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annathepiperSo, yeah. Second X-Files movie. Picoreview: at first glance, it was simply massively stupid. But after I thought about it, it was also extremely annoying. All you X-Files fans on my Friends list, if you've thought about seeing it, don't bother.
Don't get me wrong--I wasn't expecting it to really be good, but I was nursing a tiny hope that it would at least be watchable. Moira MacDonald's review in the Seattle Times pretty much nails it: there are two movies here. One is the Mulder/Scully relationship movie, and that one's not half-bad. The other one, however, is the one that's in charge of the main plot, and that's the one that's just laughable and annoying.
The Mulder/Scully bits were good, mostly. It was interesting to see how their relationship had progressed from what they had in the series--though my memories of the tail end of the series are admittedly dim, since it was tanking in the last couple seasons and I didn't bother with most of Season 9. Mulder's in a self-imposed isolation, while Scully's trying to get on with her life and devote herself to her medical career.
The interesting part here has to do with the FBI contacting Mulder again to get his help on a case. Scully thinks at first that this'll help jar Mulder out of his isolation, but she comes to realize even as he catches fire again with the investigation that this is exactly the thing she just doesn't want to deal with anymore: the hardcore investigation of crimes. And yet, it's what Mulder lives for. It's sad and wistful-making to see them realize that this is a big stumbling block between them, but we do get at least a bit of an up note at the end, as Mulder urges Scully not to give up.
It's amusing too that they're still calling each other "Mulder" and "Scully" despite the fact that they've had a kid and that they've clearly been carrying on a romantic relationship for a while now.
Unfortunately, while all this is going on, we've also got the crime that's being investigated.
And as I said above, I was hanging in there for about three quarters of the movie, even if it basically was doing stuff we'd seen done before and better in the series: Mulder investigating a serial killer, a psychic of dubious reputation (in this case, he's actively repellent as he's a pedophile priest) in whose gifts no one really believes but Mulder, and Scully questioning her faith. The movie even caught my attention in that Callum Keith Rennie, a.k.a. Crazy Cylon Guy Leoben from BSG, was playing the main bad guy--and he is an effective villain.
The morning after we saw the movie, though, something really annoying occurred to me: it turned out in the movie that Rennie's character's main motivation was that he was trying to save the live of his partner, who had actually been one of the altar boys that the pedophile priest had abused before. And by "save the life of", I mean "kidnap local women so he can SWAP THEIR HEADS OUT FOR HIS PARTNER'S HEAD".
Which means that OH LOOK we have CRAZY QUEER GUY as the villain.
Part of me acknowledges the argument that one should be able to write stories with a psychotic queer person as the villain, just as much as one should be able to write stories about psychotic straight people. Thing is? Too much of society still equates "queer" to "crazy" in general, and this movie is just not good enough to make up for the fact that we have gratuitously queer characters as antagonists here. There's even a line of dialogue that points out that these guys have a marriage license in the state of Massachusetts.
Furthermore, why the hell, if these guys were queer, was Rennie's character trying to put his partner's head on a woman's body? Because we only saw him kidnapping women--the FBI agent whose disappearance provoked Mulder being called in in the first place, and later on, another woman who swam at the same pool.
So not only do we get CRAZY QUEER GUYS mileage, we also got CRAZY TRANSGENDER FREAK mileage going on as well!
Both of which lead into the stultifying stupidity in general of the whole "trying to transplant lover's head onto somebody else's body" plot. You know what I don't want to be thinking of when I'm trying to watch an X-Files story? The Brain That Wouldn't Die, that's what. When the big reveal happened that this was in fact what was going on, all hint of credibility that this movie had had up to that point not only went right out the window, it dove headfirst screaming into the street. By the time we got to the scene where a two-headed guard dog attacked Mulder as he was trying to break into the bad guys' hideout, I was thinking "oh for fuck's sake" and cringing.
