I Am The Walrus

Just go see the damn movie.

www.xfiles.com

Because I want a third one. Please??? Please??? I have very little thrills….

Morally pissed off with the reviews. Mostly because it’s along the lines of "I don’t get it". (And kind of proud of myself that I DO get it).

So now I’m confused. I’ve been promoting the new X-files movie on my blog for months now (not that anybody’s paying attention hahaha) but I’m not sure now whether any of you should go.

I am literally listing people’s names in my head if this friend or that friend would like it. Would he/she get it? Would he/she appreciate it? Would he/she have the same "omigod" moments when a familiar character walks into the screen?

But I still want people to see it. In fact, I want lots and lots of people to see it. Let’s not kill intelligent movies, people. Let’s not turn our heads because it confuses us. Challenge your brains. Enough of stupid Hollywood for a while. (Well, not on August 6, when Adam Sandler’s Zohan movie comes out haha).

But if you will see it, please take note of the following observations I’ve made based on the reviews and the novelization I just read. Maybe it will soften your opinion on the movie:

1. Mulder is pushing 50. Scully is in her forties. They are no longer in the FBI. Don’t expect them pulling guns and wearing bulletproof vests. Mulder is in self-exile —- he no longer has the government’s budget and power to do the things he used to do. Scully has gone back to what she really wants to do, be a doctor. They’re not Austin Powers who was unfrozen and still likes to party. They’ve been in hiding all these years. They’re like Hollywood stars fallen from grace.

Things have changed. When the X-files wrapped, I was dating a random loser. Now I have a son. If six years did that to me, don’t you think Mulder and Scully have changed too?

2. Like any other X-files episode before it, this movie will leave you with questions —- lots of it. Especially since Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz wrote it. And it will be open for active debate — besides deciding if it sucked or if it didn’t. Don’t you miss movies like that? Those that make you find a coffee place after and just talk about your theories on the characters and where they will go from there?

3. Don’t expect "Fight the Future" (the first X-files film). No.1, it was directed by Rob Bowman, who is really a "go large" kind of guy. His X-files episodes have always involved blowing up trains and big spaceships flying overhead. This movie was directed by Chris Carter — he’s always, always, low key. He’s always been about the dialogue. No.2, the Fight the Future movie was given a 60 million dollar budget, this new movie was given 30 million.

4. Corollary to #3, I think Fox purposely gave Carter a low budget because they aim to humiliate him, after hauling their asses to court in 2007. They gave in for an X-files film but they never intended for it to be big enough to warrant a sequel. I only saw movie posters around here three weeks before its August 13 schedule while I’ve seen that Casino Royale poster in Gateway since, I don’t know, Christmas?

5. I also hate all those reviewers saying "X-files was about aliens, there were no aliens". Sure. Now go home and wait for the 90210 spin-off. Newsflash: X-files was never about aliens. It was about Mulder and Scully. If it was just about aliens, nobody needed Scully. The X-files has always been about the dynamic of the believer and the non-believer. And Carter has stayed true to that in the film.

I don’t know, I’m just mad, I guess. I hate it and I love it that not a lot of people get what I get because it really says a lot about them and a lot about me (and compliments are hard to get by these days hahaha).

But I hope you still see it. For me? Please? I want a sequel….

P.S. For review, I recommend you see the following X-files episodes:

1. The Pilot
2. Bad Blood (Season 5)
3. How the Ghosts Stole Christmas (Season 6)
4. Field Trip (Season 6)
5. The Truth (Series Finale)

Very Early Sidebar. I’ve had a crappy three days with work, and the threat of more work on Monday, not to mention backlog work that has to be tended to once I get to finish the threat of more work on Monday. And all I could think about it is “Mother**ker, the X-files movie’s going to be out today in the US and it won’t be here till August”.

So I spent some time at the mall this evening, looking for clothes (due to the threat of more work on Monday — it’s a presentation, not a lapdance), and before I decided to go home, popped in Fully Booked to just quickly peruse at the new titles.

