Film Friday: The X-Files (1998)

I’ve been a fan of The X-Files from the beginning. What a great show! And believe it or not, when I heard they were making a movie, I was kind of excited. Yeah, I know that movies made from television shows usually stink, but I had hope. And ultimately, this film did a great job of bringing the series to the big screen.

** spoiler alert **

Starting in 1993 and running through 2002, The X-Files was an amazingly original series. It starred David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Mulder worked in the basement of the FBI building on something called the X-Files. These were unsolved crimes involving claims of strange or paranormal activity. Because of their nature, they were considered a joke and the fact Mulder refused to abandon the X-Files was an embarrassment to the FBI, which wanted them forgotten.

The series began with Agent Scully being assigned to assist Mulder. Scully is a straight-laced scientist and skeptic, and her real assignment was to debunk Mulder’s findings and to discredit him so the FBI could justify shutting him down. Over time, however, Scully came to realize that Mulder really was onto something and a relationship developed between them. . . though the writers teased the heck out of the audience with that!

In addition to this dynamic, the series developed a deep mythology. Mulder uncovered a number of conspiracies, but never could quite get to the bottom of them. These revolved around secret groups who had a hand in alien abductions, cloning experiments, and anything else the writers could come up with. They were both outside of and controlled the government. Making these conspiracies work were a series of recurring characters like Cancer Man, a cigarette smoking man who occasionally aided Mulder with information but just as often sabotaged him. They gave the audience just enough to tease them, but never even to solve the riddles. Moreover, it soon became clear that the FBI was under the control of these groups, except for Mulder’s boss Assistant Director Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), who did his best to secretly help Mulder and Scully.

So along comes the film.

When you’re turning a television series into a film, the biggest problem you face is decided how deep to get into the mythology. Most of the audience you’re hoping to attract haven’t watched the series and know almost nothing about it. If you don’t feed them a lot of basic information to get them to understand the players and the motivations, they will be lost and won’t enjoy the film. But at the same time, your guaranteed core audience are people who love the series, and they won’t be happy if the film spends its time acting like a primer for the series. They want a continuation of the series exactly where it left off, only bigger in scope. . . something to move the series to the next level. There may be no harder balancing act in filmmaking than solving this contradiction.

Yet, The X-Files did it. And to do that, the The X-Files chose an interesting route. Let’s start with how they satisfied the fans.

To satisfy the fans, the film digs deeply into the mythology and it actually does an amazingly strong job of bringing together many of the conspiracies Mulder uncovered throughout the series. Essentially, the film involves a virus fans have seen before, which is uncovered in Texas when a boy falls through the ground into a cave. A shadowy organization moves in and covers up this virus by burying the bodies of the infected in the rubble of a building they explode. This is the same shadowy organization which Mulder has been chasing throughout the series and they are represented here by many of the same actors we’ve seen in the series. Moreover, the film doesn’t annoy the fans with exposition scenes or flashbacks that explain who these people are or what their relationship is to Mulder. In effect, it treats the audience as if they are all fans. . . though there is a catch I will explain in a moment. The film then provides a truly credible answer to what this conspiracy has been up to and why they’ve been so obsessed with Mulder. This does exactly what the fans want: it takes things to the next level and expands the mythology.

Aside from that, the film also mentions much of the mythology, like references to Mulder’s father, who is a key figure in the series, the presence of Cancer Man, the well-manicured man, the Lone Gunmen, the sexual tension between Scully and Mulder, and seeing Skinner doing his best to protect Scully from the FBI. This is more than enough to convince the fans that the film was made for them without a thought given to the newbies.

Yet, the film was also made for the newbies. Consider this.

While normally the use of something like the conspiracy would require too much background information for casual fans to absorb, no outside knowledge is actually needed here. After the opening, the character Kurtzweil (Martin Landau) provides a quick background on the scope, reach and methods of the conspiracy while showing them in action. This is an excellent way to introduce the concept – he also acts as a way to connect Mulder to the conspiracy without Mulder needing to stumble upon them and learn who they are, which would upset the fans.

Further, as the story progresses, the film actually explains both who they are and why they are doing what they are doing. Indeed, we learn that the conspiracy is in contact with aliens who plan to colonize the planet by infecting humans with the virus found in Dallas. They had been led to believe that the virus would make humans into a slave race. Since they can’t fight the aliens, they are collaborating to buy time so they can develop a vaccine to the virus. But when they see that the virus has mutated, they realize that they have been deceived by the aliens. They also realize they can’t let the aliens know this or the aliens will strike now and ruin all their plans. Thus, they need to stop Mulder from exposing this virus to keep the aliens from knowing what they have discovered.

Moreover, while the film does make repeated references to the series mythology, the way it makes those references is likely to go right over the newbies’ heads. Things like the sexual tension between Mulder and Scully and Skinner’s role in helping them with the FBI are only hinted at – enough for the fans to see it and add that element to the meaning of the events in the film, but not enough for the newbies to notice that they are missing anything. Even the mention of Mulder’s father is done with enough information that the newbies will feel like they understand the complete reason for him being mentioned, even as they miss the entire connection between his father and the conspiracy. Basically, each of these things is mentioned in such a way that the newbies will feel like they know what they need to know, but the fans will be able to add their own outside knowledge to make the film more meaningful.

That is where the film’s success lies. This film allows both audiences to walk away satisfied that their own interpretation of the film, based on their level of knowledge, was the one to which the film catered and they will never realize that the film works for both audiences. The newbies get an entirely self-contained plot, needing no prior knowledge, and have no sense of what they are missing. The fans gets a film that delves deep into the mythology, moves things to the next level and doesn’t seem to stop to get the newbies up to speed. This is like a template for how to adapt something like a comic book, a television series, or even a series of books.

Finally, let me point out that this goes back to an idea that is a constant favorite at this site, the idea of letting the audience do your work for you. As we’ve noted many times, films that leave things to the imagination are better films because they let the audience build their own worlds and their own stories. That personalizes the film and allows millions of people to each see what they want in the film, which makes them happier with the meaning of the film and gives them a stronger attachment to it since they helped to create it. It’s the same thing here. At its core, the film is quite basic, but it hints at some many things (without ever saying them) which allowed each fan to add layers and layers of meaning to the film according to their own level of knowledge and interpretation. That’s actually pretty brilliant.

In the end, I’m not labeling this a great or inspired film because ultimately the plot does feel somewhat derivative – in fact, I can point to parts that feel downright stolen, like the alien having a distinct The Thing feel to it. But if you look at the mechanics of how they assembled this film, it is quite brilliant.

So the next time you watch this film, ask yourself how much your understanding of the film is from what you see and how much is from what you assume.