The X-File Movie Review

Let's begin with Monday morning, roughly 6:47 AM. I wake, do various things, and then pull off yesterday's date from my Politically Correct calendar. I read Monday's little PC joke for the day, smile, and write a little message beneath it.

I wrote that because, frankly, I'd be a bit on the miffed side if Chris Carter and 1013 made a mess of the flick.

Anyway, I made the trip with a couple of others, about a three-hour drive to anywhere showing the flick. We saw The Truman Show with yet another friend, and thought it was good. My bunch went to a Staples, and I bought more notebooks and pens. Then we went merrily traipsing to another theatre, where we bought tickets, acquired two boxes of Raisinets and one Milk Duds, and studied the cute setup of Mulder's office in one corner. We finally went to where our movie was showing, and found seats, a la Friday's Foxtrot cartoon. Then I made the following notes in my notebook, half of them before the movie began, half afterward:

At movie theatre. Milk Duds and Raisinets in hand. Hitting 3:10 showing because I'm as broke as the rest of you. Ready? Here is the first impression:

Very like a season-ender with more special effects and guest- star places for our heroes to get lost in. But the most significant change is . . . the relationship! Ha ha! Stick that up your marmot, noromos! Heeheehee!

Yep. What I wrote was true. So now, how about

THE SUMMARY

The movie starts in 35,000 B.C., in North Texas, with both a predatory grey alien (not so high-n-mighty intelligent now are they?) and the black oil alien making an appearance in a little ice cave, where they make quick work of a couple of cavemen. Then we skip to the present day N. Texas, where a little kid falls into said cave through a hole in the ground. Not only does the kid gets black-oiled, but three firemen trying to save him bite the dust as well. Local authorities try to do their thing, but then a bunch of people and tankertrucks in white (FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and black helicopters show up and turn the entire area into a white bio-dome sort of thing. The kid gets put into a glass coffin (it only looks like one, though. It's probably plastic) and is carted off on a helicopter, never to be seen again. A guy shows up, looks around, and calls somebody on his cell phone. "It's Bronschweig. Sir, the impossible scenario we never planned for? Well, we better come up with a plan." The scene skips to...

Federal Building, Dallas, a week later. Everybody in the FBI anti-terrorism unit is searching around a building, looking for a bomb that apparently has been set there. Everybody except Mulder and Scully.

Cut to the building across the street. Scully's twelve floors up, on the roof, looking perturbed. She calls Mulder and vents her frustration at being made to search a building that wasn't even threatened, as common sense and statistics dictate that a building threatened would be the one carrying the bomb. Mulder pops out of a shadow, freaking out Scully, and they banter (Mulder, on the subject of better things to do: "Maybe we should put in a bomb threat to Houston. I hear it's free beer night at the Astrodome.") and pull practical jokes on each other (Scully, on the topic of doors not being locked: "Admit it; I had you." Mulder: "No, you didn't." Scully: "Oh yeah." Mulder: "You had nothing. I saw you jiggle the handle.") all the way downstairs.

In the lobby of the building they're still at it. (Scully: "I saw your face, Mulder. There was a definite moment of panic." Mulder: "You've never seen me panic. When I panic, I make this face." cue the normal Mulder-look. Scully: "That's the face you were making. You're buying." Mulder: "Coke, Pepsi, saline IV . . . ?" Scully:"Something sweet.") Mulder goes in search of a vending room, and finds the bomb in the soda machine. He calls Scully. She thinks he's joking and Mulder tries to convince her (Mulder, speaking of the time left till the bomb blows: "13:56, 13:54, 13:52, 13:50, you see a pattern emerging here?"), until she sees that the door lock on the vending machine room has been welded shut. She immediately gets security to evacuate the building and drags over the guy in charge of the FBI unit. They get Mulder out, they stare at the bomb. (Mulder: "Tell me that's just soda pop in those canisters.") Then, while Mulder tries to stick with the in-charge guy (S.A.C. Darius Michaud, I believe), Scully drags him out and into a car just before the bomb blows. In-charge guy had just stared at the bomb stoically, not trying to defuse it. But the building has been fully evacuated, so he's the only casualty.

Uh oh. We're at FBI Headquarters, in the Office of Professional Review It's a big ol' board meeting, with a real bitchy blonde lady at the head and Skinner on one of the ends. They have to have a public statement the FBI can give to the press, so they need the whole story. Mulder shows up late, so he's told to wait outside. This is the hearing which is apparently blaming Mulder and Scully (for some odd, regulation-related reason) for the deaths of the S.A.C., a little boy, and three firemen. Wait, you say, weren't those last four killed in scene two? Yep. M+S are being framed for 45 million dollars worth of damage to Federal property, though they're not quite sure why/how yet. Anyway, Skinner comes out to tell Mulder what's going on, and Mulder says he'll take the blame. Skinner says that Scully's said the same thing. [cue the 'awwww, ain't that cute' reaction from the audience] Scully pops out of the room, and Skinner leaves them so they can talk for a second. The big boys in the room want to talk to Skinner now, so we can have a nice chate between M+S.

Scully fills Mulder in on the framing. Then she says that they're going to separate them again. (Mulder: "We can't let them divide us." Scully: "They already have. We're being split up. OPR is going to be reassigning us to different areas.") But . . . when she was new in the field, she was drawn to the FBI because it seemed so adventurous. What she would have seen as a fantastic assignment back then sort of falls short now that she's experienced the X-files. She's not sure if she can handle having a job in the FBI with that sort of let-down. [Effectively, she's saying that it's Mulder or no one. But neither of them realize that quite yet, so we the audience will just keep it to ourselves.]

Mulder stares at her for a minute, dumbfounded, then asks if she's leaving the FBI. She says, "Maybe you should ask yourself if your heart's still in it, too." She's just kicked a puppy dog. She says sorry, then hands him his coat so he can go face the board.

