The X-Files (film)
The X-Files (sometimes called The X-Files: Fight the Future) is a 1998 Science Fiction film based on the popular series of the same name. Set between the fifth and sixth seasons of the series, it follows the adventures of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, a pair of FBI agents infamous among their peers for their investigation of cases that defy a rational or scientific explanation. After failing to stop what seems to be a terrorist bombing in Dallas, Texas, the agents are flung into another government conspiracy regarding the colonization of Earth by alien life forms. Mulder and Scully follow the usual labyrinth of paranormal clues and obtrusive bureaucracies, eventually reaching the Antarctic, where the biggest secret of all lies in store.
A second film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, came about in 2008.
- Advertised Extra: Armin Mueller-Stall, who appears in just one scene.
- Almost Kiss: Admit it, this is why you saw the movie.
- Black Eyes of Evil: People infected with the alien virus get these.
- Body Horror
- Conspiracy Theorist: Dr. Kurtzweil and he was right!
- Chest Burster
- Don't Say Such Stupid Things: Scully tells Mulder she's leaving because all she's done is hold him back. His response is along these lines.
- Determinator: Mulder. He's always been one, but it's never been demonstrated more clearly than it is here.
- Damsel in Distress: Scully. It'll be Mulder's turn to hold the Distress Ball in the second movie, though.
- Emergency Presidential Address: Predicted by Dr. Kurtzweil as he's Story-Boarding the Apocalypse.
- Everything's Worse with Bees: A memorable scene traps the agents in a secret bunker filled with millions of these critters.
- Face Full of Alien Wingwong
- Fairy Tale Motifs: There's a subtle Sleeping Beauty thing going on here -- a woman in an enchanted sleep, locked in a glass coffin in a fortress guarded by monsters at the end of the world, awakened with mouth to mouth...
- Government Conspiracy: Naturally.
- Held Gaze: Before the Almost Kiss.
- Human Popsicle: Happens to Scully, in the alien spacecraft at the south pole.
- Informed Self Diagnosis: It's simultaneously horrifying and hilarious listening to Scully describe her symptoms in precise medical terms as she goes into anaphylactic shock.
- Kiss of Life: Apparently Chris Carter's intent was that Mulder reviving Scully with CPR counted as a symbolic completion of the Almost Kiss earlier in the movie. Very few people saw it that way before the DVD commentary explained it.
- Meaningful Echo: "If I quit now, they win."
- Mysterious Antarctica: It's home to a massive underground spaceship full of extraterrestrial tech and live humans being used to gestate alien monsters.
- Ominous Floating Spaceship
- Outrun the Fireball: Well, outdrive it.
- Take That: There's one aimed at Independence Day.
- Television Geography: The suburban neighborhood that has Dallas in view is rather desert like, which is rather odd, seeing as how North Texas, especially the area around Dallas,is grasslands, and is so developed that Dallas would be way too far to see from any rural area. Downtown Dallas also looks nothing like downtown Los Angeles.
- 'Tis Only a Bullet in the Brain: Mulder gets shot in the head at point blank range. Apparently it only grazed his skull, because he's off to Antarctica to carry his partner out of a massive alien spacecraft on foot as soon as he wakes up.
- Title Drop: "One man alone cannot fight the future." Good thing he's got a partner, then.
- Turn in Your Badge: The FBI tries to do this to Mulder and Scully, making them scapegoats for a situation where they were actually the heroes.
- Ultraterrestrials
- The Virus