The X-Files - Fight the Future

A Review

(danger - spoilers below)

The epic canvas on which the mythology of The X-Files has so far been drawn leads us to a false conclusion during the opening scenes of the movie. Two figures are seen running with a purpose through a field of snow, and our first thought is that this is Mulder and Scully - we're catching them in the middle of some peripheral investigation such as might happen during the opening sequence of a James Bond movie. The words to denote the location and time that appear at the bottom of the screen are therefore doubly disorienting - first we learn that this is north Texas (a glacial Texas?), and then the year is revealed to be 35,000 BC. So, not only has this story taken us to far-flung geographic locations, but now it's even incorporated a completely different era of time in order to emphasize the scale of the momentous events to come.

The two figures running through the snow are following footprints having a strange shape. Could it be that these two beings are the prehistoric counterparts of Mulder and Scully? Are they following the tracks due to simple curiousity, did they believe they were traking down food, or had whatever this thing is that made the tracks attacked them or their tribe, and now they're trying to stop it? We'll probably never know, because what's more important to the screenplay is what it does rather than from where it came. The two figures follow the tracks into a cave, and once there they're attacked by a dark, slimy... something. One of them is killed, and the other one kills this something, but the black oil escapes from this body and invades the surviving hunter.

At the same location during the present day, a kid falls through a thin earthen covering and into this same cave, and he's invaded by the same black oil, as are the firemen who desend into the hole to rescue him. From out of nowhere helicopters and plain-looking tractor-trailer rigs appear, and the location is sealed off while an unidentified man makes a call on a cellphone, telling some anonymous party on the other end that they'd better come up with a plan for the scenario for which they've never planned.

Finally, enter Mulder and Scully themselves. The X-Files have been shut down (again), and now they're on the case of a bomb threat at the Federal building in Dallas, Texas. Yes, this does have something to do with the overall plot. Although all the other agents are checking out the threatened building, Mulder has talked Scully into searching the building across the street. Wouldn't you know it - Mulder discovers the bomb. The agent in charge tells everyone to get out while he disarms the bomb, but when everyone leaves, he just sits there and waits for it to blow up, which it does, and very spectacularly, I might add. However, this raises another question. The X-Files has always used recent events as an inspiration for plot elements, but a couple of times I've wondered if they were completely necessary. For example, the crash of TWA Flight 700 and the subsequent investigation which led to all kinds of ridiculous speculation was somewhat uncomfortably recalled in Tempus Fugit/Max. In the same way, the depiction and aftermath of the explosion in the Dallas building uneasily evokes our memories of what the Murah Building looked like after the Oklahoma City bombing.

Back to the point, why did the agent in charge simply wait for the bomb to blow up the building, and himself with it? One clue comes during a hearing in which they learn that the chief wasn't the only fatality in the bombing - the bodies of three firemen and a small boy were also recovered from the wreckage. Of course we know where those bodies came from, although weren't there four firemen who went into the hole? Yes, but more on that later. Assistant Director Skinner warns Mulder that the blame for the explosion has to be placed somewhere, and the implication is that it will fall on our agents. What??? Somebody explain this to me, please. Had they not been searching the other building, the bomb would have killed dozens to hundreds more - people who survived only because of the combination of his unorthodox methods and her ability to quickly get an evacuation started. Realistically and given the commonly known facts, anyone looking to pin a bad rap on them would surely know that this approach wouldn't fly, although the screenplay attempts to convince us of this very fact.

This element is used as motivation for Scully to tell Mulder that she's going to quit the FBI, so she goes home to think about it while he heads for a local tavern to drown his sorrows. It's good to see that this movie understands and follows this particular Hollywood rule for conspiracy thrillers: when in seedy but relatively mundane public place, the hero must be confronted by a previously unknown informant with questionable motives who claims to know more than he should, and it's a bonus if he also claims to have known a close family member of the hero. Although Mulder sees this unknown person while sitting at the bar, it's not until he goes outside to relieve himself that this Dr. Kurtzweil, a gynocologist, makes his introduction. He provides more clues concerning the bombing in Dallas, along with what might or might not be a crackpot theory about FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), the local office of which was housed in the bombed building. Sooner or later I might have to find out more about FEMA's functions and powers, because Kurtzweil's explanation seemed pretty convincing to me.

