In fact that IS what they're doing, and using the camera as a cover!!

I mean, think about the US during the mid-90s, and the US now. Back then, US cultural awareness was that the world was basically benign, and getting better (communism gone, America ascendant , economy surging, etc.). In such a world, a show about shadowy, backdoor conspiracies involving stuff as non-quotidian as aliens and monsters plays well. A show about quiet conspiracies fully in charge of how the world runs was simultaneously fun and reassuring because it gave us creepy villains while ultimately sustaining the myth of supreme US power.

But today, the US's cultural conceptions of itself are dramatically different. The US no longer appears unshakably in control--it is vulnerable (9-11), alienated and incompetent abroad (Iraq), and collapsing domestically (inflation, real estate market, gas prices, inept Katrina recovery, perceptions of border insecurity, etc.). In such an environment, does a show about investigators struggling to uncover monsters-of-the-week/a shadowy syndicate orchestrating events sound all that sensical? Probably not. It feels throw-backy. There is clearly nobody at the helm, so cancer-man and all the rest are much more comedic and concurrently less threatening.

Although, that said, a movie that ignored all the ponderous story arc stuff from the show (ESPECIALLY the nonsense that came from about 1999 onward) and was instead about two monotonic FBI agents off in the woods someplace looking for like a skunk ape (or wolfman or goat sucker or whatever), and getting into prolix conversations about empiricism and science in their downtime, would be a nostalgia-inducing guilty pleasure.

And yes, Mulder and Scully were a couple at series' end. But still, there wasn't many physical displays. I am curious to learn what they've been up to all this time.

I'm interested that you think it will be a werewolf/zombie/monster sort of movie, though, as my thoughts when I saw the trailer were "Oh crap, they're doing more space-monkey conspiracy stuff."

Why the fuck did FOX decide to spend money on this? The first movie was barely a movie! Bees?! Fucking BEES?! That's it! This movie gets a million negative stars from me, because it's going to suck like a million black holes.

Nah, just kidding, y'all. This pissin' Benji doesn't give a shit really about this flick.

Man, you haters are right! It is fun to shit all over something you don't know anything about. I'm probably not going to see this one, because I wasn't necessarily a big fan of the show. The rumors of Frank Black from Millenium being in it are pretty cool, though. I liked Millenium. I wish I owned the DVDs. (begins furiously tippy tapping in UseNext to get every episode).

Besides, Gillian Anderson needs to be slapped for making very ordinary girls with dyed red hair think they look like Gillian Anderson with dyed red hair.

They don't. They look like fat, or plain girls with Manic Panic on their scalp cosplaying as one of the X-Files people.

Bring on Y-Files: The Movie!

At least, that's what I am hoping.

True, there has always been turmoil (and as hard as it is to apply metrics to it, I think that it would be wrong to say that turmoil doesn't impact culture more strongly sometimes than others), but perceptions are different now. Nobody talks about the "peace dividend" anymore, and instead, there is a lot of fear of the US being dethroned by Europe or China. Whatever can be said about the depiction of the world in the x-files, it was stable, with a cadre of Americans quietly running things for unknown purposes. I'm not sure that works today.

time to sniff some laundry on 'cho's behalf

ashok, you know, i don't think it's that it's a long time...i think we're just used to sequels coming out much more quickly nowadays. you know, if you wait more than a year and a half, it's like, oh well, you've lost the interest of the attention-span impaired demographic. which is lame, of course.

They kissed in the season 8 finale.

Hell, they had sex to create William.

One, the "[well] written, more original show that ended only six years ago with compelling, well defined characters . . ." actually ended something like 10 years ago; a lingering, ponderous show by the same name (but frequently with different actors and sharply declining writing and direction) continued on for *years* afterwards.

Two, I stand by what I said about the show being well-suited to its cultural time and place, and it being very hard to adapt to the current very different cultural time and place. I never said that the x-files was about an omnipotent United States; it just simply took place in a world where that was taken for granted. Which is why Mulder and Scully were, in the mythology episodes, attempting to uncover powerful governmental types who were, in secrecy, controlling and manipulating events for unknown and sinister ends. The concept of which, currently, appears laughable, because the government/intelligence apparatus has been revealed to be fractionalized, unprofessional, blind to threats, and incompetent, and are envisioned as such in current US culture.

Three, your reference to the inevitability of the alien invasion is unavailing, because a) that concept was only rarely introduced, and only a truly rabid fan would recall it, and b) the show was never about inevitable disaster and last-ditch efforts to stave it off, but a struggle to wrest truth from powerful adverse forces--that, and monsters-of-the-week.

Four, the show is not "more relevant than ever." Do you really want Mulder and Scully investigating no-bid contracts? Or prisoner abuse? Or foreign jihadists? And do you really think that the trope established by the show in the 90s that major geopolitical events were feints by the syndicate to cover up/accomplish activities involving aliens would work today? I doubt it would.

Five, the Lone Gunmen WTC thing most certainly did not feature "an almost play by play of 9/11", it only shared one element--hitting the towers with a plane. 9/11 was about the failure of US defenses and the realization that nation-states and governments were no longer the only significant threats, and that the intelligence resources of nation-states were dramatically less competent than had previously been thought. The show was about a goofy false-flag plot put in motion by all-powerful domestic government forces. And the Lone Gunmen show sucked. There is a reason it was canceled.

Finally, to respond to your strawman ad hominen attacks, I think that battlestar galactica, all things sarah conor, and transformers were/are all ridiculous, and I have no desire to be a screenwriter. As is, I suspect, the case with many people here, who just enjoy a good talkback about movies, and then go on with the rest of their day.

At any rate, I think that this could be a good, fun nostalgia-fest if the movie stays away from the show's bloated mythology and instead focuses on where the x-files was best: its atmosphere and monster-of-the-week mysteries.

Oh, and by the way, paragraphs are handy things. You can make them by typing < P >, but you remove the spaces.