Over the last few months, my girlfriend and I have been watching The X Files, and we've really been enjoying it. I enjoy that it frames its science fiction in a fairly believable world, which is sorely lacking in the genre. The first movie, “Fight the Future” takes place between seasons five and six, and having just completed season five, we decided to watch the movie. My expectations were fairly high, but I was let down incredibly, for many reasons. The film had many flaws, but most of them can fall under the following two categories.
*SPOILER ALERT*
1: Too much serendipity
There were far too many moments where things just happened to work out in the film. At the beginning, there was a bomb threat in a building. Mulder plays a “hunch” that the bomb is actually planted in the building across the street. Then, he just happens to want a drink, and just happens to go to the one vending machine in which the bomb was set (there were several in the room, and the building was very large). Then Mulder just happens to know that “something is wrong,” just before the building blows up. Later on, Mulder finds out about tanker trucks from these kids, which he assumes are carrying an alien virus. They are pointed in the direction of the trucks, but come to a fork in the road. Deciding to go neither left nor right, they go straight, off into some desert. Then they stop at a set of train tracks, which happens to be at just the right moment for a train to go by, with tanker truck trailers on it! They follow the train to some secret government base, and enter some big inflatable dome things that are full of bees. They run out, and incredibly, are not stung at all. A bee stays in Scully's jacket, however, and after she runs through a corn field, drives to the Dallas airport, boards a plane, flies back to Washington and goes back to the FBI office, it stings her. Mulder calls 911, and a spoof ambulance shows up to take Scully (they just happened to be ready for the call). Mulder asks what hospital they are being taken to, and the driver shoots Mulder in the face. The real ambulance comes momentarily after, and takes him to the hospital, where the Lone Gunmen guys and Skinner wake him up. Mulder finds out that Scully is on an alien ship in Antarctica, and just happens to walk over a hole that collapses and allows him to fall right into the alien ship. The thing is gigantic, as we are shown in the next shot. Mulder then falls down a slide thing, and just happens to end up right beside Scully who is in some pod thing. Then the two escape the ship and it flies away.
The odds of all this happening are insane. There is no detective work here, no investigation, and no actual thought on the part of the main characters. They just keep falling into situations perfectly. If not for pure and total luck, our heroes would have failed miserably and evil triumphs, etc.
2: Logic goes out the window
Right at the beginning, a kid falls through some dirt into a hole and gets infected with the virus. This is just outside of a town, where numerous people have almost certainly walked before. The kid was maybe ten or twelve, which means an adult would definitely make it collapse. This in itself is bizarre enough, but given the fact that the ground is so unstable, why would the government agents who showed up to deal with the situation drive their trucks right up to the ground that is so unstable that a 90 pound kid makes it collapse? Why didn't it collapse?
Also, when Mulder goes to rescue Scully in Antarctica, he takes some ice tractor vehicle, and it runs out of gas. The only people in Antarctica are scientists, and I think that between them they could have figured out that the vehicle needed more gas in order to get to the very specific coordinates that Mulder had been given. When it does break down, Mulder decides to walk the rest of the way, with no hat, no gloves, no scarf and no face protection. Mulder would have succumbed to hypothermia within minutes. When he rescues Scully she is in some pod and covered in some goo stuff. Mulder happens to have an extra one-piece parka and boots for her (which seemed to appear out of nowhere), and they left the alien ship as it took off. It doesn't explain how they survived after this though, since they are still stranded in Antarctica without the things they need to survive, and without any fuel for their tractor thing, and Scully is wet from the goo.
And why did the Well Manicured Man blow himself up? There was no motivation for him to do this.
3: TOO MANY ALIENS
The series has barely shown any aliens or ships at all up close, and up until this point, even though it seemed pretty convincing that the aliens existed, doubt was placed into the minds of both Mulder and the viewer that they existed, and that the conspiracy was from the government and nothing else. The “aliens” that we had seen thus far could have been genetic anomalies or people with a bizarre disease (as has been implied), but now there is no doubt as to whether or not the aliens are real. They crammed as many as they could into every possible scene in the hopes of creating a scary sci-fi horror like a Ridley Scott film, but it falls short of this in so many ways. The reason that Alien was so effective was because we almost never saw the alien. X Files shot their alien in the same way Ridley Scott did, but it was far too much. We had already been explicitly shown that the aliens were real multiple times, and by the end of the film, showing the ship was unnecessary and gratuitous. It didn't add anything to the film.
This film is memorable only for the incredible sloppiness and lack of interest with which they employed while creating it. With such an interesting, memorable series, and most of the same cast and crew working on it, it could have been so much better. Deep Throat and X must be spinning in their graves.
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