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It's no mystery that 'X-Files' is on the big screen
It's a mystery worthy of Fox Mulder's scrutiny: Why make a theatrical motion picture of that iconic '90s TV series "The X-Files" six years after the last original episode aired? Nobody's doing "Seinfeld: The Movie," "Friends Forever" or "Walker, Texas Ranger, Rides Again."
But "The X-Files" is science fiction, and as we know from Trekkies or Trekkers or whatever the FC (fannishly correct) term is these days, sci-fi love never dies. And this past February at the WonderCon convention in San Francisco, those true believers known as X-Philes were sending X's - as in kisses - to the movie's producers and stars on a panel promoting "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," opening Friday.
From the screams and squeals captured in a featurette on the new DVD episode-set "The X-Files: Revelations," you'd think Elvis was in the building.
"We wanted this movie to work for and be loved by fans of the show," says former series executive producer Frank Spotnitz, who wrote and produced the movie with "X-Files" creator Chris Carter. "But if it only works for them," he frets, "it's not a success."
It does make your mind boldly go to "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (1979), released 10 years after the TV series ended and five years after the Saturday-morning animated spinoff. Like that first "Star Trek" movie, the 1998 film "The X-Files" got a middling reception at best. And if this second film turns things around like the critical and commercial hit "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson might just wind up this generation's William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (or, perhaps, Nichelle Nichols).
Pondering the future
The movie takes place six years after the events of the series finale, which, bizarrely, echoed the final ""Seinfeld": a trial, with recurring characters from the series showing up to testify and yada yada yada. In the end, FBI agent Fox Mulder (Duchovny) - investigator of aliens, monsters and other things that go bump on the screen - escaped his kangaroo court with the help of, among others, his FBI superior, Walter
Skinner (Mitch Pileggi, who appears in the film). Mulder goes on the run with his no-longer-skeptical partner, Dana Scully (Anderson). We last see them together in a hotel room, pondering the future and what to believe in.
Unlike "Lost," which has a similarly supernatural back-story mythos, the final "X-Files" seasons were all dangling and muddled loose ends. If the producers ever had a planned-ahead revelation, answer or overall point, it had gotten, well, lost.
"The show clearly didn't unfold the way anybody anticipated," Spotnitz says. "It doesn't have the great circularity of a novel. It changed gears in ways we hadn't anticipated. I understand why a lot of fans weren't as emotionally invested in those last two years as in the rest."
The harsh realm of reality didn't help. "I have come
to believe the show ended when it did because of the post-9/11 mood of the country," Spotnitz says. "I remember the Sunday New York Times Magazine a couple weeks after 9/11 having a list of things that were 'in' and 'out,' and 'The X-Files,' it said, was out. And I thought, 'Why would we be out?' And when we came back on TV after that, the audience just didn't show up for season nine. People felt it was an antigovernment show, and out of step with the mood of the country."
Now? "My sense is we're now in a 'post-post-9/11' frame of mind."
Calling in a specialist
In the new film, according to the movie's trailer and the novelization by mystery writer Max Allan Collins, rural women are being abducted, grotesque human remains appear and a disgraced priest Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly) has visions that lead police to a place of bizarre medical experiments.
The FBI gets involved, but the X-Files office has been closed. So ASAC (Assistant Special Agent in Charge) Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) calls in a specialist - former agent Mulder. Naturally, that also means former agent Dr. Dana Scully. We don't know what "Battlestar Galactica's" Callum Keith Rennie is doing there, but rapper Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner plays FBI agent Mosley Drummy.
However, "Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish are not in this," Spotnitz reveals, speaking of the latter seasons' stars. That's something of a scoop - Carter has said in interviews that the fate of Scully's infant, William, will "not go unconsidered," but otherwise, they've been treating this TV-show movie with more national-security measures than the Cigarette-Smoking Man, the series' devilish antagonist who apparently died at the business end of a helicopter missile in the finale.
