The X Files (1998)

Mulder and Scully must fight the government in a conspiracy and find the truth about an alien colonization of Earth.

Director:

Rob Bowman

Writers:

Chris Carter (story), Frank Spotnitz (story)

Stars:

David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, John Neville

7 wins & 10 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
David Duchovny	...	Agent Fox Mulder
Gillian Anderson	...	Agent Dana Scully
John Neville	...	The Well-Manicured Man
William B. Davis	...	The Cigarette-Smoking Man
Martin Landau	...	Kurtzweil
Mitch Pileggi	...	Assistant Director Walter Skinner
Jeffrey DeMunn	...	Bronschweig (as Jeffrey De Munn)
Blythe Danner	...	Cassidy
Terry O'Quinn	...	Michaud
Armin Mueller-Stahl	...	Strughold
Lucas Black	...	Stevie
Christopher Fennell	...	2nd Boy (as Chris Fennell)
Cody Newton	...	3rd Boy
Blake Stokes	...	4th Boy
Dean Haglund	...	Langly

Storyline

With problems appearing between FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, a dangerous conspiracy is starting to appear. A deadly virus, which appears to be of extraterrestrial origin has appeared, which could destroy all life on Earth. With the help of a paranoid doctor, Alvin Kurtzweil, Mulder and Scully must act fast in order to save everyone on the planet.

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Plot Keywords:

agent | fbi | bomb | government | alien | 

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Taglines:

The Truth is something you're never guess, never have predicted.

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Genres:

Drama | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for some intense violence and gore

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Arabic

Release Date:

19 June 1998 (USA)

Also Known As:

Blackwood

Filming Locations:

Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$66,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$30,138,758, 21 June 1998, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$83,898,313

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$105,300,000

Company Credits

Production Co:

Twentieth Century Fox,Ten Thirteen Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

121 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Film debut of Ted King, credited here as T.W. King.

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Goofs

It would be almost impossible to go to the interior of the Antarctic continent in July (middle of the winter) due to extremely bad weather. Barring extreme medical emergencies, no U.S. flights land on the continent between April and October.

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Quotes

Special Agent Dana Scully: Mulder what are you doing?
Special Agent Fox Mulder: Something's wrong!
Special Agent Dana Scully: Mulder!
Special Agent Fox Mulder: Something's not right!
Special Agent Dana Scully: Mulder get in the car! THERE'S NO TIME!

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Alternate Versions

The video release has additional footage not shown in the theatrical release:

• In the opening scene you now see more of the alien. In the theatrical release we see it fight off one of the cavemen, killing it, and the other caveman gets up to see it lying on the ground draining out the black blood (or what fans know as black oil). In the video release, we see it run off after it kills one of the cavemen, and when the other caveman gets up, he tracks it down and then kills it using the broken end of his torch.
• In the scene with Mulder talking to the Well Manicured Man in the car, he reveals to Mulder that Samantha, Mulder's sister, was abducted by aliens at the request of her father, William Mulder, so she could be part of the colonization project, thus ensuring her survival in the colonization of Earth by the visitors. Also revealed is that when plans went awry, Mulder was intended, by his father, to seek the truth and reveal what had been done.
• There is also an added scene in the video release with Mulder running down the street after the hospital scene.

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Connections

Referenced in Spaced: Battles (1999)

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Soundtracks

Walking After You
Written by Dave Grohl
Performed by Foo Fighters
Produced by Jerry Harrison
Courtesy of Roswell Records/Capital Records

User Reviews

As good as it possibly could be

The X-Files movie really is as good a big screen adaptation as you could possibly hope for.

It helps that it's entirely controlled by the people behind the series, and that the programme had cinematic qualities in the first place. On repeat viewings, however, the story is revealed to be thin, and lacking in incident. Its need to tie into events of the series makes it not wholly satisfying as a stand-alone vehicle, though it should still be understandable to those that have never seen an episode.

David Duchovny as Mulder seems surprisingly at ease in his limited way, while Martin Landau is good as far as plot devices go. Gillian Anderson is unfortunately encouraged to overstate her lines, particularly in the beginning, while a cameo by The Lone Gunmen is perhaps the only indulgence that would be lost on non-fans.

There are inevitable concessions to the cinema format, of course. Not the touted mild use of expletives, which happened from time to time on TV anyway. But the alien presence that mutates to owe a debt to Ridley Scott's Alien, or the near-kiss between the two leads. Thankfully, the first point actually makes a logical sense and carries the story forward. The second is something that was also long overdue, and silly that it took so long. For two people who obviously feel about each other the way Mulder and Scully do, to go five years without even kissing is stretching credulity.

Ultimately, though, it lacks any clear focus for a casual film audience, and flits repetitively from action sequence to sloppy exposition and back again throughout its duration. Creator Chris Carter, like Gene Roddenberry with Star Trek before him, is not the smoothest writer of his own series, though he does adequately most of the time. Worst example is the opening Mulder/Scully scene which is laughably trite, and there are plenty more examples of Carter's trademark purple prose. Yet it does have a beginning, middle and end, and can be watched back-to-back with a TV episode with no noticeable jumps in style. In that sense, then, it is a most successful big-screen adaptation of a television series.

Hard-core X-File fans will be inclined to award an extra mark to the total, then. But for a non-committal audience, this is a "6" as they would have no idea from watching this that the frail, fag-smoking pensioner is the series' major villain.