Mind you, the whole sequence involving an injured Mulder hauling himself out of his wrecked car was pretty intense, as was Scully calling on Skinner (a way too damned brief appearance for that character) for help in finding him. But that was just not enough to override the stupidity of OH NOEZ TWO-HEADED GUARD DOG!
In conclusion, just... guh. The truth may be out there, but sad to say, this movie didn't find it.
Don't get me wrong--I wasn't expecting it to really be good, but I was nursing a tiny hope that it would at least be watchable. Moira MacDonald's review in the Seattle Times pretty much nails it: there are two movies here. One is the Mulder/Scully relationship movie, and that one's not half-bad. The other one, however, is the one that's in charge of the main plot, and that's the one that's just laughable and annoying.
The Mulder/Scully bits were good, mostly. It was interesting to see how their relationship had progressed from what they had in the series--though my memories of the tail end of the series are admittedly dim, since it was tanking in the last couple seasons and I didn't bother with most of Season 9. Mulder's in a self-imposed isolation, while Scully's trying to get on with her life and devote herself to her medical career.
The interesting part here has to do with the FBI contacting Mulder again to get his help on a case. Scully thinks at first that this'll help jar Mulder out of his isolation, but she comes to realize even as he catches fire again with the investigation that this is exactly the thing she just doesn't want to deal with anymore: the hardcore investigation of crimes. And yet, it's what Mulder lives for. It's sad and wistful-making to see them realize that this is a big stumbling block between them, but we do get at least a bit of an up note at the end, as Mulder urges Scully not to give up.
It's amusing too that they're still calling each other "Mulder" and "Scully" despite the fact that they've had a kid and that they've clearly been carrying on a romantic relationship for a while now.
Unfortunately, while all this is going on, we've also got the crime that's being investigated.
And as I said above, I was hanging in there for about three quarters of the movie, even if it basically was doing stuff we'd seen done before and better in the series: Mulder investigating a serial killer, a psychic of dubious reputation (in this case, he's actively repellent as he's a pedophile priest) in whose gifts no one really believes but Mulder, and Scully questioning her faith. The movie even caught my attention in that Callum Keith Rennie, a.k.a. Crazy Cylon Guy Leoben from BSG, was playing the main bad guy--and he is an effective villain.
The morning after we saw the movie, though, something really annoying occurred to me: it turned out in the movie that Rennie's character's main motivation was that he was trying to save the live of his partner, who had actually been one of the altar boys that the pedophile priest had abused before. And by "save the life of", I mean "kidnap local women so he can SWAP THEIR HEADS OUT FOR HIS PARTNER'S HEAD".
Which means that OH LOOK we have CRAZY QUEER GUY as the villain.
Part of me acknowledges the argument that one should be able to write stories with a psychotic queer person as the villain, just as much as one should be able to write stories about psychotic straight people. Thing is? Too much of society still equates "queer" to "crazy" in general, and this movie is just not good enough to make up for the fact that we have gratuitously queer characters as antagonists here. There's even a line of dialogue that points out that these guys have a marriage license in the state of Massachusetts.
Furthermore, why the hell, if these guys were queer, was Rennie's character trying to put his partner's head on a woman's body? Because we only saw him kidnapping women--the FBI agent whose disappearance provoked Mulder being called in in the first place, and later on, another woman who swam at the same pool.
So not only do we get CRAZY QUEER GUYS mileage, we also got CRAZY TRANSGENDER FREAK mileage going on as well!
Both of which lead into the stultifying stupidity in general of the whole "trying to transplant lover's head onto somebody else's body" plot. You know what I don't want to be thinking of when I'm trying to watch an X-Files story? The Brain That Wouldn't Die, that's what. When the big reveal happened that this was in fact what was going on, all hint of credibility that this movie had had up to that point not only went right out the window, it dove headfirst screaming into the street. By the time we got to the scene where a two-headed guard dog attacked Mulder as he was trying to break into the bad guys' hideout, I was thinking "oh for fuck's sake" and cringing.