Mulder's upset. Mulder's unhappy. Mulder's drunk. He's in a bar, getting completely sloshed. When the bartender asks what's wrong, he fills her in with a long, rambling sentence that only the seriously inebriated can pull off. Quite amusing, actually. To prove how unbelievable this really sounds, the bartender removes his drink and tells 'Spooky' he's had enough. Mulder leaves the bar and tries to find a bathroom, eventually settling with an Independence Day poster outside. He gets approached by yet another person who wants to tell him the meaning of the universe. The guy's name is Doctor Alvin Kurtzweil, OBGYN, another friend of Mulder's Daddy Dearest. Mulder turns him down, though apparently he's listening when the man tells him that the FEMA Provincial Quarantine Office was in that blown building, and the bodies of the boy and three firemen were in there. Maybe Mulder should ask himself if those people were already dead. Go forth and autopsy one of the bodies. Whadaya think of that? Mulder, quite clearly, states, "I think you're full of shit." Mulder gets a cab, tells it to go to Arlington, please, thinks a minute, then redirects it to Georgetown.

Scully is lying in bed, contemplating life. A knock interrupts the quiet. It's Mulder, looking very wobbly, telling her to get her clothes on 'cause they've got to go autopsy someone. She says it's three AM, then asks if he's drunk. He says he was until about twenty minutes ago, and "What exactly are you implying?" She sighs, looking unconvinced, then heads back to her bedroom to change.

Now, we skip back to Texas, the town from scene two. Those giant bio-dome thingys are still erect. Secret things have been going on in those bio-domes. Remember that hole in the ground? The one that led to the cave? Well, the bio-domes cover up that hole, and the entire thing is safety sealed so nothing gets in or out if they don't want it to.

Cigarette Smoking Man visits in the middle of the night in a black helicopter in front of a full moon. [nice shot!] We see a nice little operation in action. There's computers and tubes pumping out black oil. In that cave they've got a man in form-melded plastic, still alive (though thankfully unconscious), with a grey alien growing and feeding within his thoracic cavity. The man in charge of this, Bronskweig, says that they've kept the atmosphere freezing to control development. Heat triggered the original development. They've still got time to give the vaccine, they just have to do it before the alien gestates. Everybody has agreed that this will be fine and dandy. Cut to . . .

Montgomery County, Maryland. More specifically, Bethesda Naval Hospital, 4:04 AM. Looking like a sober nun, Mulder talks his way around the marine guarding the area. The morgue has been closed off by General McAddy's orders, nobody in, nobody out. 'Cept, of course, our smooth talking agents. They leave the marine saying that he's going to check with the general, but they can go on in while he calls.

They go and find a body, already wound up in post-autopsy wrappings. Mulder unwraps it and finds the body looking all sticky and ucky and not-at-all incinerated into nasty little bomb bits. The tissue is 'like jelly', calling to mind an X-file joke I once heard. The cellular breakdown of the body is apparently quite amazing. Mulder goes off to find his new informant while Scully does her best at figuring out 'cause of death'.

Dupont Circle, Washington D.C., around five AM. Mulder finds Dr. Informant's apartment crawling with cops, who say that they've busted him for selling kiddie porn on the net. Mulder scans the bookshelves, finding a bunch of magazines on gynocology and some books written by Dr. Informant about Armageddon. When a policeman gets to the point and asks what Mulder's there for, he replies, "I had an appointment for a pelvic exam." All the cops stare for a second, then laugh appreciatively.

Mulder leaves. In the alley, Dr. Informant pops out of a corner and asks what M+S found with the body. Mulder asks why those bodies were there. Dr. Informant asks Mulder is he's heard of FEMA's managing a viral attack in Texas. Mulder says yeah, so? Apparently, a plague killed those people, a 'silent weapon for a quiet war'. FEMA will probably unleash it during a holiday [go check out the link to that joke again], then take over the government. FEMA is the secret government beneath it all, because all they have to do is cause a national emergency and then they can suspend the constitution and take over. National emergency's are so easy to produce . . . Go back to Dallas and dig.

Mulder looks doubtful, and boogies off. Scully, meanwhile, is chipping away at the body. She crunches off a bit of rib; it looks like sugar crystal. Uh oh. She's about to be discovered by the marine and a couple of his security buds. She goes and hides in the freezer, where her cell phone cheeps. Honestly, those two should get a vibrating function or something. Anyway, Mulder's called to ask her what she's found. She says it looks like a massive infection. Hmmm. She's just backed up Dr. Informant's info. He says he's going to buy tickets to Texas. She says she can't go, she's got a hearing/meeting tomorrow. He says they can get her back in time. He needs her there, needs her expertise (among other things). She still says no, and hangs up on him. Scully eventually makes it out of the building without getting arrested.

Dallas, Texas, FBI Field Office, 11:21 AM. A guy is jabbering at Mulder that they did find some bone fragments, fossils, in the FEMA office, apparently taken from a FEMA archeological site. Scully shows up, and Mulder (looking relieved) asks if his partner can look at the fossils. The guy says sure, just give me a couple of minutes to find them.

M+S gravitate toward each other, alone in a room full of people, if you catch my drift. They inch in on each other as she says the fireman got hit with a very fast infection. If the virus hit the public, it would be catastrophic. The guy comes back then with a tray of plastic containers holding the bone fragments. Scully takes a look at one of the samples under a microscope. Eyes wide, she tells Mulder that it's another one of those sugar crystal bone fragments.

Good grief, they're thinking, this means that the bodies didn't die in the blown-up building! That means it wasn't our fault! Which means they can't bust us! Yay!

But, alas, they feel they need more proof. So, pocketing a container holding some of the samples, they head off for the place the fragments had been excavated from, the town we saw in scene two.

