The long-awaited X-FILES movie finally burst onto the cinema screens in 1998, and not before time, with five years of the television series behind it. I was somewhat sceptical about the quality of the film, mainly due to the diminishing appeal from the series, which is by now long past its sell-by date and lacks the imaginative magic which made it one of the best television series around when it first began. However, THE X-FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE, while not brilliant, is still something of a return to the old magic of the series. It certainly doesn't feel like a film, but instead like a 'long' episode. The story about aliens underground and government conspiracies attempt to tie together all the long running conspiracy threads which have been running through the series ever since the pilot episode. It was a difficult task but it generally succeeds well, apart from the fact that as everything is thrown into the plot, nothing is ever looked at in depth. No real secrets are explained at all, which is also disappointing. The conspiracy side of things is pushed aside to make way for kidnapping and other, more audience-friendly aspects.

Duchovny and Anderson have by now clinched every aspect of their characters, and so are totally comfortable with them. Martin Landau is good value as a Deep Throat-style informant and other regulars such as Mitch Pileggi and William B. Davis turn up, but are given little to do. The extended budget means that there are a lot more special effects, which is the main benefit of this film, and there's an eye-popping explosion at the start. However, the aliens in this film seem to be heavily influenced by things like ALIEN and SPECIES, with big rows of spiky teeth. These alien types were never in the series and I suppose they have been included as generic monsters. It's a little disappointing. There are some genuinely good moments, like the bit in the white dome with the bees, or the heartfelt moment where Mulder and Scully nearly kiss (I thought they would make an embarrassing mess of this, but they thankfully didn't),or the awe-inspiring moment at the end where the UFO rises out of the ice. With good acting from seasoned performers, excellent special effects and a typically dark and intriguing storyline, THE X-FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE is a good transgression from television to film. I, for one, hope to see other offerings such as this in the future.

In 35,000 BC northern Texas, two men enter an ice cave to find shelter. They battle a mysterious creature. A black substance oozes from the creature and infects one of the men. In the present day, a boy falls into the cave and is infected by the black ooze. Firefighters climb in and are also attacked. One week later, the FBI is checking on a bomb threat in Dallas. Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) go to the building across the street on a hunch. They find the bomb and barely escape. The pair is made the scapegoats. Alvin Kurtzweil (Martin Landau) tells Fox that FEMA has a secret isolation ward in the building. The boy and the firefighters are found in the rubble presumed to be killed by the blast.

Mulder and Scully's banter is back almost immediately. Everything that is beloved about the show is present in this movie. They are the outsiders. There is a conspiracy. There is something creepy. This is what true fans of the show love. For non-fans, this can be a bit of a climb to understand everything.

It probably helps a bit to be a fan of The X-Files TV series to enjoy this film, but not completely necessary. The picture goes to great lengths for example, to describe the working relationship Scully (Gillian Anderson) was expected to have with her FBI partner Mulder (David Duchovny). If I'm not mistaken, it came up three times where Scully stated that she was teamed up with Mulder to debunk his work and provide a scientific rationale against his outlandish theories on UFO's and extraterrestrials. But with five seasons of the show behind them, this tack wouldn't be entirely successful in the movie, so the story line provided more fodder for the government conspiracy adherents, and in that respect, added a bit more to the mythology arc explored in the TV program.

But there were some bumps in this road for followers of the series. At one point, Mulder went into a lengthy soliloquy on why he's about fed up with searching out the truth, mentioning the alien abduction of his sister Samantha when both of them were still kids. Whether he was merely speaking off the top of his head or not, it had already been established that Samantha's disappearance had been engineered by the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis) and that Samantha was alive and (relatively) well with a family of her own. So there were those little distractions that fans of the show would be able to pick out.

When I first saw this film when it was originally released, I thought the revisit to the business about the bees spreading a virus laden pollen was too much covering of old ground, but I see now with another viewing that it was instrumental in grounding a link to the government conspiracy to keep the public in the dark about alien colonization. Here more than ever it's established that the so called Syndicate is working both with, and against the alien colonization forces, in order to save mankind from becoming a handy meal for extraterrestrial biological entities.

My assumption is that the Antarctica scene was meant to provide that over the top, big event, explosive finale that action movies are expected to include these days. As an added bonus, Mulder must rescue Scully from a pod-like chamber in which she's being kept alive following exposure to the alien virus. A mild version of a serum the Syndicate had been working on is shown to be effective in bringing Scully around, thereby providing Mulder the means to make the save, and insure that the franchise would live for another day. Well, make that four more seasons at least, even if "One man alone cannot fight the future".

My timing in re-watching this film happened to coincide with the passing of Martin Landau just a few days ago, and I had forgotten that he was part of this film's cast. I always enjoyed his work, having been introduced to him as a teenager watching 'Mission Impossible' during the mid Sixties. That show, along with a couple appearances in Rod Serling's 'Twilight Zone' ('Mr. Denton on Doomsday', 'The Jeopardy Room'),seemed to have well prepared him for the role of the mysterious Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil in this film. It's always sad to hear about the passing of well regarded celebrities, and all I can offer is Rest in Peace, Mr. Landau.