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Monday, August 4, 2008

Faith New to The X-Files?

posted by on August 4 at 17:10 PM

I just want to attempt to shut down this half-baked theory right now. The X-Files has always highly concerned with faith, specifically Catholicism. The Irish-Catholic Scully wore a cross in the very first episode—just a little visual tweak to the formula of Mulder as believer and Scully as skeptic. (Which is itself a reversal of the formula of men as rational and women as intuitive.) Nearly every time thereafter that Scully believed some freakish thing and Mulder (presumably a secular Jew) held back, religion or the notion of life after death was involved. I’m thinking of Beyond the Sea, Revelations, Elegy, All Souls (just look at those titles!). Meanwhile, Pentecostal and evangelical Christianity (Miracle Man, Signs and Wonders) and pseudo-Mormonism (Roadrunners, which is set in Utah) are treated with extreme suspicion. Judaism got off OK, as I recall (Kaddish). But any time some random character was supposed to be religious but not fanatical, the writers made him or her Catholic.

belief.jpg


So it wasn’t exactly a surprise that the new movie puts Scully in a Catholic hospital or uses a scary priest as the source of dubious leads. The show did that sort of thing all the time.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

RSS icon Comments

1

movie sucked so hard why are you writing about it

Posted by x files? zzz files | August 4, 2008 5:26 PM
2

Because the show was fascinating and I'm newly reobsessed.

Posted by annie | August 4, 2008 5:28 PM
3

A lot of alien believers seem to be religious. Because if you believe in little green men, I guess angels ain't that much of a stretch.

Posted by Sirkowski | August 4, 2008 5:38 PM
4

Are we fast approaching a time when everything on Slog comes from Andrew Sullivan? Is he paying The Stranger or do you all just not know that other sources of information exist? He may be justly discredited and ignored, but what does that make of his stenographers?

Posted by whatevernevermind | August 4, 2008 5:42 PM
5

Maybe you should give peace a chance... or on the other hand... ask Yahoo what the fuck is up with the Morgan Freeman Story from my good friend father DELANO POSSIDEON LEO PONTIFICATO ERECTUS MOBILIUS GHOSTUS ISIS SISYPHUS.

DIDN"T YOU KNOW HE"S GOT A NINJA KILLER FOR A GRANDSON!!!!!!

Posted by daniel bennett kieneker | August 4, 2008 5:43 PM
6

the movie didn't suck. it may not have been the best episode ever, but I loved seeing what Scully and Mulder had been up to after all these years.

Posted by josh | August 4, 2008 6:26 PM
7

The movie was amazing. You're all morons. You don't deserve The X-Files. The last shot of the movie--Scully's smile to the boy--is enough to make any true fan drop a tear.

Posted by Mr. Poe | August 4, 2008 6:35 PM
8


Yes, but will they ever turn "Red Shoe Diaries" into a major motion picture?

Posted by John Bailo | August 4, 2008 6:51 PM
9

Good god Annie, why do you but faith in this abhorrent attempt at a movie? I too was a fan of the show, but I can see an unenthusiastic turd when I see one.

Only turning one's brain off could ever make this movie good- so Poe's endorsement I understand, but you...? I used to put so much stock in your reviews, but now you've lost all credibility with me.

Fucking Sad.

Posted by mojo mojito | August 5, 2008 12:46 AM
10

Need a reason not to see this turd? Let me list bullshit plot points for those too starstruck to turn their brains on:

-Pedophile priest as the hero, his victim as the villain. (yup, they actually went there- most of you need read no further.)

-Scully's baby is dead. And they breezed over it with two lines of dialogue. SERIOUSLY.

-Xzibit as an FBI agent (any guesses to his acting chops...?)

-Gay villian wants his head transplanted onto a woman (one can only assume because the other villian, his husband, really only wants a woman with a man's head... After all, that's how being gay works.)

-How do I know the gay villains are married...? Because the movie explicitly states that the villains were gay married in Massachusetts! (I smell a GLAAD award!)

-FBI inexplicably forgets to secure a crime scene, and FBI agents do the stereotypical "split up" in an abandoned building while hunting the villain.... One of those agents is Mulder- Care to guess what happens to the other agent? (And it's not Xzibit. We should be so lucky.)

-Scully suggests using an experimental stem cell treatment at a Catholic hospital, and they agree to let her go through with it, no questions asked.

(Read that last sentence again. It doesn't get any more retarded than that.)

-Did I mention she found aforementioned stem cell treatment on Google...?


(Ok... NOW it couldn't get any more retarded.)

-They make such an effort to stress the evils of scientific experiments on humans in the climax, yet in the next scene they laud Scully for using experimental stem cell treatments on a little boy all because she has faith. Anyone notice the inconsistency?