Texas. A little kid goes up a plastic slide to see the domes. Cut to the bio-domes. Bronschweig has another, older-looking glass coffin, and is saying that they've got to recheck everything, making sure that the coffin is a steady -2 degrees Celsius, so that everything is ready after he gives the vaccine. Bronksweig goes down the hole, ready to terminate the experiment. He's got a little brown bottle filled with a liquid (the anti-virus) and a hypodermic needle. Uh oh. The alien has gestated. It's not in the body anymore. It's somewhere in the cave, and the guy is going to be toast very soon. He runs back to the ladder leading up, yelling that the alien is loose. They tell him to come up. He pauses, looks to a corner, then gets viciously attacked for several minutes. He managed to stuff the hypodermic needle into the alien, which stops it briefly, but as he tries to climb out, his colleagues fit the top of the hole with a plastic cover, lotsa locks, and dirt. They can't let him out; he's part of the agenda, he's a witness, he's a carrier. He ain't leaving.

But wait. The alien. It's not dead. After gestation, the vaccine doesn't work. Our guy gorily meets his maker.

Cut to the County of Somerset, England. We're at the estate of Well-Manicured Man. He's watching his grandkids, two girls and a boy, all of them brunettes. One girl has brown braids. [Anyone else feel a glimmer of Samantha?] WWM doesn't look particularly evil or smug. Just a happy sort of sad. He gets called by CSM to a meeting which is being called together by someone named Strughold. WWM isn't so happy now. To emphasize the badness of this news, his grandson promptly breaks his leg, causing WWM to be late to the meeting.

London, England, 6:47 PM. The Elders are all waiting for him, and they tell him the bad news about everything. They've got to reassess their position in the colonization. [Huh? asks the audience] The virus has mutated into a new alien bio-agent. [What? asks the audience] WWM is horrified. This isn't colonization, this is spontaneous repopulation. At the rate things are going, we'll be nothing but digestives to the aliens. [Eh? asks the audience] Well, what if we show our alien buddies some of the bodies that've been infested? Maybe they don't know anything about it. [Pardon? asks the audience] No, you fools, says WWM, if we do that and the aliens do know about it, then they won't even try to keep up pretences. [Oookkkaaayyyyy, says the audience].

After this, the Elders go ahead and tell WWM about Mulder seeing the fireman's body (they have a surveillance camera's testimony to the fact that M+S had been in the morgue). Then they tell him about the information leak. (CSM, on the topic of who it is: "Kurtzweil, we think.") Someone pouts and asks why they can't just kill Mulder off, but Strughold (someone with an accent) says that they can't, not without the risk of one man's quest turning into a crusade. All they have to do is take away that which keeps him going. Cut to a shot of Scully. [Jeez, has everybody figured out about their mutual and undying love? You'd think the happy lovers would figure it out, too.]

We're in scene two's northern Texas now, gasping slightly at the fact that where there were little bio-dome thingys, now there's a new playground, complete with new green grass and no irrigation system. Very conspicuous, actually, seeing as how they're in a dry and desert-like area. M+S have a look, and determine that this is grass was only laid down a few hours ago. Then some kids come by, and while Mulder comments on their shiny new playground and the shiny new bikes they're sitting on, Scully tries to get them to tell her where the people who were just here went. The kids look at each other. We aren't supposed to tell. You can tell us, we're with the FBI. The middle kid looks credulous. No, you aren't. Well, how do you know? "'Cause y'all look like door-to-door salesmen." M+S exchange looks, then Mulder steps forward and pulls out his credentials. "Anyone want to buy a badge?" The kids exchange looks again, then say the bad guys went thataway and with huge white tanker trucks. M+S hop into their car. Mulder's driving.

They drive and drive, and then hit a t-road. Either left or right, no tracks, a hundred miles of nothing in either direction. She says right. He says left. They ponder. Then he hits the gas and goes straight forward, over a barely-there dirt road. She looks at him. Mulder looks back, saying, "Five years together, how many times've I been wrong?" Scully gives another look, then her eyebrow slowly starts to rise. Mulder notices, then says with an edge, "Never." Another pause. "Not driving, anyway."

It was noon then. It's twilight now. They've hit a dead end. Scully's pissed. She's probably not going to make it to her hearing (which is in 11 hours). Mulder just helplessly trys to fold their map, saying, "I was right about the bomb, wasn't I?" She spends a few minutes reaming him out (Scully: "We're in the middle of nowhere, chasing phantom tanker trucks!" Mulder: "Tanker trucks holding a virus." Scully: "Tanker trucks hold oil. They hold gas. They do not hold viruses!" Mulder: "These do."), when suddenly a train [nice shot!] rushes past. And what's on that train? White tanker trucks. [In the interests of preserving facts, the train came from the left, so Mulder must have been correct at the t-road.] M+S hop into their car and try to follow the train, eventually going up a hill while the train goes round [the perfect Oldsmobile Intrigue car commercial: yes, it can go over hills and run for hundreds of miles in comfort and quiet!]. M+S get out of the car and climb up the rest of the hill, and we see the train come to rest outside a couple of really big white bio-domes, and a field of corn. Corn in an exceptionally arid area.

They climb down and through the corn, commenting on it and the bio-dome thingys. (Scully: "Any thoughts as to why someone would grow corn in the desert?" Mulder, referring to the bio-domes: "Those could be giant Jiffy Pop poppers.") They go inside one. [It should be noted at this point that Mulder is still wearing the clothes he had on from the first hearing, before he went to the bar. Just thought you should know.] The structure's big, and has an odd whining noise. Scully thinks it sounds like really high voltage electricity. Mulder crouches down and listens to one of the covered vents on the floor. He thinks it's probably not electricity, and is about to say so, when vents on top of the structure suddenly open with a clang. Both look mystified for a minute, then he tells her to run. They've gone half a step when the vents on the floor open up, and trillions of bees pop out.

