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The X-Files: The Unopened File (1996) (V)
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Overview
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Release Date:
15 January 1996 (USA)
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The Truth Is Out There more
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Mulder receives an encrypted computer disk containing the defense department's top secret files on extraterestrial life. | add synopsis
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1 win
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The beginning of an end
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135 min | Brazil:134 min
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Edited from "The X Files: The Blessing Way (#3.1)" (1995)
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Beginning the in the mid-1990s, the X-Files soon shot to the top of the ratings pile as a series of fables about things that go bump in the night, so to speak. Stolen ideas from John Carpenter aside, the biggest problem with the series soon became incredulity at the inability of this wide-reaching government conspiracy to dispatch two pesky little FBI agents. They say that the weakest point in one's story is its most unbelievable presenter, which brings up the greatest question of where one starts with the X-Files. The satire in one episode of The Simpsons said it best. There are a million other things that Mulder would be reprimanded for ignoring, such as terrorist activity.
The Unopened File is essentially a three-story arc consisting of the episodes Anasazi, The Blessing Way, and Paper Clip. Anasazi begins with a hacker stealing a bunch of encrypted files from a government server. Meanwhile, the Big Government Conspiracy™ starts poisoning the water in Mulder's building, which eventually leads to one old lady shooting her husband. Of course, when Scully discovers the chemical filter on Mulder's water tank, one has to wonder why she does not pass this information along to the authorities handling the murder case. Or perhaps it is just professional conduct not to care about what happens to the innocent civvies who get mixed up in an X-Files investigation. In any case, our intrepid agents soon find their way back to a group of Natives, the eldest of whom was drafted in World War II to help encrypt Army communiques.
An X-Files mini-series having a weaker spot is a pretty special event, given how much the series already expects the viewer to take on faith alone. Nonetheless, The Blessing Way shows a couple of the biggest problems overall with the entire series. The inefficiency of the old Big Government Conspiracy™ is just one of them. Another is the continued co-opting of said Big Government Conspiracy™. The "group", as it is called by one member during a phone call, is so extraordinarily inefficient that one has to wonder why the Evil Alien Race™ would solicit their cooperation.
Paper Clip ties the whole conspiracy thing together with Nazi scientists who were granted amnesty after the war, as the title implies. Unfortunately, this is where The X-Files in general takes a big leap into the ridiculous, with this being the first mention of alien crossbreeding experiments and invasion. At least, the first that I can remember. Unfortunately, as this theme began to gradually take over the series, the interest factor rapidly died. Sadly, The Unopened File also marks the beginning of the recycling fad in X-Files stories, where a story arc will be engineered to end in exactly the same place as it began. If you want to understand why the X-Files was eventually canceled with its ratings in the toilet, it can be traced back to the perpetual story recycling that was begun here.
Out of ten, I gave The Unopened File a two. Like all X-Files material, it is too incredulous, even insulting, to be any good. Also like all X-Files material, it is too slick, too like a con artist's routine, to be bad enough to be rescued in that manner. As a result, it winds up stuck firmly in no man's land. People ask why the show was canceled in 2002. I ask why it wasn't canceled within 12 months of 1996.