Mind you, the whole sequence involving an injured Mulder hauling himself out of his wrecked car was pretty intense, as was Scully calling on Skinner (a way too damned brief appearance for that character) for help in finding him. But that was just not enough to override the stupidity of OH NOEZ TWO-HEADED GUARD DOG!
In conclusion, just... guh. The truth may be out there, but sad to say, this movie didn't find it.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-17 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-18 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 05:20 am (UTC)I can't quite take issue with Scully at least wanting to move on--but I do take issue with her giving Mulder shit about his old fire catching over an investigation he wouldn't have even been in if she hadn't pointed him at it in the first place. And that whole spiel about Mulder bringing the "darkness" into their home--meh. Doesn't she trust the man well enough by now to understand whether or not he's capable of keeping work out of their abode?
Still, though... what few interesting glimmers of their relationship we had was not enough to build a movie on. I'm really quite disappointed that we didn't get a movie of bigger scope, like oh, say, dealing with the alien invasion that was supposed to be coming in 2012!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-17 03:17 am (UTC)Huh?
DO what?
WTF?!
My head just broke.
Let me fix it:
no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 05:14 am (UTC)Hee! The *other* movie you mentioned . . .
Date: 2008-08-17 03:36 am (UTC)I find this memory oddly neat.
::now having a whole stream of memories from that Sunday morning series, from bad vampire movies to this thing where these guys get stranded on this island full of witches and Our Hero decides to hang out w/his new girlfriend even after he realizes he has to make a choice between life w/her and all his friends dying--someone needs to do a riff on this theme, if I ever start writing again I shall eventually get around to it -- to a vast horde of wonderful Godzilla movies::
Danke.
Re: Hee! The *other* movie you mentioned . . .
Date: 2008-08-20 05:12 am (UTC)And I note that the MST3K version of The Brain That Wouldn't Die almost makes the movie palatable. ;) ALMOST!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-17 05:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 05:01 am (UTC)Mulder and Scully did actually get involved before the series ended--though Chris Carter IMHO handled it badly. One of the big beefs I had with the tail end of the series was this big mystery plot that happened about Scully being pregnant; the show was all "ooooo maybe it's an ALIEN BABY". Only it turns out that, well, Mulder was the father.
And
Because they never did on camera. Nor did we get any non-sexual scenes that even indicated that they'd moved from a platonic relationship to a romantic one, as near as I can recall; I can't even remember them expressing feelings for one another. Granted, I'm kind of fuzzy on the last three seasons--Duchovny was kind of phoning in his part by that point, and the plots were suffering, so I was watching only erratically.
We skipped most of Season 9, the final season, at the Murk. We only watched the series finale just so we could see how it was going to resolve. And all I remember about it was Scully and Mulder lying together in a motel room bed as the credits rolled.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 05:08 am (UTC)But it just makes no sense to me that women were the victims shown on camera. All I can wonder there is whether the writers decided that female victims would somehow play better for the audience than male victims, or something. Which is also kind of annoying, as I think of it.
The pillow talk scene was definitely one of the better ones in the movie, indeed. And yeah, I was kind of irritated by the whole "OH NOEZ WE CAN'T BE TOGETHER" bit. Jesus Christ, Scully, have you not figured out after this long with Mulder what makes him tick? And you're giving him shit for actually perking up and sinking his teeth into the case he's on BECAUSE YOU POINTED HIM AT IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? If you're allowed to be a doctor, why isn't he allowed to investigate stuff? Sheesh. :)
Though I did get at least a hopeful vibe off the end when Mulder was pressing her about the whole "don't give up" thing. The message there was very clearly "don't give up on us", so I came away with the idea that the incidents in the movie would be a rough spot in the relationship--but not that it would end it. (That's my story anyway, and I'm sticking to it. ;) )
no subject
Date: 2008-08-17 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 05:15 am (UTC)