Yuck. Bees. M+S run out, covering their heads and getting covered anyway. Scully nearly pulls off her clothes in an attempt to take off her jacket to cover her head. She stumbles, and Mulder goes back for her. They make it out, both saying that they haven't been stung. Then they hear a noise, and the horizon lights up. Hmmm. Reminiscent of UFOs. But it's not. A couple of helicopters swing up to the area, and M+S make a run for it through the corn [nice scene!] and when they get separated they call out trying to locate each other. (Mulder, noticing Scully is no longer behind him: "Scully, talk to me. Scully? Dammit! Scully!") Mulder turns back to find Scully. [cue the 'awwww, ain't that cute' reaction from the audience] Then, when they both make it out of the corn, they run toward each other like all the popular romantic meetings do. They look to the sky; the helicopters have vanished, though the entire theatre knows darn well that they were there. Scully asks where'd they go? Mulder grabs some unidentifiable part of Scully's anatomy [shucks, it wasn't unidentifiable. I know where he grabbed. I'm just wondering if either of them realized it.] and hustles her out of there. M+S make their slow way back to the car.

Back in D.C. Scully's late to her hearing, but at least she's there. She's a mess: dirt smudging her cheeks, second day hair, the same outfit she had on yesterday . . . She goes in, apologizes for being late, then says she's got new evidence. Evidence? Yep, fossilized bone fragments, gathered in Dallas. You went back to Dallas? Uh, yes.

Mulder's back in that bar, wearing new clothes and a really nice leather jacket. He slides into a booth across from Dr. Informant. [In the interests of info, I might add that this appears to be the same booth/bar from that episode Travelers. This is an important bar.] They exchange greetings.

Cut back to the hearing. Scully's saying how the S.A.C. was involved somehow in the setting of the bomb. The board says these are serious allegations.

Cut to the bar. Dr. Informant asks what they found in Texas. Mulder says they found bees, and corn crops.

Cut to the hearing. Scully's sweating bullets here. She says the results are not completely conclusive, but we're working on getting more information. 'We'? Who are you working with? Scully swallows and looks like she's gonna faint. After a moment, sounding like she's confessing that she stole her sister's Easter candy, she says, "Agent Mulder."

The camera gets a shot of her shoulder. We see a little bee climb over her collar. Oops.

Cut to the bar. Mulder asks Dr. Informant what the bees and corn mean. The good doctor's eyes shift back and forth. What do you think they mean? Well, says Mulder, I think they're transportation devices. Ah, says the doctor, good. Must be going now. Tootles. Dr. Informant beats a hasty retreat out of the bar, into the alley in the back. Mulder follows, pissed. He catches up to him and says that the doctor has given him no real answers, he's just been using Mulder to gather information for his books. Dr. Informant probably never even knew his dad. So Mulder's been running around, nearly getting killed, just to get info for this guy. Dr. Informant turns around and denies it all. Mulder didn't nearly get killed; those people don't make mistakes. He was right about everything else, wasn't he? Dr. Informant scurries off, leaving Mulder in the alley. Mulder looks up. A man in a suit has been watching them, and with only a flick of the eyes shows deadly menace. Then Mulder boogies off.

[Warning: The next scene is pivotal to the rest of the series. If you have doubts, turn back now.]

Mulder's Apartment. Mulder's crashed in, not bothering to lock the door behind him. He sits down at his desk and opens a drawer. From the very bottom of it he pulls out a photoalbum. After a brief search he finds a family photo from way back, and Kurtzweil is there. Whoa, he thinks, remember to breathe. He's still contemplating the picture when a soft knock interrupts the quiet. Scully comes in (still in her dirty duds) and wearily says, "Salt Lake City, Utah." What? Effective immediately, she's being transferred. He stares, and then asks if that means that she's quitting the FBI. She nods; she's left her letter of resignation with Skinner. Mulder tells her she can't quit, they're on the verge of something here. She sighs and says that he's on the verge, not her. She heads for the door. He stands. "I need you on this." She stops and turns. "You don't me. You never have. I've just held you back. Goodbye, Mulder." She leaves and is halfway down the hall before he catches up to her. Mulder turns her around, grabbing her arms. Then he says something I wish I could have remembered completely.

"You want to leave with a clear conscience. Well, I'm not going to let you! You saved me. Time and time over. You kept me honest. You make me a whole person. I owe you everything, you owe me nothing. I don't know if I want to do this alone. I don't know if I can. And if I quit, they win."

Ladies and gentlemen, Mulder declared love. You should have heard the squeals in the audience.

Scully's staring up at him, silent tears rolling down her cheeks, a bewildered and enchanted look on her face. She hugs him, and it's a full-body hug. This lasts for a minute, then she pulls back and holds his head, fiercely kissing his forehead. When she stops, his hands move to her face, hers to his neck. They look deep into each other's eyes. His thumb gently circles her cheek. She smiles a small smile: it gives him permission. Slowly, ever so slowly, he leans down toward her, she inclines her head to meet his, and I swear on my singing, relationshippy soul that their lips brush together . . . and then Scully cries out and falls forward and to the side. "Ow, Jesus!" Mulder looks downcast and frustrated, probably thinking that he's ruined the moment. "Sorry."

Scully's reply sounds muffled. "No, not you. I think I got stung." Mulder checks where she's rubbing the base of her neck, and pulls out a bee. "Must've gotten down your shirt." He still isn't sounding all that happy. Probably because he thinks she's backing away again. Then she looks up in a haze of pain and says, "Mulder, something's wrong." He snaps into danger-mode. Is it anaphylactic shock? No, she's got no allergy to bees.

She collapses in his arms, breathing out her symptoms to a Mulder who must be living his worst nightmare. He lowers her to the floor, cradling her body, then runs to his apartment and makes a desperate call to 911 requesting an ambulance.

An ambulance shows up a minute later and Mulder's telling them all her symptoms. They lift her onto a stretcher and bundle her into the vehicle. Mulder says he wants to go with her. The EMTs brush him off. Mulder's spidey-sense goes off. He tries to get in the back with them, but they push him out. He asks which hospital they're going to; they ignore him. Uh oh. They close the back door in his face. Scratch everything. This is his worst nightmare. He yells at the driver, demanding to know which hospital they're going to. The driver looks at him for a second, then levels a gun at him and shoots Mulder in the head through the glass. [According to a reliable EMT I know, the driver of an ambulance often feels like shooting annoying people in the head, though they never act on it. Much.] The ambulance goes roaring off, leaving Mulder on the ground with a serious wound on one side of his head and the real ambulance driving up.

