Do-do-do-do-do-doooo

[sabotabby]

I saw the X-Files movie with utterly no expectations. I don't know if a lot of you know this, but I was—surprise!—completely obsessed with the X-Files when it was on the air, right up until it really went downhill and my eyes were starting to hurt from rolling so often.


Anyway, this movie was even worse than the other one, which is a pretty big accomplishment. And given that it had three significant female characters, one of whom is sort of classic for breaking all sorts of TV conventions*, it completely failed the Bechdel Test. Le sigh.

So I liked the little Bush joke, because I'm predictable, and I liked that even though they were doin' it, they still called each other by their last names.

Otherwise, though, who cares? We need another movie about a gay serial killer?

It also drummed into my head how much better TV writing has gotten since I was a kid. At the time, the only show I knew of that had long-running, interesting, weird stories was Twin Peaks—long off the air by the time I was old enough to appreciate it. I was willing to put up with all sorts of silliness to see stories with some sort of intelligent commentary (though, granted, of a subtly libertarian bent—keep in mind that I was a teenager, and also mostly rooting for the bad guys). But looking back, it was pretty terribly written. The movie's like that—all of this cringeworthy dialogue about faith and belief.

Yawn. Also, gay marriage in Massachusetts will result in Russians cutting off your body parts and grafting them on to—uh, what were they trying to do anyway?

* Yes, I wanted to be Scully when I was 17.

Comments

Well, Hell ...

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I wanted Scully when I was ...

Oh. "... want to be Scully."

Well, either way, until about the 10th time she'd been kidnapped by aliens and yet said to Mulder, "But there's not evidence ..."

At some point, my brain just broke in three.

Re: Well, Hell ...

[sabotabby]

At some point they had to screw with the formula or risk having her look very stupid, and unfortunately, they went for the latter. Also, they made her all about the baybeeez, which I hated.

Re: Well, Hell ...

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

[At some point they] made her all about the baybeeez, which I hated.

Did they? I don't remember that? Much as I thought that [actor who played Scully] was hot, I never thought/felt that they played up the character's sex-appeal (but maybe I stopped watching). It's been a while, and I'm not even sure if I got to the end of the teevee show.

At some point they had to screw with the formula or risk having her look very stupid...

That was my point. Some time before she actually got kidnapped (raped? impregnated? just kind of pushed around?) by aliens, she'd already been through enough weirdness that I just couldn't suspend disbelief enough to accept her "I'm a rational scientist-type" routine.

Scepticism stops being convincing when the sceptic has been taken to the moon/mars/gallifrey and back a dozen times.

Re: Well, Hell ...

[sabotabby]

I like how Londoners all go on vacation at Christmas now.

Basically, Scully got abducted and they removed all of her eggs. So she couldn't ever have kids, and she angsted! But oh wait, they made an alien hybrid with one of her eggs, and she was all weepy and emotional and yay! But then the alien hybrid died, and she was angsty again. And then Mulder found some extra eggs, or something, so she tried experimental fertility treatments with him as a surrogate father, or something like that, and those failed, but somehow she miraculously got pregnant with another alien baby. Which they then had to give away because their work put him in too much danger, or something. And now he may or may not be dead.

I KID YOU NOT.

[suburbannoir.livejournal.com]

As a Scully fan, I thought this movie did slightly better than the first, considering she wasn't kidnapped by aliens and entirely missing from the last half of the film, but apart from that...

Oh, and Xzibit.

[sabotabby]

I'm glad that she got to rescue Mulder instead of spending most of the movie floating in a pool of snot.

Oh, and Xzibit.

Why did they tease us with that, though? He didn't do anything.

[beam-oflight.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it seemed to me she was still in less of the film and spent most of it going on about 'the darkness' and angsting for no reason!

[sabotabby]

Also, she didn't really get to run around and chase anyone with her trenchcoat flapping around in the wind. That's annoying.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Scully being a skeptic never seemed as strange to me as it did to everyone else. Maybe it was a bit of a stretch when she was so close-minded at the beginning of cases, but I always liked that she insisted on bringing science into Mulder's hunches, and having evidence before she would believe.

Just because she had some first-hand-experience and proof with certain supernatiral things, didn't mean that she need to believe everything that Mulder threw at her, and change her entire worldview around. She could be a little rigid, but I just saw it as Scully needing the cold hard facts before accepting something as valid. Although perhaps for realism they should have pushed the angle more that Scully was at least somewhat open to Mulder's theories, instead of laughing and rolling her eyes everytime heh.

