Did anyone say that during the movie? What a missed opportunity... I've heard it so many times on the show, I thought for sure it would be used here.
Okay, so I admit to wondering what homo sapiens would have really looked like in 35,000 BC. I hope CC & FS did their research to come up with a decent representation. But wasn't that the TXF teaser to end all teasers? As I watched it this time — I don't know how many years since I last saw it — I thought, whoa, it's the X-Files meets Alien (i.e., the one with the unfortunate John Hurt).
Which leads to the question of why the need to present such a vicious, face-ripping type of alien here, when all along, TXF has been happy to offer up the standard version of the more "realistic" greys and occasionally morphing humanoids? 'Cause it's a MOVIE of course, and ya gotta give these folks more for their money. (An episode later, we are shown that these guys are merely the "infant" form of the greys... yeah, sure.)
Loved Scully's long-winded explanation of why bomb threats are called in... wrong again, Agent Scully. That said, fifteen years later, I am still beating my head over why Mulder and Scully were blamed for anything regarding the bombing. The only wrong-doing that could have been pinned on them was that they broke rank and weren't supposed to be across the street. And maybe also that Mulder obeyed a direct order from his SAC that actually contravened the rule book. But did they not save a lot of people as a result? The way the whole OPR hearing was presented, it sounded as though they should have been able to save the [dead] firemen and Stevie and Michaud, all while disarming a surprise bomb that was in a building that they should not have been investigating. Just for that, we are going to separate you two miscreants and assign you to even more menial tasks!
Oh, and then what does Scully say? Something about her FBI years — that she gave up a medical career for — not having made a difference? I get that we need to give a bit of Scully's background to the uninitiated ones in the audience, but to have her say that she thinks her involvement hasn't made a difference? Really? Bless her heart, GA does her usual good turn in this film, but a number of scenes don't ring true for Scully and this was one of them. (The others? The two instances where she uttered the "I had you big time" comment. I don't know about you, but even though I think Dana Scully does have a sense of humour, she has never really shown us that particular side of herself in the TV series and it felt "off" here.)
This movie is full of "how did — ?" moments, and here are the first ones for me. Mulder goes to Scully at three in the morning (where she looks way more lovely than anyone has a right to be, after arising from bed at three in the morning). She drives them to the Bethesda Naval Hospital at his request. I have to assume that it is common knowledge that this is where bodies of interest to the conspiracy are held, because how else did they know to come here? Then, not only do they successfully gain entrance, Scully manages to perform enough of an impromptu autopsy to find out quite a bit before making like a magician and joining Mulder in Dallas the next morning (which it already is... the next morning, that is).
The movie next turns to the Consortium folks to employ the standard superhero plot twist (after it's stated once more for the record that to kill Mulder, risk, crusade, blah, blah, blah). They decide that in the case of their boy, they must "take away what he holds most valuable; that which he cannot live without". It's the Superman/Lois Lane thing, the Spiderman/Mary Jane thing, you get the picture... it's the take Scully away from Mulder thing!
But what a way to do it. Tanker trucks? Corn? Bees? Bees carrying viruses? (It's not even as interesting as Homer Simpson described it, "or the bees, or the hounds with bees in their mouths so every time they bark, they shoot bees at you?") The fate of the conspiracy lies in one super persistent bee that waits until just the right shipper-heart-breaking moment to do his foul deed before a team of faux medics — who are monitoring the 911 lines on the very faint possibility that Mulder might call in an emergency — respond and snatch Scully away, at which point one of them attempts to dissuade Mulder with a gunshot aimed crazily close to his head.
So am I to understand that the Consortium guys decided to do... nothing? I mean, did they just wait for the bee sting to happen? (Which would only make sense if it had been a nanobot bee, which it wasn't.) Strughold and his gang had nothing to do with a bee stinging Scully. And it's not like anyone "sent" Mulder and Scully to the Jiffy Pop popper bee hives to have them get stung, right? Even the menacing helicopters gave up chasing them. Couldn't/shouldn't someone have taken Scully then?
It's a good thing Mulder heals well, because he literally does amazing things in the final third of this movie. After leaving the hospital in Byers' short pants and having that very compelling conversation with the WMM (my Mr. Laurence Hilliard from The Sum of My Tomorrows), he's off and running to the end of the earth to save Scully. In doing so, he also manages to set back the aliens' plans, leading to their departure in that magnificent spaceship that Scully may or may not have seen.
It's interesting that AD Cassidy complains to Scully about "the holes in your account" of what happened. Did CC and FS not realize that they were actually calling attention to the holes in their storytelling? This script traded heavily on situational coincidences that — as soon as you stop to think about them — are way too contrived to be believable. Usually, it's the bits about the alien colonization that are hard to believe. In Fight the Future, it was the story surrounding those bits that was the issue.
But come on, you say, you must have liked the movie just a little, didn't you? Well, that was the problem... I did only like it "just a little". I went back and saw it at least one other time while it was still playing in the theatre (back in 1998) and it didn't change my opinion. I thought I had seen many episodes of the series that were way better. (On the other hand, this movie sparked a memorable fanfic writing period for me, as I wrote Crossing Lines a few months after I saw this.)
Stuff I did like? Mulder was Mulder; in truth, he was a kinder, gentler Mulder than he'd been through the latter part of the fifth season. I liked his passionate speech to Scully at the end, when he told her to get as far away from him as she could. ("I'm not going to watch you die" stuck in my brain for the longest time.) I liked the explanation that WMM gave Mulder, even though it took a couple of viewings for me to get all the information straight. I liked the WMM period, for the fact that he apparently decided that enough was enough and took some sort of action. I liked the sequence where Mulder finds the bomb and his interactions with Scully in its aftermath. I liked the whole "Salt Lake City" conversation that led us into the hallway; some wonderful dialogue was exchanged. (What Mulder says to her still brings tears to my eyes.) The rest of it (such as the heroic but unlikely rescue) just didn't hit the believable mark for me.
On Rotten Tomatoes, FtF shows up as having a fresh rating of 64/72%. I figure that's fair. (By contrast, IWtB has a 32/32% rating, which I find alarming, considering the fact that all of the principals want to do yet another feature film.) I'm not one of the fans who wants to see new TXF movies. It was a great show for the most part and impacted TV in many, many significant ways, but it's past its prime as something to put up on the big screen.
Especially when the creators are not really that great at doing it in the first place, as previous attempts have shown.
Rating: * *
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