Please, Chris Carter, I Beg Of You To Correct Your Sins
So a friend of mine just emailed me this (hope he doesn’t mind):
“You seem unusually not geeked out about the new X-Files movie on the weekend. Do you know something the rest of us don’t?”
Most people that I know these days don’t think that’s a weird thing, although they could possibly guess from the sonic screwdriver I carry in my purse most days. But he’s an over-5-year friend, and he remembers the fact that I have both a XF alien state and a Cigarette Smoking Man 12-inch signed by Chris Owens. Can I have my nerd card now?
More about the upcoming film, old episode spoilers, big-time plot speculation, and I actually criticize Gillian Anderson. Considering I have said for years that she’s the only woman I’d switch sides for without question, any day, anywhere, this is a strange development. (In related news, I hope my mom hasn’t found my blog yet) Oh, and very subtle references to the DW finale (what else do you expect?)
I tend to get obsessed with shows and things for months at a time (hello DW, Robbie Williams, House, BT.) Not stalker-obsessed, but in need of seeing and hearing everything they have done artistically. And I did that with XF for a long stretch. All the way from the movie through two and a half more seasons. Chris Carter killed it with me when Mulder and Scully procreated off-screen and then Mulder took off. Mulder wouldn’t do that, and Scully wouldn’t let him. Not if the past seven seasons had meant anything to them.
The thing was, when I became a fan I was a huge shipper. To me, the first movie was a grand love story. We can debate the craptitude of the rest of the plot or the effects or anything artsy, but when a guy freaking gets on a plane to the Arctic Circle to find a alien spaceship and save you from certain death, that’s my idea of romantic. I’m a sucker for grand gestures. Or even small gestures, which Mulder was full of. Ever notice that Scully never drove? Girls appreciate sexist stuff like that.
But the way it was handled, where no one else had any clue that the two were doing the horizonal polka until Scully announced she was pregnant, and then dragging out the explanation through a season. And then their son turned out to have some sort of incredible powers, and Scully decided WITHOUT MULDER to give him up for adoption “to save him”? Did anyone at 1013 Productions remember a little girl named Emily? The one that was Scully’s biological daughter who died right when she found her? And whose adoptive parents had been part of the Smoking Man contingent in the Mythology? (You know, that thing that fell apart around the same time as the rest of the plot.)
And then you ended with Mulder and Scully going on the run, seemingly forgetting about their child, and they killed off the Smoking Man. I cannot think of a worse way to end their story. And I have never met a fan who loved the show’s last two seasons. I know of really few who watched the final two seasons. And it wasn’t Doggett and Reyes’ fault. It was because TPTB ruined these previous characters we loved for all the years before with a horrific jump over a really hungry shark.
As production started on this film, my expectations were really low. Although this is a Monster of the Week film (MOTW in XPhiles lingo) and so I don’t have to watch that shark get some more dinner with the Mythology, I had my doubts about all the new folks in the cast. Amanda Peete, really. Why not add Matthew Perry for some chemistry building? (And a hat tip for the departed, unloved “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”.) And how could we possibly have this film without spending the whole thing missing the Smoking Man, Krychek, Doggett, Reyes and the rest?
But the past few commercials have changed my mind. Because I am a really heartless, cynical sort who hates Hollywood endings. (Omits comment about DW finale since it hasn’t aired in the US yet…please hurry, Sci-Fi.) This is going to be so much better than the crap back then, because they’re going to take their happy ending away and screw with our heads again through the new film. Because it’s very clear from the latest commercial that Scully and Mulder are not only not together, but not in contact.
It would be completely understandable why. Scully got tired, got out and got a nice, boring, safe job somewhere. Mulder is off looking for the Loch Ness somewhere. Or maybe they switched. Remember, there were a few eps of that. But I can’t see either of them happy about it, and Scully’s kinda pent-up, so she probably wants to do a lot of yelling at him for being a dumbass.
Imagine how screwed up you’d be if you were forced to be around your biggest and oldest ex for a week working together. Either a fire sparks again and we get all that yummy dramatic tension they had before moving to “Dearest Dana” (Don’t get me started on that.) They’re going to either end it with them going to get their son and go from there or they’re going to go their separate ways at the end. Possibly sending Mulder off on cases with Scully replacements in future films. Okay, not happy about that.
And that leads to Gillian Anderson, who used to be my #1 girlcrush. She’s had the most awesome character, running through marshes and cornfields alike while wearing high heels (I almost never wear them, but I aspire to.) Always together except when the heavy stuff happened, like her cancer and losing two kids, and being kidnapped by aliens. And that was understandable. She was pretty much agnostic but started going to Mass after her daughter’s died and always wore a little cross around her neck. She was badass but she was always real.
I have worries that, like Billie Piper in the latest DW eps (sorry) she might have lost her Scully voice. She’s moved to London, had a torrid marriage and divorce and now two more kids from the man she left her husband for, allegedly. And while I think she was awesome in the way she called the Newsweek reporter on the sheer stupidity of going to interview her without knowing anything about the show, she seems to have crossed the line from quirky (I love quirky) to eccentric. Surely she remembers how to give an interview without mocking every question?
Can a Scully with really long hair (I tried for years to get the do she had in the XF movie and have never succeeded) and who might have an English accent creeping in be the same Scully who was absolutely focused on the case and willing to throw out a dozen 5-dollar words during the ep?) Has she completely turned into someone who has completely rejected her past to become a real skeptic (it seems that might not be true from the latest commercials too.
Anyway, I will be at Monoco Pictures Friday night, wearing my XF “Fight the Futre” shirt. Maybe I’ll carry the Smoking Man with me so that he’s actually at the movie if not in it. And I really want to believe.
