New X-Files Movie 228
An anonymous reader writes to let us know that a new X-Files movie is in pre-production, directed and written by Chris Carter and starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Duchovny said in an interview that his understanding is that filming will start in November for a summer 2008 release. The article notes that in an earlier interview, Anderson said the film "would stay away from the series' (and first film's) sometimes tortured mythology" (quoting the article, not Anderson).
Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
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It would be nice to have a movie based on the original season and a half. Before they started with the mythology. Sure, there was smoking man, but I don't think Carter had it worked out at that point.
The horrible thing was, I watched the first few seasons, then my company sent me out to Tokyo to take over Far East training. When I finally got back to the states, I had missed a year and a half of the series and I was lost on all the black filmy eyes. By the time the movie came out, I didn't care. I've tried
Wait, what?! (Score:5, Insightful)
God help us if this turns into some John Cusak-esque romantic comedy (with a dash of aliens).
Re:Wait, what?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait, what?! (Score:5, Funny)
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it's funny (Score:5, Interesting)
Myself, I have always loved the conspiracy arc in the x-files, and I know a lot of others who feel the same way. Although it got rather convoluted with the bees and so on, some parts of it (such as Tunguska and all that stuff with Krycek, and the shifting role of the Cancer Man/X/Deep Throat/Bill Mulder) were fascinating and were definitely what kept me tuning in week after week.
Yet some people hated that stuff, and loved the "locals tell of the mythical swamp monster... and here it is!!!!11!!!1!" type episodes, the "monster of the week" as someone called it here (also "serial killer of the week" at times). Personally I feel like those episodes were frequently poorly done, and the sfx never really carried the silly plotlines adequately. There are some notable exceptions of course (I loved the Loch Ness Monster episode, but of course that was great mostly because they never show the thing).
Of course some of the better episodes had a bit of both - a "monster of the week" which turned out to be part of the broader conspiracy arc, or segued into it.
My perception is that more hard core fans tend to prefer the aliens, casual fans prefer the wolf-man stuff. Maybe it's an attention span thing too. It will be a shame if the new episode does nothing to move the conspiracy arc forward - of course, it may well be set earlyish in the series, rather than at the end.
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I'm really getting to hate fan-think. It's cheapening the way we think of narrative. Too much adolescent desire to inhabit an imaginary world, not enough use of art/narrative to think reflectively about our own world and lives.
I normally wouldn't be so abusive, but the way that you framed it actually valourized e
Re:it's funny (Score:5, Insightful)
While meandering about a library once I picked up some book vaguely related to Lord of the Rings or Tolkien or some such and read a bit of it wherein Tolkien was lamenting the popular (at the time of his writing) disdain for fictional worlds as works of art in their own, and the insistence that all fictional stories serve some allegorical purpose of illustrating something about some particulars here in the real world. (If anyone can cite the passage I'm trying to recall I'd much appreciate that!) Of course all stories, no matter what "world" they're set in, will touch on and illustrate themes about "human" nature, whether or not the characters are actually human, because for the story to be engaging at all they've still got to be recognizable as people and thus will have (and act according to, and suffer the consequences of) psychological traits just like humans in the real world do. But the War of the Rings doesn't have to be an allegory for World War II; Sauron's Orcish army doesn't have to be a representation of the German war machine; Gandalf is not Jesus Christ come to guide the West against the forces of evil! Certainly real-world events and history can influence the creation of a fictional world - e.g. Tolkien's mythology draws clear inspiration from real-world mythology, both Christian and pagan - but that doesn't mean the fictional world has to be somehow a proxy for the real one. Maybe someone just wanted to tell a cool story against a cool backdrop. Or maybe, as was the origin of Middle-Earth, maybe someone just wanted to create a cool backdrop. Reading real-world mythology isn't always that engaging, but it paints an interesting and sometimes beautiful picture of the world.
This debate seems to me like arguing whether portraits or landscapes make for better paintings; or more accurately, whether representational painting (of real things that actually exist before the painter) is better than purely imaginative painting (of things that exist nowhere but in the artist's mind). Each sort requires a different kind of talent and is useful to different ends: a representational painter must be able to accurately reproduce the details of the real things before him, and as such talk about the details of his painting, if it's well done, can serve as proxy for talk about the real thing. But an imaginative painter who creates fanciful images from whole cloth has a level of creativity and inspiration that someone who can only paint representationally lacks, and such fanciful art is great for - you said it - escapism, which is a perfectly fine recreational activity. Likewise with portraits vs landscapes - different levels of scope, different levels of detail, both valid art forms.
