![]() It works outside of that context better than I thought it would. The season 6 premiere “The Beginning” has Mulder on an FBI panel talking about what happened to him in the movie. At one point they planned to end the series after the fifth season and then only do movies, instead they just moved from Vancouver to L.A. Unlike the STAR TREK series of movies, this was made while its show was still on the air, so it had to both make sense to newbies unfamiliar with the 116 episodes leading up to it and be satisfying as a big-screen-worthy episode for those who did. I liked THE X FILES MOVIE FIGHT THE FUTURE at the time, but I was curious how it would play now that I haven’t watched or put much thought into the show for many years. I liked the mythology about the black oil and the aliens and all that, but all of my favorite episodes were the funny standalone ones like obviously “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” (I’m not gonna resist a Jesse “The Body” Ventura appearance) or “Bad Blood.” Before Breaking Bad came out I thought it would be good because it was created by the guy that wrote “Bad Blood.” I never watched it though so there’s no way to know if I was right. I watched it weekly for much of the run, but not all of it. I’m somewhere in the middle between a devoted fan and a total ignoramus. We didn’t know a real life Mulder would likely be hanging out with people whose passions include protecting Confederate monuments and preaching about the dangers of recognizing women as human beings. ![]() We couldn’t guess that Art Bell talking about big-eyed aliens on the radio would evolve into Alex Jones telling grieving parents that their murdered children never existed, or Reddit convincing a guy to storm a pizza restaurant with a shotgun believing Hillary Clinton was selling child sex slaves in the non-existent basement. We didn’t know there would be decades of official science denial, dumb people believing dumb shit on Facebook, me worrying that 9-11 was some kind of set up to start wars that, in retrospect, I think they would’ve found some way to start anyway. Back then they were niche groups and mostly seemed harmless. You didn’t have to believe any of these ideas to kind of admire the people who did as interesting, extreme personalities, non-conformists, mavericks, Richard Belzers. With The X-Files, Carter tapped into those instincts to suspect the authorities are always up to and/or hiding something big, that life is weirder than they want you to know, that the world you live in is just a sugar-coated topping, carefully maintained by mysterious men in black licorice helicopters (or something, this candy metaphor may need work). I remember Freedom School founder Billy Jack mentioned Vince Foster conspiracy theories on one of his DVD commentaries as if they were real and universally accepted. Suspicion about JFK and Waco wasn’t strictly for right wingers. X-Files creator Chris Carter had come of age in the era of the Kennedy and King assassinations, and lost faith in all institutions. seemed less binary and partisan than they are now, less left vs. Maybe it was just my natural youthful rebelliousness, but at that time debates in the U.S. A few years later when the mass suicide happened I dug out a handout I’d saved, and though it didn’t say “Heaven’s Gate” on it anywhere it described the same theology, following the teachings of someone called “The Two” or “Ti and Do.” And I always wondered if that lady got out in time. All I really remember was a woman with a shaved head who seemed very sincere about all this. One time I even went to a UFO cult’s presentation on a college campus. I don’t know why, but that’s what I did at a certain age. If you wanted to know about UFO cults you had to know their address and send them a self addressed stamped envelope and read their newsletter. If you wanted to find out about some weird creature somebody claimed to spot you had to read outdated cryptozoology books at the library. See, the internet was pretty new, so it wasn’t common to know about every strange belief or kooky fringe group. It spoke to a type of pre-millennium paranoia that has uncool associations today, but at the time was fresh and edgy and hip. Not in style, or in any kind of fun, nostalgic way – it doesn’t feel very dated – but just in its view of the world. The X-Files sure was a bigger deal in the ’90s, wasn’t it? And in some ways this movie spin-off of the show is the most era-representative of the ones I’ve watched in this series so far. ![]() ![]() (note: Some people call it X-FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE, but I think “fight the future” is just the tag line, like “DIE HARDER.”)
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