Case 05, File 21: Fight The Future

AKA: The Big Damn Movie

Approaching a movie to review is a slightly different act than approaching an episode of a TV show. I mean, a movie is longer (rimshot). But more seriously, while a TV show can have reasonable expectations that its audience will at least be familiar with a lot of the basics going into each new episode, a movie generally has to stand on its own merits, regardless of how jaw droppingly huge the show it's based on was at the time.


Our movie kicks off where you'd expect any good movie to kick off: 35,000 years BC. Specifically a couple of cavemen take shelter in a cave, which I guess they'd want to do since it's in their name. The cave turns out to be filled with aliens and after a brief scuffle, both the alien and one of the cavemen end up dead, and the surviving caveman ends up with a bad case of Black Oil. We then cut to the present day (well 1998) where a kid falls into the cave and winds up with an equally bad case of Black Oil, which is immediately spread to some firefighters before the Conspiracy arrives to cover it up.

We then cut to three weeks later where a couple of young new FBI Agents named Mulder and Scully (with names like that they'll never go far) wandering around a building in Dallas. See the building across the street got a bomb threat called in but Mulder has a hunch. And since Mulder is never wrong, turns out the bomb is in the building they were searching. But the lead bomb disposal guy just sits there and lets the bomb go off! So we get a cool explosion out of it. That's nice.

 But the FBI doesn't think it's nice and want to blame Mulder and Scully for...some...reason? Anyway, Scully starts getting whispers she'll be transferred and if she is, she'll leave the FBI. She won't work at the FBI without Mulder and is there something in my eye? Anyway, Mulder gets hammered at a bar and eventually gets told by an old man named Kurtzweil that the explosion was to cover up some dead bodies who were listed as killed in the explosion. So Mulder sneaks Scully past a military guard on the morgue and gets to the bodies which are uh, Jello-O, so Scully performs an autopsy.

Honestly, this is where all movies should start. Just to check in.

While all this is happening, the Cigarette Smoking Man shows up at the place where the Black Oil is and finds that one of the bodies has an alien gestating inside it, Xenomorph style baby. So he wants to test out his vaccine and then destroy it. Scully meanwhile discovers the bodies have been infected with an alien virus (hence the jell-o-fication) and as soon as she heads out to meet up with Mulder, finds that some fossils found in the explosion also have the virus. Mulder checks in with Kurtzweil who tells him that FEMA will turn off the government under the right circumstances? I dunno, I tend to tune out when conspiracy nuts talk about FEMA.

After a brief check in with the Conspiracy (who think they've been betrayed by the aliens and also want to stop Mulder) we head back to the Black Oil filled cave, where the alien uh...hatches? That's not a great word for a person. Anyway the alien pops out and injures one of the scientists before getting locked in with the scientist. Mulder and Scully arrive soon after, just in time to follow the tanker trucks on a circuitous journey track them to a cornfield and a pair of domes. Domes filled with BEES! After another cool chase scene (involving some helicopters) our heroes escape.

But not for long, as Scully gets transferred to Salt Lake City, and immediately quits, which is honestly what I would do too. But Mulder wants to keep digging and he and Scully have a really emotional conversation and they're about to kiss and then history's greatest monster (a bee) stings Scully and she gets the alien virus. Mulder calls 911 but the Conspiracy shows up, shoots him and absconds with Scully.

I just really like this shot, leave me alone.

Mulder wakes up in the hospital with Skinner and the Lone Gunmen and with some help from the Lone Gunmen escapes, only for him and Kurtzweil to get immediately grabbed by the Well-Manicured Man, who lays out the uh, the entire plot of the rest of the series for him. Then he gives Mulder the vaccine, tells him where Scully is and how to save her, gives him a swift pat on the ass and blows up in a car bomb. Sic Transit Gloria Munchausen.