We see a cargo plane land on an air field. A white truck awaits it. So does CSM, smoking. Off the truck comes one of those glass coffins. Scully's in it. It gets put on the plane, and CSM gets on with it. The door on the plane clangs shut, blocking out all light save the red glow of CSM's cigarette.

Black screen. Then we hear hushed whispers. "What're you doing?" "I'm reading his chart." "Don't do that." "I'll do what I want." "He's coming out of it." Mulder's eyes crack open and who should we see but the Lone Gunmen. Mulder rapidly shuts his eyes again and moans out "Oh God." His eyes open, and they're still there. His gaze drifting back and forth among them, he murmurs, "Cowardly lion, Scarecrow, Toto . . . " Ha, ha, they say. They fill him in on the fact that Scully probably got intercepted by fake people intent on Doing Evil, and that the wound to his head is only a grazing. [Good grief, the man's immortal.] They found this (here, they hold up a small container holding the bee that stung Scully) in his hallway. It's an africanized honey bee. Mulder tries to get up and out to save Scully, but A.D. Skinner pops in at that moment to say hello, and ends up wrestling Mulder back into the bed. Skinner says that he'll go save Scully, more proof that Mulder isn't the only one with the hots for her. Mulder says 'no', he has to do it. The Lone Gunmen ask if they can do anything to help. He blearily looks up and says, "You can strip Byers naked." Byers squawks "What?!?"

Well, we knew Mulder was kinky, but with a head wound, and in front of his boss . . . ?

Mulder rubs his eyes and says, "I need your clothes."

A few minutes later we see the backs of Frohike, Langley, and Byers go down the hall. A man keeping security peeps into Mulder's hospital room and sees Skinner on the phone and a dark haired man with a bandage on his head. The man's on his side, so security can't really see his face, but . . . aw, shucks, must be Mulder in there.

Well, it's not. The Lone Gunmen bust him out and say farewell, having spent approximately two minutes on screen. Mulder makes a phone call on the way out the door.

Cut to the alley behind the bar. Dr. Informant is nervously waiting for Mulder to show up. A car pulls up and Well-Manicured Man steps out, saying what a bad boy Dr. Informant has been. WMM levels a gun at him.

Mulder pops up a few minutes later, only to see WMM's chauffeur slamming the car trunk's lid shut and WMM putting his gloves back on or something. Mulder knows he's too late, but he asks where Dr. Informant is anyway. Not here. Well, do you know where he is. Yes. So where is he? Not there either. Arghh.

WMM beckons Mulder closer, saying he has something for him. He holds up a piece of cloth. Mulder asks what it is. "The location of Agent Scully and the means to save her life." Now WWM's got Mulder by the curiosity. He invites him into the car for a talk. Mulder gets in. The car (license L A365) begins to drive. Under the shadow of the capital building it moves, and WMM looks sorta sad as he glances at the driver sitting up front, then begins his speech.

He tells Mulder that the corn he has seen contains genetically-altered pollen, which the bees gather and eat, making them carriers. The bees will later go out and sting people, making them hosts to the virus the bees carried. The virus will grow inside the people, then eventually gestate and break out. The grey alien is actually a giant virus. But aren't viruses these really tiny things? Yes, well, this virus was the first inhabitant of earth, an alien thing that landed and developed and evolved and grew, until it was huge, a predatory sort of grey alien. Star Trek: Voyager did something like it once. [good episode!] Anyway, the colonizing aliens (the black oil?) reconstituted this virus alien without telling the Elders. Us humans are dog chow. Until Dallas, when one of the virus aliens gestated, they thought that it could be controlled. Guess again. So, the Elders tried to make the best of a bad situation by making this weak vaccine. Here. If Mulder goes to these coordinates, he'll find Scully. And if he gives her this vaccine within the next 96 hours (WMM hands over a small brown bottle and a hypodermic needle), she'll live. She'll be a mess, but she'll live.

Mulder looks bewildered. Then he wants to get out of the car. The car ain't stopping. Mulder wants to get out of the car now. The chaffeur pulls into an alley after a nod from WWM. Mulder tries to open his door. It's locked. He looks over to WWM, and notices the gun in his lap. Crap, he thinks. WWM says he was ordered to kill Dr. Informant and Mulder. Then, "Trust no one, Mr. Mulder." At this point, WMM shoots his chauffeur in the back of the head. The blood splatters all over poor Mulder; he'll have to get some testing done after this. WWM gets out of the car through his door and tells Mulder to get out. Mulder looks at the gun in WWM's hands, and at the driver. He thinks he's gonna bite the big one, so his sense of gallow's humor pops up. "Why? The upholstery's already ruined." Get out! Okay, okay. WWM doesn't shoot him, though. WWM says that he has grandchildren, and he doesn't want them to live in a world where this sort of thing is going on. He says that this has been happening for 50 years. It has to stop. Go. Mulder doesn't budge. WWM, in desperation, lifts his gun and points it at Mulder's head. Go now!

Mulder begins his walk to the end of the alley. WMM sadly watches his retreating back, then gets into the passenger seat of a car with no driver. He slams the door. And the explosion rocks the area.

Mulder dives to the ground, then turns and looks over his shoulder. The car is a fiery pit. No one's gonna get out of that. Mulder picks himself up and leaves. [It should be noted, at this point, that we see no body. Who knows.]

