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

[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]

It pissed me off SO BAD Scully was ALWAYS wrong, and they never let her identify any SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES, either.

MULDER: But you saw it! I saw it! It has to exist!
SCULLY: Yes, but this was a one-time experience and we have no idea what caused it, Mulder. Can it be duplicated in an entirely removed environment under controlled conditions? If not, then any number of things could have been responsible. Anecdotes based on personal experience, however emotionally compelling, are not the same thing as quantifiable proof.
MULDER: ....

WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN SO HARD

[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.