So Mulder goes to where Scully is being held, which turns out to be *checks notes* Antarctica. Don't think too hard about that one there. He sneaks into the *checks notes again* alien spaceship, gets Scully the vaccine and then the spaceship completely freaks out and...I actually didn't totally follow that part, but whatever, they escape and the ship takes out. Scully decides to keep working with Mulder (after telling the committee that they don't have an FBI unit capable of investigating it) and the movie ends with the X-Files getting reopened.

How do you approach a movie like this? Do you take the normal approach with a movie, as a standalone entity? Functionally impossible, the movie gives the arrival of the Cigarette Smoking Man a glamour shot (framed by Helicopters) but the movie never explains who he is, it would be raw nonsense without the show to explain it. But approaching it like it's a super long episode of the show feels wrong too. So I'm just gonna take the usual approach: Review the movie and dissect the question until I forget what I'm talking about.

"Hey, those weren't always there right? I'm not THAT unobservant?"

I suppose the first question to ask would be whether the narrative at the center of the movie actually works as a story, and I think it does. Assuming you know and care about who Mulder and Scully are (and can get a quick grasp of who the villains are, even if you don't know) then the movie is really engaging. It's well paced, its got some good action beats and a killer finale. This movie came out in 1998, the waning days of practical effects being the standard, and some of the stuff, like the explosion in the opening minutes, are still really excellent.

It's also got a pretty solid emotional component. I dunno how well it lands if you haven't been following these two people for 5 years, but the threat of them being split up, of their partnership ending, hangs over the entire film and it's good enough to keep me, and it appears most of the fanbase, invested. Since it's also the movie, that's lead in episode had the office burning down and the titular X-Files being shuttered, that threat feels real. Yes, I know that Mulder and Scully aren't going to get split up, but being able to believe that it's a possibility for 120 minutes is still important.

Which is as good an opportunity as any to talk about the relationship stuff. I think it's safe to say that a big portion of The X-Files' fanbase is, was and will continue to be, people who are super invested in Mulder and Scully's relationship, or to put it another way, people who want them to boink. I know this because the word shipping (short for relationship) was popularized by The X-Files' fanbase. Yeah such stuff existed before, but the word took off from there. I've hinted (read: stated outright) that I'm one of those people before, although I usually play such things pretty close to the vest, but yeah, while it's not the only draw for me, it's certain A draw.

I hate the bee from this shot more than I hate Cigarette Smoking Man.

While various writers have gone back and forth on how close they wanted to make them in the first five seasons, season six and on are where that idea started to be more closely interwoven with the fabric of the series, and I think that's based heavily on the events of this movie. For starters, this movie canonized the fact that Mulder and Scully are the most important and meaningful relationship each of them has, and also gives them their first major almost-kiss, even if it was interrupted by History's Greatest Monster (read: That fucking BEE!)

I'm not one of those people who thinks that getting the lead couple together will ruin a series, but it something that needs to be handled delicately, and I think that having Mulder (an obsessive conspiracy nut with a serious case of arrested development) and Scully (an emotionally closed off badass with some pretty major father issues) fumbling towards a kiss in a moment of emotional vulnerability is pretty much the most in character way to handle this scene. In other words, I just spent 3 paragraphs saying that I like the hallway scene, it's good.

One major quibble I have is that as the conspiracy stuff starts getting more solidly defined, it has to have more solidly defined concepts behind it, which is where things in 2019 start to get awkward. I said while on stream with Dan Olson (shoutout to Dan, go follow him) that part of what makes The X-Files awkward on rewatches is the public perception of conspiracy theories has shifted, and not for the better. I want to make a jokey reference to that line from Arrested Development ("I don't want to blame everything on 9/11") but honestly, 9/11 was the watershed moment.

"Scully, you gotta see this!"
"I saw the aliens earlier Mulder, you win, I'm not turning over." 