Between that final episode and now, Spotnitz reflects, he and Carter "had changed, and realized the characters would have changed as well. You get older, and what matters changes, and your perspective on life, I like to think, deepens."
Mulder and Scully now "struck me as more poignant than I'd appreciated before - how much they'd been through; how much they'd lost."
Whether audiences will be similarly affected, who knows?
You say you want a revelation?
I want to believe ... that the new two-disc DVD set "The X-Files: Revelations" really is an "essential guide to 'The X-Files' movie" opening Friday and "eight critical episodes," as the disc-jacket claims. Then I realize, didn't the filmmakers go out of their way to say they made a movie you could appreciate without having seen the TV show?
Spooky. This must be essential for that "X-Files" movie from another dimension, where you need to do your homework first.
What "Revelations" is - and it's not a bad thing, at that - is a collection of some of the stars' and filmmakers' favorite episodes, such as actress Gillian Anderson's ("Bad Blood") and creator Chris Carter's ("Memento Mori"). Each has an introduction by Carter and his main executive producer, Frank Spotnitz, and there's only one of those pesky "mythos" episodes about the overarching alien-invasion conspiracy.
There's even an actual revelation: Bob Newhart had been the producers' first choice for the title role in "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," for which Peter Boyle won a well-deserved Emmy Award.
Rounding it out are trailers for the series DVDs and the movie, and a 27-minute fan Q&A with the film's stars and producers. And a couple of early softball questions aside, the astute fans could actually teach Larry King and Barbara Walters a thing or two.
FONTE: NewsDay.com
There is at least one secret Gillian Anderson can reveal about "The X-Files: I Want to Believe."
Anderson and her on-screen partner, David Duchovny, return to the big screen Friday, six years after the seminal TV series about paranormal investigators ended. But never mind the horrors that lurk in the story line - details of which not even alien abductors could pull out of her.
For Anderson, returning to play Agent Dana Scully, the role that made the 39-year-old actress famous, is what was really scary.
"I found it quite tricky over the first couple of days to slide back into it," says Anderson. "It was kind of unexpected and a bit freakish for me."
Freakish, that is, until the first scene that reunited her with Duchovny, aka Agent Fox Mulder. It was innocuous - just a brief conversation between the two agents as they walked down the hallway at FBI headquarters.
But the old magic was back.
"It was definitely the moment that [we] got into the same room together that it felt familiar again," says Anderson.
For Duchovny, the chance to revisit Mulder was more like slipping on a comfortable old trench coat.
It was a far cry from the way he left "The X-Files," burnt out after nine seasons of spending 10 months a year starting his week at dawn on Monday and ending it in the early morning hours of Saturday.
"I missed the heroic quality of [Mulder] - he's got a hell of a lot of integrity and he's a dreamer," says Duchovny. "And sometimes he made me a better person, just because he was so single-minded and courageous."
So when director Chris Carter, the show's creator, called to ask if they wanted to do a second "X-Files" movie, both Duchovny and Anderson leaped at the chance. The first, 1998's "The X-Files: Fight the Future," earned $187 million at the box office worldwide.
Almost everything else about the film is shrouded in the kind of secrecy usually reserved for vast government conspiracies.
During filming, Carter and the producers had copies of the full script. The actors were only given pages related to the scenes they were shooting at the time, and they were collected and shredded afterward. And in the spirit of the show's mantra, "Trust no one," fake images were leaked on the Internet to throw spoiler sites off the scent.
"I'm already looking over my shoulder [just talking to you]," quips Duchovny.
But the biggest mystery is whether, after six years, the fans still want to believe.
Many X-philes are still recovering from the horror of the way their beloved show ended in 2002. A contract dispute kept Duchovny out most of the last season, and the show buckled under the weight of its confusing back story about a government/alien conspiracy.
FONTE: DailyNewsPsst, the truth is over here.
It's tough to find, but in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the P.N.E. Fairgrounds, beyond a roller coaster, past the movie-star trailers and craft-services tent, and on a set designed to resemble a California bungalow, The X-Files is flickering back to life.