- Finally, Mulder and Scully are together. They're Fucking. Did I also mention that Scully makes jokes about the enormity of Mulder's penis? Because she does. And in that moment, all the great sexual tension from the show was raped to death.


This should be reason enough for EVERYONE to avoid this crapfest.


Posted by UNPAID BLOGGER | August 5, 2008 2:02 AM
11

oh, THEY FUCK ...

I always thought they did that in high school

I did not like the TV series much, won't spend a dime to see the movie

now let me tell you about the cosmic beings in my life and being pre cognitive ....

Posted by Henry Johnson | August 5, 2008 3:07 AM
12

@9

You need to learn to type. As for the turning off the brain, well it's actually the exact opposite. You obviously walk into a theater for cheap thrills and big-bang endings. That's brainless.

You know what else is brainless? Saying you "put stock in Annie's reviews" only to come here and basically tell the world you didn't even read her fucking review. If you did, your brain was obviously turned off.

Credibility? Did you really just use that word? Your brain must be turned off.

Anyway, thank God you're hiding behind an anonymous name. You sound like a fucking idiot.

Posted by Mr. Poe | August 5, 2008 8:06 AM
13

I actually enjoyed the film. It was a quiet meditation on themes that were always prevalent in the series. Scully and Mulder all grown up -- it was like seeing old friends.

Posted by kid icarus | August 5, 2008 9:06 AM
14

@10: Just so's you know, I'm one if the very, very few--if not only--critics to have mentioned that the villains were gay-married.

Anyway, Scully's baby is not necessarily dead, and the movie doesn't imply he is. She put him up for adoption in the ninth season when supersoldiers were trying to kill him all the time. She has no idea what happened to him, and that's why she's still upset about it.

The movie isn't great, and I never said it was. I still find it interesting.

Posted by annie | August 5, 2008 9:55 AM
15

Ok, I concede that point, Annie- but even if the baby's not dead, it still seems like lazy writing to cover and dismiss what could have been such a complex plot element with only two paltry lines of dialogue.

(I guess I'm just bitter because I had such high hopes after all these years.)

Posted by UNPAID BLOGGER | August 5, 2008 10:26 AM
16

It isn't lazy writing at all. One of the best things about IWTB is that it doesn't stop to fill us in on things that wouldn't be discussed with detail at the time. That's lazy writing.

"Oh, I don't know how to answer all the these details, because, you know, The X-Files has always been about giving answers (durr), so I'm going to just continually shrine Mulder and Scully together in little isolated scenes where they'll disclose all of this negative space that doesn't have anything to do with the fucking story at hand."

This isn't the last movie we'll see. I hope it isn't. It shouldn't be. If anything, the movie is a focus on Scully. You should also take a hint from "I want to believe" and "Don't give up". These are two of the most important points of the movie, as well as for Scully and Mulder. Mulder doesn't give up, he never does. And when he does, it's because he has to, and if it isn't because of that, you don't have to twist his arm to get him back on track. Scully is the...why the fuck am I explaining this to you? Your #10 comment is ridiculous.

How do I know the gay villains are married...? Because the movie explicitly states that the villains were gay married in Massachusetts! (I smell a GLAAD award!)

Calm the fuck down. GLAAD isn't going to give them an award for this, they're probably as sensitive as you are to the subject, which is pathetic. And it's a flaw in the movie anyway, they can't legally be married in Mass without being residents.

Finally, Mulder and Scully are together. They're Fucking. Did I also mention that Scully makes jokes about the enormity of Mulder's penis? Because she does. And in that moment, all the great sexual tension from the show was raped to death.

I'm glad they didn't make a big deal out of it. You know, they've already had sex. You know that, right? You never picked up on that in the final season? You also know that sex isn't really all that much of a big deal, right? Does everything need to be blown out of proportion for you?

...oh.

Did I mention she found aforementioned stem cell treatment on Google...?

Thanks. Nobody had any idea. It's only the #1 thing everybody's ranting about.

Gay villian wants his head transplanted onto a woman (one can only assume because the other villian, his husband, really only wants a woman with a man's head... After all, that's how being gay works.)
Pedophile priest as the hero, his victim as the villain. (yup, they actually went there- most of you need read no further.)

This is your #1 problem. Please stop watching movies in general. Your brain cannot grasp anything fictional outside of your retarded box of a life. This movie in no way attacked gay marriage. In no way did this movie call a pedophile a hero. In no way did this movie say that gay relationships all reflect the one of the two psychos we followed.

High hopes after all these years? Uh huh.

Posted by you suck | August 5, 2008 1:48 PM

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