Some people like vast, epic stories that flesh out grand worlds; some people like close, character-driven stories instead; some people like stories set in the real world, during real events, with which the reader is familiar to some extent; others like stories created ex nihlo which transport you into a wholly original, novel experience. All of these things have their appeal, and arguing for one over the other is as silly as arguing over favorite colors or ice cream flavors.
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Considering that Tolkien described it as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision" to a Jesuit friend, it would seem more applicable to the incursions of Islamic forces into Europe and the eventual response to
Re:it's funny (Score:4, Interesting)
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Mod the heck UP (Score:2)
Even the Chronicles of Narnia started this way - Lewis didn't start out to write an allegory of Christ, it more or less just happened after Aslan came bounding into the picture.
Re:it's funny (Score:4, Informative)
At some point he says something about fantasy and world creation (or sub-creation) being not so much 'escapism' as in a deserting soldier (a rather demeaning word), but rather as in a prisoner escaping to freedom.
Highly recommended reading.
Lake Sacandaga (Score:2)
A little coaching on the locations would have helped, too.
There was one episode that took place somewhere near Lack Sacangaga in upstate New York. I know this area. I live 30 miles from it. I went to a summer camp on its shores as a kid.
It would have been nice if someone, especially one of the "locals", pronounced it "sa can DA ga", as it should be, rather than "sa CAN
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Re:it's funny (Score:5, Interesting)
There was not an actual episode on the Loch Ness monster that I remember. It was rather an episode on 'a' lake monster (one like nessy). And they did indeed show it, at the very end of the episode after Mulder and Skully finished a great dialogue wherein Skully compared Mulder to Ahab and his quest the white whale. They leave the lake area and then the thing pops up.
I re-watched the entire series recently. The running mythos episodes were indeed good
You must remember, the mythos migrated from uncovering the government hiding aliens, to bees being used to inject the black oil alien and enslave the human race (no, wait, they were going to be used to inject the green stuff from the movie and convert all humans to sleestacks -- see my point?), to a government plot in building super soldiers, to all sorts of junk in-between.
Carter fell into the trap of keeping a series alive by never really revealing anything, but making fans think you were gonna -- the "revealing for revealing's sake." Underneath all the mystery and revealing, there was nothing there. There was no big "aha!"
Were the mythos episodes good? Yes, at first, but they fell apart and the last couple of years -- the super soldiers episodes -- were taxing at best. Now, what were always good about the mythos were some of the characters. CSM, Krychek & TLG were awesome no matter how sucky the mythos episode.
The stand-alone episodes were always up in the air, but by-and-large had staying power. Some were incredible and, yes, some sucked. To me, my best memories of x-files are from these stand alones. The Chung episode, the genie episode in the last year of Mulder, even the Burt Reynolds episode. These are some of my favorites.
I have always suspected, though, that Carter was inspired by Oliver Stone's JFK. I re-watched it a few years back and the scene between Costner and Southerland's character is like watching Mulder talking to Mr. X or the CSM. "You're closer to the truth than you realize" says Southerland to Costner. My gosh, put that into any x-files mythos episode.
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*shudder*
I believe that was the one that was banned for a while, wasn't it? How long was it before they let it air again after it premiered?
Re:The conspiracy stuff.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh man, I Think I Just.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Not as big as a beowulf orgy, though.
Aliens won't probe anymore (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Aliens won't probe anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Aliens won't probe anymore (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Aliens won't probe anymore (Score:5, Funny)
Well I wouldn't climb over her to get to you.
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I don't care if the movie sucks. I'll pay just to see Scully on the screen one more time.
but as I always say... (Score:5, Funny)
Age aside, I lost my fascination with Sculley when they made her vulnerable and emotional. The ice-maiden thing was quite the draw, but when I saw her crying and needy...hell, I can find that anywhere. Cerebral and aloof? Sign me up.
Nope (was Re:Aliens won't probe anymore) (Score:3, Informative)
> gone.
Nope. She was recently in a UK TV production of Bleak House.
She's certainly less gamine, but still *gorgeous*, at least to my taste (to me Sigourney Weaver's hotter in Alien Resurrection than the original).
Conrad
well, the aliens left (Score:2)
and a high probability of a good soundtrack.
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Oh, that was funny as shit! X-files was one of the few series that both my wife and I watched (normally, we have very different tastes). After the sideshow episode, we both starting using the cliche, "Don't worry, somebody ate the problem".
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Cheers!
Lost its edge (Score:5, Interesting)
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Did you ever watch the X-Files?
Didn't Scully once do a hostage swap with an alien corpse for Mulder? Wasn't that in the first season? I was a big fan back in the day, but I think was fun involved a lot of ignoring the solid proof and carefully avoiding the lack of tension between believer and skeptic.
