Vintage

Essentially there are aliens among us and somehow they cut a deal with the power elite of the world, a group of shadowy figures that like to meet in wooded parlors in London.  The movie is really not clear on what kind of deal we got or even if it was a good deal by our Earthly standards.   It seems that this group agreed to let us be colonized by aliens one day in exchange for what – I am not sure.  Perhaps in exchange for honey, because there are these huge, rather public installations, where this group is planning on developing lots and lots of bees.  But, in a nutshell, we were all sold down the river by the power elite.  This would include higher-ups in the FBI and by extension, some kind of world government of those in the know.  Beyond, that I am not sure.

The X-Files: Fight The Future is really a buddy sci-fi flick intended as one big episode of the X-Files television series.  I believe it spans the gap between Season 5 and 6.  It can be watched self-contained, that is without knowing anything about the characters and plots from the series, but really is not intended to be taken that way.

The movie opens 35,000 years ago in North Texas. But now, or then, North Texas is covered with snow and we meet our first character – a cavemen, two cavemen actually.  They run into some kind of worm like alien that slithers into the one caveman and bugs out his eyes and gives him weird veins.  Naturally, the other caveman’s instincts are to club him over the head.  Hell, if this happened to someone I knew, I would probably do just the same thing.  Only, he has some kind of crude knife and manages to kill the sucker – his buddy and the thing that was hijacking his body. 

Not really sure why advanced evolved species need to hijack us and take us over.  I never could see the sense in that.  If they can get here, do they really need to jump in our bags of blood like that?  But, I digress.  Cut to 35,000 years to the present and we find ourselves near the same cave.  A boy falls down the hole, lands in the cave, and the worm with the more patience than anything that could surely have originated on Earth, crawls into him and hijacks his body.

The authorities are called in and they quickly see this is something out of the ordinarily.  The Men in Black or the NSF or whatever, whisk the boy and others affected back to a special FBI building for a good fashioned autopsy.  That is it – for now.

Agents Fox Mulder (Duchovney) and Dana Scully (Anderson) have been assigned anti-terrorism duty in Houston.  There is a bomb threat at the FBI building, but Mulder decides to also inspect the adjacent federal building across the street, where coincidentally is the building where the boy’s body was examined.  They discover the building houses a bomb in a vending machine.  Mulder and Scully evacuate everyone but some kind of commander guy orders them to beat it as he “diffuses” the bomb.  He must have stuck his dollar in the money feeder the wrong way, because the whole building is blown to smithereens.  It looks a lot like the Okalahoma federal building after it was destroyed. 

Mulder and Scully are sent for FBI hearings for wondering into the wrong building.  You would think it inconceivable that they would be held accountable for investigating the building, what with the saving the lives of most people in the building, but they are called to task for disobeying orders.  Plus, the FBI needs a scapegoat about the disaster. 

About now, Mulder meets Kurtzweil (Landau) one of those barroom booth guys who has “information” about what really happened.  Namely, that the FBI blew up the building themselves.  Why?  Because the people were already dead in the building – at least up stairs and the FBI needed a reason to cover-up their deaths.  Why were they already dead – the alien boy thing? 

So, now ensures a bold adventure across corn fields to ice patches in the Antarctic.  Meanwhile, the world powers meet in London and keep tabs on them.   Questions are answered but more are raised in the end.  In some sense, they get close, but get nowhere at the same time.  So, there really is no major payoff at the end.  But, I will leave it at. 

The movie is well acted and Fox and Anderson rightly act like they are simply in another X-Files episode.  Like the television series, their own screen chemistry is apparent and helps propel the movie along.  There is the right amount of “Cancer Man,” Skinner (their boss) and appearances by the Lone Gunmen Society to make it a well satisfying if you’re a fan of the series.  Secret societies are always nice too.  But, in the end, we are no more closer to the truth, then when we started.  So, when the movie is over, you will have enjoyed it, but make no mistake: the truth is still out there!

Matthew J. DeReno is a writer living in Pittsburgh.