A white screen, cleverly disguised as Wilkes Lake, Antarctica, 48 hours later. We're reaching the final stretch, people. Mulder's in a Sno-Cat, trying to find the proper coordinates (33 degrees South, 63 degrees East, for those interested). This takes a bit. Finally, after discarding the Sno-Cat (which ran out of gas) and walking, he climbs over a hill and sees a bunch of those white bio-domes. Dragging out his binoculars, he sees CSM get into a bigger Sno-Cat and rumble off. Mulder's ecstatic. He's also not thinking too clearly. He just goes running across the snowy plain, getting ever closer, until . . . he falls through a hole. A bunch of holes.

He's in a tunnel, and he crawls around for a while until he gets to a place where he can stand up properly. He pulls out his mini-flashlight. The place he's in looks suspiciously like a hallway, with green glowing cubicles lining it. Around him are things that look like ladders here, gateways there . . . we're all getting a sinking feeling about what this is. He is, too. He goes up to one of the cubicles and swipes at the snow covering it. Aggh! There's somebody in there! He swipes more. Ewww! There's an alien in his thoracic cavity!

Outside, CSM's Sno-Cat drives up to Mulder's. Uh oh. Guess who's coming to dinner.

Mulder's scouting around below ground. He comes to one dead-end, a huge column with something like mechanical vertebrae hanging down it. [nice shot!] Mulder backs up and goes another way. Another dead end, but this one's more promising.

This is a gorgeous shot. Absolutely beautiful. It's the inside of a giant ship, like a cross between the Borg and Independence Day (although apparently it looks just like the ship in the book 'The Puppet Masters', by Robert A. Heinlein. Not to be confused with the movie 'The Puppet Masters', which was based loosely on the back cover of the book by Robert A. Heinlein). Shades of dark, metallic green, phosphorescent glow lights, symmetric crossbeams. Gorgeous. It resembles, in shape, a giant sink, with Mulder standing on an edge and the bowl beneath him. The sink eventually levels off, and then there's the drain. He looks down with his binoculars. He sees Scully clothes, minus the Scully. He decides to go down to the sink bottom.

After much slipping and sliding and fearing for his life, he finally makes it down there. There are huge, vertical green cubicles, like the ones he found before, only newer looking, which glow that green phosphorous color. He passes them. He makes it to what apparently caught his eye in the first place, rows upon rows of those glass-coffin thingys. He searches until he finds one which has her shirt, her business suit, undoubtedly her underwear, and . . . her gold cross. He jumps up and begins, on a hunch, to search the vertical green things.

He swipes at the glass of each, every time uncovering another face. [Once again I'm reminded of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager.] The fifth one contains Scully.

This bit is actually quite frightening to look at. She's wide-eyed, her facial expression that of someone screaming. Instead of sound, however, she's got a tube connecting her mouth to the inside of the green cubicle. Mulder looks her up and down (far longer, I am sure, than required to look for an alien growing in her. But she is naked, after all), then paws at her face. Then pounds at her face. He's trying to break open the cubicle.

CSM's Sno-Cat comes back. CSM enters a dome filled with Men In Black, and he calls at people that there's a breach.

Mulder runs over to a glass coffin and unstraps one of the oxygen tanks on the side. He brings it back to Scully's cubicle and begins to smash open the front. A crack, and then an opening. Water, or something, begins to spill out.

CSM tells the troops to assemble. They've got to go down there, to get whoever's in there out.

Something subtly changes about her. She sounds like she's going to hack up something, and surprise, she does. Something comes out of her mouth and up through the tube, looking disgustingly like link sausage. [I vowed at this point never to eat sausage ever again.] A crashing noise fills the hallway. Steam erupts from various things.

A guy top-side sits at a computer with CSM looking over his shoulder. In tones of disbelief, the guy says, "There's a contaminant in the system." CSM looks horrified. "Mulder has the vaccine." Drat, he thinks. That means he's not dead, but Well-Manicured Man probably is. Oh well . . .

The sausage in the tube is done squishing out and again Scully seems to change. Now she's trying to breathe, to do something. Mulder breaks the tube off her mouth (like that bad guy in 'Terminator 2' who tried to walk after being frozen by liquid nitrogen). She coughs out a ton of water and Mulder has to pull out a little tube thing that she's gagging on. It's a very long, disgusting tube, and Mulder looks like he's going to have some interesting nightmares after this. Finally, it's out and she falls forward. Mulder catches her, neatly making sure that we the audience don't see anything R-rated. The first word she manages to get out is 'cold'. Then, "I'm cold."

Above ground, alarms are going off. "Abandon your posts! Evacuate!" Someone asks CSM what's going on. "It's all going to hell." "What about Mulder?" CSM pauses momentarily. "He'll never make it."

Mulder puts Scully into his snowsuit, leaving him to only wear the clothes he had on beneath, which are thankfully sorta warm looking. There's still steam and crashing noises all around them. Mulder carries her in his arms till they get to a big column tunnel with ladder-like ridges on the sides. On the principle that up means out, they start climbing.

CSM is slowly walking to his Sno-Cat. With one last lingering look toward the emptying bio-domes, his vehicle heads north (everywhere's north in Antarctica).

The aliens are chittering and scratching at the cubicles as the melting occurs. M+S make it to the top of the column, but Scully can't go on. [Voyager reminder again.] (Mulder: "Keep moving. Come on." Scully: "I can't, I can't." Mulder: "Yeah, you can.") Mulder scoops her up and carries her fireman-style. They're winding and weaving, going nuts as the aliens move more and more. Finally Mulder sees a hole that resembles the one he climbed out of. He tells Scully to reach up and climb. He'll hold her up, even. No response. He has her down on the floor in an instant. She's not breathing, and her face looks like a scull. [nice make-up!] The aliens in the bodies around them are moving faster. Some are beginning to pound on the cubicle windows. It doesn't matter. He pauses for a moment, then lowers his head to hers and gives mouth-to-mouth. Not quite the kiss we were hoping for, but as close as we're going to get in this flick. Mulder tells her breathe, come on, breathe! [Maybe this entire section should be a tribute to Voyager] She starts to breathe again, and turns her head to look Mulder in the eye. In a whisper, she says, "I had you big time." They smile at each other.