Guess what I found? The novelization of the X-files movie.

I wanted to cry.

-0-0-0-0-

The reviews are out, and so far I’ve only read one review — Roger Ebert’s (the most reliable reviewer at that) — that’s positive. Everybody else thought the movie sucked. They said David and Gillian had lost chemistry. They said it was just a longer version of an X-files episode. They said Amanda Peet and Xzibit (Pimp my ride, ayt?) were pointless characters. One even said that it’s a total waste of time.

I respect that. Sure. The same way I don’t really get why guys are so pumped up by the NBA finals or why anybody even watches ABS-CBN for credible news reporting.

If the movie is exactly as I imagine it based on the novel I just read (in two hours haha), then I would completely understand the disappointment of certain people. And I would sum it up into one statement — THEY’RE NOT X-PHILES.

And for that, I actually worry for this movie. Us X-philes are a rare breed. Nowadays, movies have to have one or all of the following elements: (a) controversial lead stars, (b) special effects, (c) exploding things, (d) sex, or (e) nudity. I am telling you now —- EXPECT NONE OF THIS ON THIS FILM. It is nothing like the Fight the Future film. (SImple reason: the series was still thriving, so the movie was meant to be a come on). It is a way to bring the characters back. It is a door that will eventually lead to more doors. (A line Scully uttered in season 5 I think. That’s how much I love the show!!!!).

Ultimately, what I’m trying to say, is that the film won’t be for people who don’t think. And you know the statistics on that. Or, to sound less pompous, it won’t be for people who don’t think the way we, the X-philes, those who followed the show for nine wonderful years, think.

One reviewer said it best: The X-files: I Want To Believe is a love letter to X-philes everywhere. So don’t go bashing on my love letter. (Haven’t had one in years.)

I would love, love, love it for you, my friends, to go see it as often as I would (because, as Chris Carter said, it’s the only way they will be willing to do a sequel). Or at least just pay the box office, sit through it a few minutes, then leave haha.
But that’s up to you.

But I am willing to treat at least one person for every X-files viewing between August 13 to 17 (yes, I will at least see it four times), so if you’re interested, give me a call.

Here’s how my life has been in the last few months:

1. I’ve been feeling a lot of pain in my carpals — finger bones, to you. Whenever it’s raining and it’s cold, that’s when it’s most painful. I also feel it in my knees and occasionally my calves. I had myself checked but I’m negative for rheumatoid arthritis.

2. I’ve talked to at least three agents about life insurance. For the first time in the nine years I’ve been working, I feel the moral need for insurance, in the event that I have to leave this mortal coil.

3. Parents are dying. Three of my officemates buried their fathers. One officemate has a mother on dialysis in the hospital.

4. My father was diagnosed with cardiomegaly or an enlarged heart. Apparently, he’s been taking in too much water and the edema is causing pressure on his chest which is why he has a hard time breathing. He registered a pulse rate of 132. Normal pulse rate is 90. He’s better now but it was a major, major household scare. It still is.

5. I shouldn’t've been too worried since my mother was also diagnosed with an enlarged heart a few years back due to hypertension. Ain’t it romantic of them to be so compatible to have even the same illness? So now I have two parents with two enlarged hearts who can’t keep their cups of rice in check.

6. Almost all my guy friends — considering I have so few — have hypertension and they’re barely into their thirties.

7. Some of my girl friends and my girl friends’ girl friends either have (a) myoma ;(b) breast lumps or worse, (c) breast cancer.

8. While in the past I never took any vitamins, I now have three bottles on my cabinet: a multivitamin, vitamin E and calcium (for the painful carpals mentioned in item #1).

9. I can’t stay up later than 12mn during a night out.

10. I don’t know who the hell the Jonas Brothers are.

As you approach this age, you realize that so many things are inevitable. So many ugly, painful things are inevitable. People who used to be the pillars you could lean on are deteriorating right before your eyes. But at the same time fragile little ones are growing up and will soon outgrow you.

This is so against my philosophy on positivity but I know I can find a way to go full circle.