That said, the only time I ever dreamt I was married, it was to Gillian
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Did it go somthing like you were a fanatic believer that you & her were made for eachother, but she was a carefull skeptic & you ended up chasing her around for the whole dream ?
I just want to make sure without a doubt, that I'm not alone.
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The problem with series is, that try to keep the status quo for years and y
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Yours sincerely,
Robert Patrick
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The Lone Gunmen die! (Score:3, Funny)
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It will never reach the cinema (Score:3, Informative)
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With the lawsuit resolved, the property can now be developed in new ways.
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So it all sounds a lot more likely/official this time around.
Thusly, all the stories now.
So what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
So what's the point, other than to cash in on the franchise? Way bother to have an X-files move if you don't folow the X-files back story in it? It would be like taking some scifi space move that was completely unrelater to the star trek universe, casting a couple of aging trek actors, and slappimg the Star Trek name on it.
Re:So what's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the film industry, sequels get created precisely for that purpose: to cash in on the franchise.
Executive producers greenlight these types of films because they're virtually guaranteed a certain audience.
-ben
(BCIT Film)
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Cheers.
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Fox is convinced the reason the first movie wasn't a huge success is because it didn't appeal to new fans, which is BS. I never watched the TV show, because I didn't have the time, and I wanted to watch it someday from the beginning and completely follow the plot. Thanks to the advent of DVD, I was eventually able to buy the entire run of the series and do just that.
I watched the movi
Duchovney & Anderson (Score:5, Interesting)
An X-Files movie would be great. But you don't need Fox or Dana to do it. Fresh faces, fresh talent, less annoying. Although, if they could get W. B. Davis back as the C.S.M in a major plot part that would be fine by me, I liked that guy. It could be a pre-quel, before the X-Files, examining some aspect of the origins of the whole back story. That'd be cool.
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X-files is to blame for my refusal to watch long story arc shows anymore, Lost, Heroes, etc.
A good story arc doesn't just fizzle away, but you can bet your TV that's what will happen. It gets to the point that it's obvious the writers are just making things up from week to week just to string the viewers along. The plot starts to look like swiss cheese, and then it just melts away.
I was hooked on Chris Carter's long running "mythology". Talk about ge
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When the supposed super secret conspiracy government was spilling all sorts of urban legends for everyone to see, and mystically collecting the evidence in the end, that should've tipped you off better.
You can't have a conspiracy that involved the entire horror pop-culture, and that is both so poorly kept that it has sprungs hundreds of weird cases across USA, and then still well kept enough not to leave evidence.
Not to sp
"hot" women (Score:3, Informative)
If you want consistently "hot" women then try watching porn, that's what it's for.
Scully's character was very complex and brought a vital part of the main dynamic of the x-files (faith/spirituality versus objectivity/rationality) to life. On matters of the paranormal, she represented science and obje
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Being straight, Duchovn
Re:"hot" women (Score:5, Funny)
If you want consistently "hot" women then try watching porn
The truth really *is* out there.
I just didn't expect to find it on Slashdot.
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You would have to have seen Zoolander to get that joke.
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An X-Files movie would be great. But you don't need Fox or Dana to do it. Fresh faces, fresh talent, less annoying. Although, if they could get W. B. Davis back as the C.S.M in a major plot part that would be fine by me, I liked that guy. It could be a pre-quel, before the X-Files, examining some aspect of the origins of the whole back story. That'd be cool.
The episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" did a pretty great job setting up CSM's back-story. He killed both JFK and MLK Jr, and explained that he did the latter himself because he respected the man too much to leave the job to someone else.
The kicker is when CSM's short story gets published -- in a porn rag.
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Re:Duchovney & Anderson (Score:5, Funny)
Yup. Other movie ideas I'm having along the same approach:
X-Men movie but swap the DNA mutations for emo culture and hard metal/rock underground.
Batman movie without costumes and gadgets, about the struggles of a billionaire Bruce Wayne to increase his company revenue.
James Bond prequel. Like, how his parents met up and married or something?
Toy Story movie about alcoholic toys in mid-life crisis, sexual problems and physical abuse.
Star Wars movie set in the wild west.
Jurassic Park, but instead of real dinosaurs, it turns out Dr. John Hammond hired ILM to make elaborate fake computer dinosaurs and escape abroad with hundreds of millions of investor funding.
Saw 4, where it turns out everything in Saw 1, 2, 3 was a dream sequence of a poor patient dying of cancer, and telling the story of a cancer patient finding true love in his last days of life.