The cubicles burst.

Mulder instantly shoves Scully up that hole, and tries to follow. He makes it halfway up, but something's holding onto his foot. Like two dogs fighting over a bone, Scully tugs on Mulder's hand and the alien tugs on Mulder's foot. Scully wins. They immediately crawl as fast as they can down the tunnel. Scully's on hands and knees, and Mulder's behind her. Something is scratching along behind him. [This reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons. Honestly.] They climb up one more hole, and just before the alien does too, a blast of steam hits it in the face and has it down for the count. M+S are now safe. For the moment.

They climb out of their hole and onto the surface, spending a moment breathing heavy. [At this point, I'd like to say that odds are CSM looked back and spotted them, then radioed in and discreetly asked that someone pick up two people at these coordinates within the next fifteen minutes. Otherwise, M+S would have been going nowhere fast in a Sno-Cat with no gas and no one knowing that they were alive/there.]

Mulder, while breathing heavy, notices that the ice is buckling beneath them. Uh oh. Mulder drags Scully up like a marionette, and off they run, as fact as they can. The bio-domes disappear below the ice. Now, some of the outlying land. Uh oh again. It's a sink hole. Large cracks form, and the land drops away faster and faster. M+S aren't going to make it, I tell myself. Then I realize that they have to make it, they're the heroes. Then I get in a snit, because common sense says that they're going to go under, but the writer probably said they weren't. I watch, in full anticipation of hating it.

They don't make it. The land drops from beneath them, and they fall.

Then they surge back up again, along with everything else. A giant ship pops out of the sinkhole. M+S are neatly, and believably, dropped off right at the edge of the crater, because they'd been close enough to the edge of the ship to have been caught up by the sloped sides, thus saving them.

M+S are lying on their stomachs on the ground, but Mulder looks up and sees the ship wheel briefly over his head, then fly off in the same direction as the helicopters. He tries to nudge Scully to take a look, but she's not very responsive at the moment. (Mulder: "Scully, you gotta see this. Scully.") Mulder, on the other hand, has the face of a man who has seen the meaning of it all, the utopia, the ultimate vision of God. He . . . knows now. And for a moment he's happy.

Then he lays his face back to the snow, still smiling like an angel.

Scully drags herself up, and wrestles Mulder's upper body into her lap to keep them both warm. She's rocking them back and forth, burying her chin in his hair. The camera pans, showing us a crater the size of New Jersey. And the seen fades there, which is why CSM had better have radioed in for transport, 'cause they're not going anywhere.

We're back in the hearing room. Scully is looking a little worse for wear, with broken capillaries and other nasty cold-related things, but at least she's in clean clothes.

Cut to a man in black walking around a lab with a flashlight.

Cut to Scully giving her case to the board, telling them everything she and Mulder found. The board says (quite intelligently in my opinion), that it's all a crock of bull.

Cut to the MIB taking all the little containers of fossilized bone fragments. There's a voice over going on of the board's opinion of Scully's story. We cut to someone peeling tape from the white tanker trucks, revealing a message reading 'Nature's Best Corn Oil'. We cut to another shot of the corn fields going up in flame.

Cut to the hearing. The board finishes its little speech by saying that due to the lack of hard evidence, the unbelievability of the presented facts, and because they wanna, the board will be deleting all of this from their report till hard evidence can be found. Scully gets pissed, stands up, and stalks over to the board's table. Dropping the container holding the bee that had stung her in front of the head of the board, she says that due to the nature of the case, which is definitely odd, it really is too bad that there isn't a division of the FBI that can handle it. Scully flounces out, leaving the head of the board staring at the piece of evidence which says that everything Scully said is true. The board looks at each other.

We're in a park. Mulder is sitting on a bench, reading a newspaper. Scully slowly walks up and stands in front of him. He hands over the newspaper, pointing to an article which reads: FATAL HANTA VIRUS IN TEXAS CONTAINED. "Interesting work of fiction on page 24," he says. "Interestingly enough, our names have been omitted." She says she just came back from the hearing. They won't be transferring her for awhile, not till they can get some stuff sorted out, apparently. She won't be leaving.

He stands, and faces her, frustration, anger, and despair just beneath the surface. He nearly yells at her, "You were right to want to quit. Right to get away from me. Get as far away from me as possible. I don't want to see you die because of some quest of mine." His voice nearly breaks. "Go be a doctor. Go be a doctor while you still can." The man's trying to be noble, trying to do the right thing. Good thing Scully knows better. She makes a grab for his hand and squeezes it. In almost a chiding tone, she says, "Look, if I quit now, they win." He looks down at her. She looks up at him. The camera looks at them from a couple of feet away, and they're standing thisclose together. He looks like he wants to kiss her. But he doesn't. Drat. Instead, they walk off into the sunset (despite the fact that it's mid-afternoon). But . . . they keep holding hands (not fingers, not knuckles, not elbows). It's only when the shot starts to fade out that we see them finally release their grips.

One mo' time. [cue the 'awwww, ain't that cute' reaction from the audience]

The last scene is the Foum Tatouine desert, Tunesia. Very hot, very dry, very filled with corn. CSM gets dropped off and heads for the guy in charge of this crop. The man asks why CSM's here in person. (Guy: "We have regular channels.") But CSM says it's about Mulder. The guy says that 'Mulder' is all they talk about (hmmm). Why does CSM have to come all the way over here just to talk about him some more. CSM hands over a telegram and says he recieved it this morning. The guy (Strughold?) looks at the message and pales. Silently he drops the paper and they walk off into the sunset (despite the fact that it's mid-morning). We catch a glimpse of the message as the wind lifts the top flap. We can't read the name of who sent it. It reads:

The X-files reopened. Stop. Please advise. Stop.

Crap, they're both thinking. Maybe CSM shouldn't have radioed for transport.

And that, ladies and gents, was the movie.