A side note here - when Mulder is taking care of his wasteful duties in the alley, we see that he's urinating on a poster advertising the movie Independence Day. Could there be some hidden meaning here? The obvious reason is that it's a joke at the expense of that film and of Twentieth Century Fox, which released both that film and this one, but I wonder if there's some other reason it's there. One theory concerning Syndicate operations is that they're the ones that are really struggling for humanity's survival through their covert operations. If so, then Mulder is unwittingly working against our survival, and his opposition to the Syndicate's efforts could be metaphorically seen as the act of him pissing on our independence.

Anyway, we already know that Kurtzweil was correct, and that the the FEMA office was the real target such that there'd be a plausible explanation for the deaths of the people we saw infected by the black oil at the beginning of the movie. Despite being fairly drunk while listening to Kurtzweil, he's sobered up enough a short time later to get Scully out of bed and to talk his way past a guard on duty at the morgue which holds the bodies in question. Mulder runs off to leave Scully to perform an autopsy on one of the bodies, the cause of death of which was certainly not the explosion. However, when the guard finds out that he's been fooled, surely he knows what an ass-chewing he's in for from his commanding officer and would like to have something in his own defense, which really makes me wonder why he didn't take at least a casual glance at the floor beneath the slabs. The only more obvious hiding place in that room would have been disguised as one of the corpses, and I don't even remember him checking any of them, either.

Therefore, Scully escapes (although I'd still like to know how) and meets Mulder back in Dallas, where they uncover what might be evidence that the building was bombed to cover something up. Elsewhere, remember how one of the firemen from the introductory rescue hasn't been accounted for? The gestating alien inside him has survived, and CSM wanted to keep it to be a test subject for the new vaccine. Unfortunately for the lone Syndicate member still in the hole, it hatches and kills him, in the process revealing itself to us in all its black, slimy glory (along with retractable claws - an homage to Freddie Krueger?).

The Syndicate meets in London, having just realized they've been deceived concerning the aliens' intended use for humanity, and here we see again what's been hinted at earlier - that Well-Manicured Man might have a different philosophy about the Syndicate's work than the rest of them. Having made this discovery, it seems that only WMM is willing to try and overtly do anything about it, the others instead deciding to maintain the status quo in hopes of preventing the colonists from finding out what the Syndicate has learned.

Mulder and Scully check out the site of the original incident that claimed the boy and the firefighters, learning that the mysterious complex that had been there earlier had been torn down and that the trucks had only recently left. They follow the trail, eventually finding a strange, domed building surrounded by a corn field in the middle of the desert-like terrain. Considering the nature of this area, not to mention the fact that some kind of shipment had just arrived, you'd think there'd be some kind of security presence there. Instead, though, our agents are able to waltz through the corn and enter the domed structure unmolested. Bees are released while they're inside the structure, but they're able to get out without getting stung. This leads to another question - considering the aggressive nature of the bees in Zero Sum, which went to town on a playground full of children, are the bees here of the same type? I only ask because it seemed that nobody could escape the bees in Zero Sum, although Mulder and Scully are able to run through this particular swarm with nary a scratch. Ah, but now that I think of it, the Zero Sum bees were used to carry something else (a fatal strain of smallpox, maybe?), whereas these apparently are used as a contagion vector for... I dunno - the eventual spread of the infectious oil, I guess. Oh, well - sometimes I just get confused.

Anyway, Scully returns to Washington to appear once again before the board of review with her new evidence gathered in Texas, but it's all for naught. Rather than be transferred to a field office, she decides to quit the FBI, and it's when she tells this to Mulder that the movie's most talked-about scene occurs - it appears that in the mutual hopelessness of the moment, they begin to lean toward each other, and for all appearances, it looks like they're finally going to kiss. At the last instant, though, she's stung by a bee brought back from Texas and is loaded into an ambulance. When Mulder confronts the driver, asking which hospital she's being taken to, the driver quickly draws a pistol and shoots Mulder in the head (which, admittedly, I did not expect).

