Good news for Generation X-Files, the second movie is nearly upon us!
It has been a long wait. In fact, it has been so long that I had forgotten another X-Files movie was even on the cards. I resigned myself to watching reruns and DVDs, crying into packets of sunflower seeds and half-heartedly looking up alien conspiracies on the Internet. (Did you know the British Royal Family were blood-drinking reptilian aliens? Neither did I.)
I was on Lifehacker AU the other day, the 11th of July, to be precise, reading about iPhones and brimming with jealousy (the darn things are everywhere), when a little banner to the left caught my eye.
There was a lot of mist, and two shadowy figures, and that unmistakable symbol in the background, like a beacon in the dark.
My heart leapt into my mouth. Mulder and Scully, together again? Could it be?
It could. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are reprising their roles as Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in the second X-Files movie, X-Files: I Want to Believe. It comes out in cinemas Australia-wide on July the 24th.
I was so happy that I didn’t even whinge about Anderson’s long hair. Yes, it bothers me. I am the kind of fan geek that normal geeks avoid. I am that small, obnoxious voice in the back of the room that goes, “Hem-hem, in episode blah-blah, Mulder clearly states that he dresses to the left, but this close-up proves otherwise. THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS and I ... What’s that? Where did I get this picture from? Never you mind.”
In an ideal world, after the series finale, Mulder and Scully (with her sleek bob untouched) would have been put away immediately in cryogenic storage and then thawed out for this movie and my viewing pleasure. But I’ll take what I can get. The fact that there is a second movie at all makes me so euphoric that David Duchovny could have gained a hundred pounds and grown horns, and he would still be my pin-up man.
In addition to its definitive treatment of alien mythology, the X-Files introduced us to new dimensions of the human psyche, cryptozoology, spirit worlds, extrasensory perception, the profane and the arcane, all with humour and passion and one of the best TV soundtracks since Twin Peaks.
Remember Eugene Tooms from Season 1? Tooms was one of the most frightening villains to appear on any screen. He could squeeze through the smallest crack or cranny, and his victims wouldn’t know he was there until they felt a drip-drip-drip of yellow liquid from above and looked up.
Then before you could say, “Bile!” he would be on top of you and eating your liver.
A few nights after that episode aired I was in the kitchen making dinner, when a drop of cold, old oil from the extractor fan splattered onto my hand. I screamed so loudly that my dog ran away.
Good times.
As the seasons passed, Scully’s eyeshadow grew subtler and her shoulder pads became smaller. Mulder’s sideburns retreated in sympathy. The weather got better (filming was moved from Vancouver to Los Angeles). New characters were introduced: Deep Throat, sexy bad boy Alex Krycek, Alien Bounty Hunter, Cigarette Smoking Man, the Lone Gunmen, Skinner, Kersh (it's the Chief from Grey’s Anatomy!), John Doggett (T-1000!).
The mystery of Samantha Mulder’s disappearance was finally solved. I learnt a new word: “exsanguinated”. Scully went missing and came back. Mulder went missing and came back. Gillian Anderson got pregnant and hid it with baggy trenchcoats and large briefcases. Scully got pregnant and thought she was going to have an alien baby. (Not in chronological order.) I love the series so much I may pass out from all this nostalgia.
I wasn’t the only one dribbling with joy when I heard the news. After eight years, my partner still carries a torch for Gillian Anderson.
"Just imagine,” he mused to me on the weekend, “if you were Mystique from the X-Men movies. I could ask you to look like Scully all the time.”
"If I were Mystique from the X-Men movies,“ I replied, “I would never turn into Scully, just to spite you. Ha ha ha!"
Well, I thought it was funny.
Chris Carter has said that if this movie is a success and the powers that be permit it, he would like to make a third X-Files movie (source), one that deals with the mythology of the series. It will link back to the predicted alien invasion of December 22, 2012, that is mentioned in the final episode and the thought of that third movie has made me so excited that time just stood still and I could see the Matrix.
If you care about the X-Files, please go and see the movie, or at least buy a ticket for it. What the heck, buy two. Let's make it a success, so that Carter can wrap up the X-Files, and I will die a happy woman.
Official site for X-Files: I Want to Believe: http://www.xfiles.com