THOUGHTS

Hmmm. This movie brought some interesting questions to mind. For instance, FEMA is entirely in white. The Elders and the government are entirely in black. There are two different color systems that I know of that are relevant here. In European culture, and to a degree North American culture, white symbolizes purity, goodness, and good hygiene. This would make FEMA good, and everybody else, including our heroes, bad. In South America, most notably Mexico and related nations, white is evil, decadent, and always worn by the bad guy. Which would make FEMA bad, and the Elders and our heroes and CSM good. Hmmm. Interesting.

Then there's the M+S relationship. Now, believing that there was nothing between them before was a relatively easy thing to do. After that one scene . . . that thing's gonna have repercussions. As one of the esteemed males in my party said afterwards, if it hadn't been for that bee they would have been liplocked till January and then would've spent a constructive couple of hours behind Mulder's locked apartment door.

The point is, however, is that they won't be able to forget the fact that they weren't being forced to, they weren't drugged, and neither had suffered serious physical damage within the last five minutes. Both are completely aware that they were going to kiss. And they won't be able to get around that. Their relationship, as it has been, is over. The UST meter is going to jump to phenomenal heights, and they're going to be pushing it ever higher by working together. If some jovial co-worker accidently locks them into a supply closet, Seven Minutes In Heaven is going to be the least of what happens.

Who's the stooge at the FBI? Someone sent CSM that telegram, and it wasn't Krycek or anyone obvious because we couldn't see the name. Spender? He hates Mulder, hates the paranormal, hates the X-files, and CSM is his dad. Good reason there. Skinner? But I thought he was a good guy now? Well, he did work for CSM for awhile, who knows? Scully? Nah. Then who?

Someone in my group mentioned a possible theory as to why they don't just kill off Mulder, why he manages to survive everything, why his sister was picked instead of him for abduction, and why his family tree is a little questionable. Perhaps, just perhaps, Mulder has something funky in his genes, something that makes him different in a fundamental way, something that may be the saving of everybody else in the world. Maybe, in his search for the truth, he doesn't realize that he is the truth. It would explain everything, especially the reason why they shoved that little chess- playing kid into the storyline. That kid is there to point out the possibility, to make you subtly aware that this may be the case. A little voice in your head may whisper, 'Gee, the kid watches TV escape the voices for a while. Mulder watches TV to escape reality and his dreams. What a coincidence.' or 'Gosh, that kid is as enigmatic as Mulder. They certainly seem to be able to talk the same language.' Foreshadowing is a lovely thing, don't you think?

Of course, the person who came up with the above has also said that maybe Scully is actually Samantha, with all her original memories wiped out and false ones implanted. Her family isn't real, and meeting up with Mulder was sheer luck. It would explain their meeting of minds, but adds a certain tarnish to their UST. So take the theories with a grain of salt.

QUESTIONS

Now, several things weren't addressed in this flick. Who burnt down the X-files (though we damn-well know who did), whether Well-Manicured Man survived the fire, what Agent Spender has to do with anything, what Krycek's part is, what happened to Samantha, who abducted Scully/what happened during her abduction (aside from the immediately obvious), what happened to that little chess-playing kid, what the relationship is between the black oil alien and the grey alien, what the relationship was between Mulder and Diana Fowley, and whether she's still alive (bet me she is). Obviously they're saving all that for next season, especially the Diana Fowley bit (after all, with the way M+S are now, they've got to address that. To not do so would cheat not only us but M+S's budding new relationship).

THINGS I LIKED

The soundtrack was interesting. It was the theme music sped up, slowed down, played in a slightly different order . . . it was quite fascinating to listen to.

The visual imagery in this was gorgeous. The train barreling through the wisps of fog brought back memories of the haunted train stories by Odds Bodkin, and it also reminded me of the midnight train stop in Valhalla, New York (at midnight a train goes through the station, but it only stops if someone inside wants to get off. There are no official rides at midnight, so what you see is a ghost train, which only ghosts wanting to get off. Valhalla is famous for its cemeteries). The ship in Antarctica was beautiful. The aliens clawing within the desiccated bodies of still-living humans was eerie. Mulder's pose of defeat with a bee-bitten Scully in his arms was heart-wrenching. I want to see this movie again, both to understand the plot better and to see these images once more.

For a season-ender it was a nice one.

And finally, they handled that one scene perfectly. M+S had been working up to that moment for the past five years, and anything done differently in that scene in the hallway would have ruined everything. And when they tried to do the best thing for each other by trying to push the other away, yet were glad that the other refused to be pushed . . . (I'm referring, here, to when Scully said that she was leaving and Mulder could do tons of stuff now that he wasn't being held back, and when Mulder said that she should leave him and go be a doctor) . . . I'm convinced now that Chris Carter has a romantic soul.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE

The Lone Gunmen were making an appearance, not doing anything really worthwhile. Their part in it could easily have been done by anyone else. They really should have played a bigger part in the story.

While it may be normal for the series, and it may be normal for movies, I just couldn't like having a new informant pop out of the woodwork and then conveniently die after he'd given his lines. It bugs me for some reason.

Lastly, I'm really hoping that CSM turned around and saw them sitting in the middle of that ice field. I don't like not knowing how they got out of that.

THE OFFICIAL VERDICT

Well, that's my review. Overall . . . go see it. Good flick, especially for fans of the X-files and UST. As for me, I've seen it twice now, but I'd like to hear what other people got of this movie (and if they caught any more good quotes); I'd like to make this a better, more rounded review/summary. Opinions, people!

Here's some links I've compiled since I saw the flick. If you click here, you can get to the official movie site. I suggest going with the non-Shockwave, then going to the 'Archived Homepages'. This'll get you great pictures and quick-to-download sound bites, many of which I've linked to in this review/summary. If you click here, you can get to a survey counting the number of times people (specifically relationshippers) have been to see the movie. If you click here, you can get to a fanfiction archive that has some fanfic based on the movie. Woof. Think that covers everything? Enjoy yourselves.