Skinner had his first walk-on scene earlier, and now he has to share his second one with the Lone Gunmen, who show up in Mulder's hospital room when he awakens. Although it serves a dual purpose (letting us see them in the first place as well as giving Mulder a quick means to sneak out of his room under the nose of the sinister man keeping an eye on it), you have to feel for non-philes watching this and trying to figure out who these geeks are that came out of nowhere, anyway. Also, what the hell kind of covert operative would have let himself get taken in by Mulder's means of escaping? Once again, syndicate field operatives are depicted as being badly in need of plenty of training in basic surveillence techniques.

Mulder tries to catch up to Kurtzweil at their favorite mutual watering hole, but the Well-Manicured Man has gotten there first, the implication being that the good doctor has been silenced for good. WMM takes Mulder for a ride in his limo, during which he gives Mulder an antidote for Scully's black oil infection as well as her location. I suppose he figured his betrayal would be the final straw as far as the Syndicate was concerned, because he then shoots his driver in the head and then blows up his car (with him presumedly still inside it).

Next, we see Mulder piloting a specialized winter vehicle through the vastness of the Antarctic (and let's not even ask how he was able to get there and get outfitted so quickly, being on such shaky relations with the US government as he presently is). He reaches the location given to him by WMM, but all he sees is a very small installation in the middle of a snow-covered plain. His vehicle runs out of gas, and it's a good thing, too, because otherwise he might have missed what might be the only way he could have gotten into the underground structure without getting seen. What does he find? It's a radically alien-looking structure filled with people in sealed cases (people I assume have been previously infected by the black oil and are now being held at the precise temperature required to prevent the oiliens' gestation within them). He miraculously finds Scully in this vast network of tubes and injects her with WMM's antidote. She comes out of it, and it appears she might be fine after some recovery time, but the introduction of the antidote into the system causes a breakdown, and the gestating aliens feeding on the humans in all the other tubes begin to hatch. Geez, I dunno. As much as I'd hate to lose Scully, I have to wonder what she'll think when she learns that every other human on board that structure has been sacrificed to save her (although I might be interpreting the situation incorrectly). The human operators at the site evacuate (including CSM), and Mulder and Scully barely get away before the ground starts to cave in. Surprise - the underground structure was actually an alien spaceship. Once we get this revelation, we've got so many new questions that I don't even know where to start. Were there other aliens on board at the time? How long had it been there? Was that place a long-standing base of operations, or was it relatively recent (hastily established in light of recent events)? Is this place involved in the apparent communication between the Syndicate and the aliens (that's what we're led to believe in the course of the movie, anyway)? If the aliens are planning such an underhanded betrayal of the Syndicate, why would they allow its representatives such a free reign over their facilities? Does its exit mean it was under intelligent, non-Syndicate control, and if so, doesn't this mean that the aliens now know that the Syndicate knows how things really stand between them? If the answer to the final question is yes, then I really have to stick with WMM in his assessment of the situation (that to continue with the same plans would make us "beggars to our own destruction"). If, however, the aliens know that we know, then aren't they technologically advanced enough to just come in and take what they want by force? Then again, if they could have done it this way, I suppose it stands to reason that they would have done it already. Finally, is this more vicious type of alien simply an ancestor of the type with which we've become more familiar (one implication possibly being that the aliens with whom the Syndicate have been dealing might have had no idea that such a turn of events might occur), or was it their plan all along to use this "attack" breed as shock troops/worker caste in the development of its rule over Earth?

Regardless of where humanity's fate stands what with the oncoming threat of an alien invasion (with the plan, I suppose, that people are to be used as living incubators for parasitic aliens which will grow within them, digesting their hosts until their "births"), the stage is now set for the makings of a momentous confrontation between the powers-that-be on Earth and those that apparently are still making their plans to colonize/invade. In the middle of it all, as the final scenes show (the X-Files have been reopened, and our agents appear to have grown even closer professionally and personally), it appears that Mulder and Scully will be once again at the middle of it all.

As of now, brave souls have ventured across this page.