Conspiracy nuts were no longer quirky guys who watched Bigfoot footage in bed, they were now guys who interrupted press conferences to say that Bush did 9/11. And now, by 2019, conspiracy nuts have shifted to people who shoot up pizza parlors and won't shut the fuck up about QAnon. None of that is this movie's fault, it's still a good movie, but I can't help that real world stuff makes me wince when Kurtzweil starts rambling about FEMA, it's just a wee bit too close to Alex Jones stuff.

Less blamable on real world stuff is the stretch in the 2nd act where the movie just has to have Mulder and Scully following breadcrumbs to get them to the cornfield/bee dome (Bee Dome would be a good name for a rock band) but that's a minor nitpick. Fight the Future is exciting, it's well shot and edited, it's funny, it has cameos by other X-Files secondary characters that don't feel gratuitous, it's everything a fan should expect from a movie of the series. It even has an epic exit for the Well Manicured Man, who I will miss. So I guess my end point is that if I take the movie as part of the series, it's a damn fine part of the series.

Oh fuck, if I was gonna make this part of my Season 5 reviews I should have done my summary part here, god I'm so bad at this.

Case Notes:

• The first bit of audio after the 20th Century Fox fanfare is a tiny bit of The X-Files' theme. Good call.
• Opening with the two cavemen in the ice cave, getting attacked by the alien is also a good call, it both sets up stuff for later and gives the movie the feeling of having cold open like it was a normal episode.
• The kid getting killed by the Black Oil is pretty good too, and it's nice to see what a Black Oil attack looks like with more of a budget.
• Okay, I like the pan-up-pan-down time shift with the firemen coming to find the kid in the cave. I like edits like that.
• Scully's first bit of dialogue is explaining to Mulder the statistics and psychology behind finding a bomb. Mulder's is to talk about how to look for the unexpected. It's good that we're establishing our leads to new audiences with 100% in character dialogue.
• Mmm, that is some good Mulder and Scully banter on the rooftop. Great stuff.
• Is the brand of soda on the soda machine a regional one I'm unaware of, or is it a fake brand for the movie?
• I love the slow build to the reveal of the bomb and I love Scully yelling at the guy at the desk not to think, just to make it happen, it is a CLASSIC Scully moment (Mulder will have his classic moment later).
• I love the bit with the bomb defusing guy just sitting there watching the clock tick down, it's a great way of showing that he's in on it.
• The explosion is great, we don't usually get practical effects like that anymore.
• I'm sorry, they're mad at Mulder at the hearing? He found the bomb when they were looking in the wrong building, they shouldn't even be trying to blame him.
• Scully basically telling Mulder that she doesn't want to work in the FBI without him makes me want to cry. I love them so much.
• To the bartender: You don't need to say Poopy Day, this is a movie, you can say shitty. Mulder says Shit like six times.
• Mulder's rant to the bartender is his CLASSIC moment, honestly one of his best rants in the entire show.
• Mulder is peeing on an Independence Day poster. What was it with 90s blockbusters and taking shots at each other?
• I genuinely forget Kurtzweil is in this movie to push Mulder forward. Does he show up again later in the series or am I remembering wrong?
• Mulder shows up to Scully's door at 3AM, tells her to get dressed and come with him and she does it. God I love them
• The effect of the guy with the alien gestating inside him with slightly translucent skin is excellent, very freaky.
• Mulder bullshitting his way through the guard at the morgue is excellent, I wish we got more stuff like that.
• Mulder just leaves Scully at the morgue to do an autopsy on a guy who is basically jell-o and goes to find Kurtzweil.
• I like that Mulder, while a believer in aliens again, is still credulous enough to think that Kurtzweil is full of shit when he looks at the books he wrote.
• Nice of Kurtzweil to lay out the setup for the rest of the series' plot for us.
• Mulder decides to go to Texas without Scully but Scully comes anyway. I love them so much.
• -2 Degrees Celsius seems kinda high given that they end up in Antarctica. That's what, like 28 degrees Fahrenheit?
• I like them leaving the scientist to die in the cave, nice and heartless without seeming cartoonishly evil, but leaving an alien in a cave in Texas seems shortsighted.