It's here that the revered TV show's key players -- stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, director Chris Carter and producer Frank Spotnitz -- are reuniting for The X-Files: I Want To Believe. The film, opening Friday, is the second X-Files feature, after The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998), and marks the first X-Files story since the series completed its nine-year run in 2002.
The bungalow is the home of Fox Mulder (Duchovny), the former FBI special agent and believer in government conspiracies and the existence of aliens.
In the scene being shot, Mulder is seated at his desk when his former partner and great love, Dana Scully (Anderson), walks up behind him.
"What's up, doc?" Mulder asks.
"You're becoming very trusting, Mulder," Scully says, "considering you're wanted by the FBI."
Carter shoots much of this scene from behind the actors' backs. Duchovny is turned away from the camera, as is Anderson.
It's a big moment in the movie, a major revelation. The characters exchange more dialogue until, finally, Mulder rises from his chair. When he does, there's no mistaking the poster behind him. It reads "I Want To Believe," and it was on view often during the course of the series.
The top-secret plot involves Mulder and Scully teaming anew to search for a missing FBI agent. The quest brings them in contact with a psychic (Billy Connolly) and more than a few things that go bump in the night.
"I think the reasoning behind being mum about what's going on, for Chris at least, is to give an audience an experience of surprise," Duchovny said.
"But, having said that, the themes are the same as what the show always was. The themes are about belief and faith and about the relationship between Mulder and Scully, and how that's developed (since) the show's been off the air, as if they've been living, as we've all been living.
"They've not been stuck in time," he said. "They've moved on in some fictional realm, just as we all have. And yet their issues remain the same."
Duchovny and Anderson weren't exactly close during the show's run. He was slightly older and considerably more experienced when the show premiered in 1993, and they were simply different personalities with different styles. Relations on the set now are, by Duchovny's assessment, "good," and the classic chemistry remains very much in evidence.
"We're aware that this is where the heart is," he said. "We have to trust each other to hold each other up in these scenes and to bring back whatever it was that was there."
Anderson is in full Scully mode, hair dyed red and the character's familiar cross dangling from her neck. The actress, who sought to distance herself from Scully after the show ended -- and did so, appearing in the British miniseries Bleak House (2005) and the film The Last King of Scotland (2006) -- admits that the character didn't come back to her as quickly or as easily as she had anticipated.
"I was really not so much cocky about it, but I was really confident that it would be really easy," Anderson said. "On the first day I wasn't afraid at all -- I usually am terrified before I start something -- and for the first couple of days, it sucked! It was horrible. I had a really, really hard first couple of days."
More than anyone, Spotnitz seems thrilled once again to be immersed in the X-Files universe. I Want To Believe has been a long time coming and, he acknowledges, he had begun to doubt that it ever would coalesce.
"We wanted to do this movie well before the series ended," he said. "That's when the Fox executives came and said that they wanted to do another movie. At that time we were still dealing with the series. The series ended, and we took some time. Then we began negotiations, and I think my deal has been done since 2002 or 2003. Negotiating David, Chris and Gillian took a very long time, and then there was a lawsuit and everything stopped.
When the lawsuit was finally resolved, Spotnitz and Carter wrote the I Want To Believe script, building on a concept they had hatched six years ago. Now, as the film rolls into theaters, one of the greatest mysteries surrounding the project will be answered: Do audiences still care about The X-Files?
"We felt like we had a really good story to tell," Spotnitz said. "How other people respond to that remains to be seen."
The challenge, Carter said, is to create a film that will appeal both to the show's loyal fans and to the general public, people who have perhaps never seen a single X-Files episode.
"It's funny," he said, "because I've had five years to step back from this.
"What I realized is that there are kids in college today who say, 'Oh, my parents used to watch X-Files,' or, 'I never watched X-Files, I was too young. My parents wouldn't let me watch it.'
"So I think there's a new audience to introduce it to."
FONTE: Dispatch.com
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