Why I Liked the New X-Files Movie

[rusty_halo]

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Tonight, I finally get to see The Dark Knight in IMAX. Woohoo!

I realized I never did write about why I liked the X-Files movie. So here are my reasons, with the caveat that I was a major X-Files fan, but was never part of fandom, and stopped watching around season five, so I’m pretty unfamiliar with the fan wars or later events of the series. (I was eleven when I started watching. My dad allowed me fifteen minutes on AOL per week. Yeah. No fandom for me. But everyone who signed my eighth grade yearbook wrote something about X-Files, because it was all I could talk about for a couple of years there.)

I liked:

* That Mulder and Scully have ended up in completely appropriate places for their lives. Scully is an accomplished doctor who is changing people's lives and making the world a better place. Mulder is the batshit nutjob hermit who lives in Scully's spare room cutting out newspaper articles and failing to shave. IT'S TOTALLY THEM.

(One of the weird things about watching the show so young was that I figured that the adult characters generally knew what they were doing. It's only in retrospect that I realize that Mulder was incredibly crazy.)

* It was funny. The humor was witty and subtle, but totally there; I laughed throughout whole scenes in the beginning. Mulder's beard, the pencils in the ceiling, lots of the dialogue. (It probably helped that I was seeing it at midnight on opening night with a theater full of fangirls, who were all giggling at the same moments.)

* It had actual conversations about serious, nuanced issues that don't have easy answers, and arguments that heroic characters could be on different sides about. Yay for adult conversations!

* It made no secret that Mulder and Scully are together. THANK FUCKING GOD. Part of the reason I stopped watching was that I didn't care if they were in love or not, but I was sick of the show jerking the audience around about it.

* And it had none of that mytharc crap! Look, I loved the mytharc back in the day when it looked like it was going somewhere, but in retrospect it's all a bunch of nonsense that makes me want to bang my head against the wall. A big part of why I stopped watching was that I realized the mytharc was just the writers jerking us around with no point whatsoever.

* Mulder is still driven by Samantha's loss. He knows she's dead, but he's a damaged person and that issue will always be at the core of his being. It's never going to go away. Actually, I loved how every character in this movie was flawed, but, you know, complex, and struggling.

* Mulder is the damsel in distress, and Scully rescues him. I LOVE YOU, SCULLY. Seriously, this movie was way more about her than about Mulder. I was worried that her story with the kid would be the B plot to Mulder's A plot, but I actually think her story was at least as important, and just as interesting. Plus, the film ended on her story, in a way that epitomized the "Don't give up" theme. She was strong and amazing throughout.

* Skinner! Cradling Mulder! You'll never convince me that scene was anything but fanservice to the slashers. :)

* The film's themes match the most interesting themes of the series: wanting to believe, finding your purpose, struggling against the world's darkness, not giving up. And Mulder and Scully's relationship issues are the exact issues they would have. They're not about stupid domestic nonsense; they're about how to deal with darkness and obsession and how to live a happy life despite those things. And there are no easy answers, just characters who will continue to struggle with those issues as best they can because they understand each other and love each other dearly.

* And speaking of fanservice, that scene over the credits? Mulder and Scully floating in a tropical paradise and waving goodbye to the audience? That's almost enough to make up for the years of crap that Chris Carter foisted upon his audience. (I've never been so glad I stopped watching a show.)

* The thing I loved most about the show was Mulder and Scully, as characters, interacting with each other. I didn't care if it was romantic; I just wanted their senses of humor, their instinctive understanding of each other, their disagreements about the nature of "truth," their mutual respect. This movie had all that in spades, so it gave me what I wanted and made me happy. :)

Current Mood: contemplative

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