[sabotabby]

True, true. I can see her rolling her eyes in the standalones, but with anything involving aliens it seemed a bit silly after the second season.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

But didn't she ultimately think that it was the government that kidnapped her, to try and harm the working of the X Files? I have a difficult time keeping the mythology all straight now LOL, but I remember that around season 3 time Scully became convinced that aliens were about the leftover Nazi scientists carrying on their work with experiments on humans?

And she was unconscious during her abduction/had no memory of it, so it's not like she could say for sure who had kidnapped her. I could see it making more sense to think the government were corrupt and trying to mess with you, rather than assume you had been beamed up to a spaceship for some unknown reason, and that aliens are hiding among us

[sabotabby]

If I recall correctly, though, she was skeptical about the government's involvement too. She didn't really have much of a theory a lot of the time beyond "it must be the opposite of whatever Mulder thinks."

...which, actually, is probably a good stance to take, if he hadn't been right almost every time.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

IIRC Chris Carter deliberately kept everything on the fence with No It was Aliens!/No It was the Gov't! until it became untenable and he shot the works with NO It was Both!, which just....I dunno, sort of really didn't work for me. And then he made this big deal about how now Scully "is the believer and Mulder is the skeptic," blahblah, and that....just didn't work for me, either. Yeah, that kind of shit looks good in outlines, but schematics often don't survive when you actually create something.

[maukatt.livejournal.com]

And yet, the one area Scully was completely UNskeptical and totally beLEEEving in, even in the face of Mulder's unflagging skepticism, was the religious and spiritual. She had visions of the afterlife, was visited by ghosts all the time, including her dead hybrid-daughter, she saw (and believed in) angels and demons and The Power Of Prayer, and I kept expecting her to fall into an ecstatic trance a la St. Theresa and start manifesting stigmata.

[queerasmoi.livejournal.com]

I love the Bechdel test ;)

Futurama passes the Bechdel test (not every episode, but a lot of them) because Amy and Leela argue about important things like crashing the ship.

[sabotabby]

TV shows pass more often than movies. TV writers, for all their flaws, recognize that women make up over half of their audience. Hollywood writers are explicitly told otherwise.

[queerasmoi.livejournal.com]

Wow, excellent article.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

....god, that's fucking depressing.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

I suspect that I subconsciously have something like the Bechdel test running around in my brain, which is why I seldom go to movies.

[sabotabby]

I notice it a lot more after having read that, but it's really annoying as the movies I like (with lots of explosions) rarely have even one significant female character and she's almost always the love interest.

I have so many good idea for sci-fi and action movies but no one will ever make them.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

....I want to be Scully NOW, dammit.

-- I hung on to the BITTER BITTER BITTER end (I actually developed an affection for Doggett) and actually sort of liked the first movie, kinda, after seeing it half-a-dozen times on a crappy videotape (what, I'm a fan), but...noooooooooo, that ship has long sailed, Carter. You ain't getting me back in that easy.

[sabotabby]

I thought Doggett was okay and Reyes wasn't bad but I lost interest after they decided the conspiracy stories were too convoluted and just, well, screw it. It sort of lost me post-California move, actually, when the entire tone of the show shifted from dark and brooding to "we'll put in more cheesy comedy episodes 'cause everyone likes those better."

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

....oh God yeah, post-CA was bad, except we did get Drive, and Shirtless John Doggett in Mexico. I liked that one. Butyeah, first it was all -- we're going to sub in CSM's kid and Mulder's old squeeze! No, we're going to sub in Doggett and Reyes! and it was like they tried to go back to S1 and just no, no no no NO NO NO no no.

And I HATED the way he killed off the Lone Gunmen. And Krycek (my favourite woobie!). DIE, Carter.

[red-raccoon.livejournal.com]

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! I still have to see it even if it is horrible to no end! I will give them my money even if I resent them in the end! DAMN YOU CARTER!!!!
YO- I have a popcorn bag FRAMED on my wall that David D. ate out of when he sat next to me at a movie when I was 13. Oh yes. Oh yes. Everyone who comes to my house basks in it's glory. I win.

[sabotabby]

It's horrible, but the popcorn bag thing is awesome.