• I like our little check in at the Well Manicured Man's house, he's always been the most human member of the Conspiracy.
• The conversation between the Conspiracy members is mostly stuff we know already (Conspiracy members are working with the aliens, want a cure, won't kill Mulder) but I think it's to get casual viewers or new viewers for the movie on board.
• Even the Conspiracy refers to Scully as "The thing Mulder can't live without." Aw.
• The kids who Mulder and Scully question are terrible at keeping secrets.
• Mulder and Scully arrived just an hour after the guys who buried the alien. Convenient.
• Mulder taking the middle path when he and Scully can't agree is great, as is his "How many times have I been wrong? Never. Not driving anyway."
• I like Mulder's shadow from the car on the train as it passes by. This movie actually has some pretty solid shots honestly.
• Okay, the two white domes in the middle of nothing look like boobs, I went for the easy joke, are you happy now?
• I have very few notes for the bee and helicopter escape sequence, I was too busy watching it.
• As Mulder's informants go, Kurtzweil is at the bottom, he's basically asking Mulder to find information for him.
• Scully collapses describing her symptoms to Mulder, which is vintage Scully.
• I love the part where Mulder gets shot (from a filmmaking perspective). The movie gives us just enough of a beat to recognize who the driver is (and therefore what's about to happen) to make it land.
• The Lone Gunmen being the people who wake up to find Mulder is great, as is the plan to sneak Mulder out of the hospital. It took them long enough to acknowledge that Mulder and Byers dress similarly.
• I guess Kutzweil won't be showing up later, since he just got killed.
• The Well Manicured Man being the one who helps Mulder is excellent because it works both in a broader series context (knowing his whole relationship with the rest of the Conspiracy) and in the context of the movie alone (he disagreed with their plan earlier).
• It's pretty impressive that Mulder managed to get to Antarctica in only like, 48 hours, given that it took me 33 hours to fly home from Anchorage in November. How did he even get a flight out there? Or am I just not supposed to worry about it?
• Not too many X-Files episodes get to end with Mulder just wandering around an alien spaceship, I'll give the movie that.
• Mulder picks up Scully's cross, as he should.
• The things Scully and the other patients are being held in are suitably horrific, as is the results of him giving her the vaccine.
• Okay, I'll give them this criticism, the CGI cold weather breath is pretty bad.
• Mulder's plan to get out of the spaceship is just to crawl back up the vent he slid down. Mulder is bad at long term planning.
• Mulder doesn't need a boost to get up to the vent because he has about a foot on Scully.
• Mulder tells Scully "You gotta see this" when the spaceship is taking off but honestly, that's pretty low on the list of "Shit that happened to you today."
• I guess we can assume that the Cigarette Smoking Man left them their ATV and that's how they survived?
• Scully telling the panel what amounts to "You can't investigate this shit cause you don't have The X-Files anymore," is fantastic.
• Final conversation between Mulder and Scully? Excellent. Just give me lots of Mulder and Scully needing each other, it feeeeeeeeds me.
• I like the final telegram, but the whole conversation basically amounts to "Gosh, Mulder can't possibly investigate this across 6 more seasons can he?"
• As always, these reviews are supported by my Patreon. Please check it out, so I can keep these going long enough to get to the second X-Files movie.

Current Celebrity Watch:

Kurtzweil was played by Martin Landau, an incredibly veteran actor you have almost certainly seen in something else. He won an Oscar four years before this for his performance as Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, which is still one of my favorite movies. He passed a couple years ago, which was quite sad.

The head of the committee Scully and Mulder go before is played by Blythe Danner, an incredibly veteran TV and film actress who has like a dozen Emmy and Golden Globe nominations (she won one for something called Huff?) She was in a movie called Hearts Beat Loud last year which was cute, you should see it.

And finally, the Bartender is played Glenne Headly, who had a lot of well known film and TV roles but is probably best known for playing Janet in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. She also died a couple years ago, which was also sad, she was quite young.