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Doing great, actually. We're shooting last scene now, but it's pivotal to the plot: we put all old Star Trek episodes in a pile in the middle of the screen, and the everyone in the new cast takes turn peeing on it.
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They already made this movie (Serenity) .. it started as a TV series (Firefly). And it was great! :-)
Those of you who were fans will know.
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Guys like you are why women hide their intelligence and cultivate the whole ditzy airhead thing. Guys like me like cerebral women, even those who age with time (you know, like everything in the goddamned universe) and we hate guys like you because women think they're talking to you when really they're talking to me, and they are cautious about seeming too intelligent. You haven't quite ruined my life, but you make it much harder to find interes
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Scully was a bit husky initially and she had that big "Maniac Cop" chin. She didn't get hot until about the third season.
LK
Well, Gillian Anderson WAS pregnant during the second season ...
Anderson is back (Score:2, Funny)
No "tortured mythology"? (Score:2)
At the end of the series, we're waiting for the alien apocalypse (or *something* significant*) in 2012. Mulder and Scully are finally together. Everything's pointing towards an end of the world scenario, and they're going to give us a MotW? Why bother? Unless, of course, there's a third movie planned to cover the events in 2012... or X-Files 2 is a Jose Chung-style "episode." That
I don't see the point. (Score:2, Insightful)
The show that wouldn't die (Score:2)
X-Files stopped being cool after the first few seasons. It was at its best when the series focussed on unrelated weird stuff every episode. In the later seasons it basically became a big soap opera with aliens. I stopped watching when it got to the point where missing an episode or two meant you had no idea what was going on for the rest of the season.
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Yeah, (Score:3, Funny)
Scully and Reyes Sex scene now we are talking Box Office Gold.
Surprise (Score:4, Funny)
"Evolution" is the only non-x-files movie I can remember having seen either of them in, and belive me; I'd rather I forgot.
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Actually, Anderson's career has been doing pretty well. She's been taking more serious roles ("House of Mirth", "Last King of Scotland", and PBS/BBC's "Bleak House"). Her only drawback is that she's now based in London, not LA, so it's a bit more difficult to land those plum roles in big-budget American films.
Duchovny on the other hand has hit hard times ("House of D", anyone? Brrrr..), even though he does have a new flick coming out soon.
Both of them it seems are trying desperately to avoid getting Shatn
Balance was good (Score:2)
A lot of people have commented that the conspiracy plot was the real meat of the show, and the non-conspiracy episodes were a waste of time. And a lot of people have commented that the oddball episodes were the only interesting ones, and the conspiracy got stale. I personally think the success of the show comes down to having both types of episodes. Obviously the FBI was not going to hire these two agents to investigate one single controversial case for a decade. It made sense that they had shifting res
The plot (spoiler warning!) (Score:3, Funny)
Now that it's starting, I can tell you all the plotline. In the first half of the movie, Scully and Mulder will travel deep into the artic to find the lost alien mothership that contains the special brand of bees needed to resurrect the Lone Gunmen.
In the second half of the movie, Scully and Mulder will try to save the world from Zombie Lone Gunmen.
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The X-Files had a planned story arc that should have lasted seven seasons; stupidly, Chris Carter let himself be bribed, and tried to extend things
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My god, you're trusting. Did you ever watch Alias, JJ Abrams' previous series? It had a lot of mysterious backstory, involving the magical Rambaldi devices and several -- I lost count -- rival secret spy organisations, and everybody
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Oh, dear gods, not Alias...
Started off as a spy series, then turned into a bloody soap opera.
I have never seen an episode of Lost, but now I have no desire to check it out. At all.
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Lost is the most well thought out show I've ever seen. It isn't a soap opera, and the story is huge. I honestly am amazed that someone is attempting to tell a story of this scale and caliber on television. The show gets deeper and better the more you go along, bu
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A multi-year arc is pretty damn hard to pull off. Hardly anyone has ever tried, and fewer have succeeded. With the network breathing down your neck to maximise
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I'm in Hong Kong. We get Lost and such series here usually several months after the US. But the advantage is, they run them straight through one per week, even for series cancelled midseason in the US. If I care about a series I have to take care to avoid spoilers. Of course, the DVDs are available here too, and downloads, but I rarely indulge in that unless I happen t
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Alias seemed to have a metaplot planned for several seasons, but the studio execs hated the whole Rumbaldi thing, by season 4 they ditched the whole serial/cliffhanger thing and even aired episodes out of order. Eventually it became a lame spy/action series with the overall plot taking a back seat, and even completely contradicting itself as Sydney becoming pregnant with no explanati