Recently I watched the first and last X-Files Movies with the Missus.
I've written about the first one already last week, a really brilliant film adaptation of the early series we adored.
The two films couldn't be more different if they tried. The second one was dire!
It's tired, old and bored, a lot like the two main characters, Mulder and Scully.
As far removed from the global alien conspiracy as you can get, this second movie focused on illegal organ transplants. I wouldn't have minded if they were for aliens but the transplanters appeared to be Russian. Is that really the best they could come up with?
Even poor old Billy Connolly looked non-plussed by the whole affair, tearing around on the ice looking for ex- limbs.
I know early on the X-Files wavered between aliens and monsters and did so quite superbly as a series but this was neither. Not extraterrestrial or monstrous in any way, just deplorable human vice. OK, its a very nasty subject but its not the X-Files.
Admittedly I stopped watching the series about half way, several seasons in in the 90's and have a lot of catching up to do one day - for instance I didn't know that Mulder and Scully had a son called William - so maybe the original X concept had waned as the many seasons rolled on.
Is the second movie representative of later seasons of the X-Files?
I still want to believe!
I've no problem with making an X Files movie of a standalone story, after all the series did that so well. The problem with this is that first it is a below average story but more importantly, it does not fit in with the series timeliness. When we last see them, Mulder and Scully are on the run from the military and the FBI and the aliens are about to return and wipe out humanity, yet here we are and everything's fine!
ReplyDeleteI'm not as well up on the timeline Kevin. Did this film come after the whole series had ended?
DeleteYes, after the bulk of the series but they made 2 more seasons many years later.
ReplyDeleteOh really. Wow. I may have to watch them all this winter!
DeleteDid you watch Millennium Kevin too?
DeleteI really liked Millennium, I have it all on DVD. I love the way that for a season it is a completely routine crime show, then suddenly, one of the regulars enters a building to arrest a suspect, said suspect suddenly turns into a winged demon, flies at the cop and rips his throat out! I definitely didn't see that coming!
ReplyDeleteNow that sounds like the X-Files and the type I liked the most, the monster ones. I must rewatch Millenium, Lance Henriksen is very watchable too. I once saw him in a cheap horror called Pumpkinhead, which gained a sort of cult following.
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