really has no peers in that field. The world needs Mulder and Scully. It needs the X-Files. Why? Because if there are more answers than questions being asked, entertainment isn’t really all that entertaining.

X-FILES II TEASER FOOTAGE LEAKED ONLINE

The exclusive X-Files 2 teaser that was screened at Wondercon in the US has, shock horror, leaked all over the internet thanks to the joy of Youtube and its ilk. How does the footage look? Well from the grainy, tiny, phone-cam-filmed video I saw, it's hard to say. It probably isn’t an actual teaser per se, more a montage of completed shots put together just for the con. I’m guessing this is just a selection of completed scenes, cut together into a teaser trailer. Well, it does exactly what it says on the tin- it teases.

 

From the ominous shots of Billy Connolly (the Big Yin in the X Files? marvellous!!!) flanked by FBI agents as he strides across a snowy wasteland crying out ‘It’s here, it’s here!’, to the tantalising glimpses of action scenes, and of course our first look at new footage of Mulder and Scully in years, it looks, well, like the X-Files. I am very happy about this. It only runs to about 35 seconds, but it looks very cool indeed. Who is the man with the scratches all over his face? Why are Billy Connolly’s eye bleeding? Who (or what) is being dragged across the ice?

 

Where the first X-Files film (Remember that? I loved that movie) may have been close to the series in spirit, it lost a little something by giving the story such a massive scale onscreen. This new X-Files movie is billed a standalone story, and is rumoured to be of a supernatural nature. Chris Carter has gone record at Wondercon to say that while the mythos of the show- i.e. the conspiracy aspect- will be mentioned and dealt with, it isn’t the crux of the story. This is a very good sign. The show got too bogged down with its own continuity and lost a bunch of viewers along the way. The standalone stories were generally the best, and also the most memorable (Tooms!).

 

It is wonderful to know there’s a new one on the way, and great to see Mulder and Scully, two of the most important figures in modern science fiction, on the big screen again. Early word is that the chemistry between the two main characters is as good as ever, remains just the right side of flirtatious, and the interplay is back how it was in the early years of the show.

 

Judging from the reaction at Wondercon in the video (the screams an applause are deafening) it would seem that all the old X-Philes are hungry for more. Just you wait and see come this summer- the X-Files are open again, and by the look of it, all hell is about to break loose.