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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jan 18, 2016 15:24:32 GMT -5
Because obviously we might as well have a thread ahead of the show's return very soon, with reviews rolling in and with at least some people having been able to catch early screenings of some episodes.
narvinek's X-Files tribute Serenata Immortale is a nice five minute sizzle reel of nine years of Mulder and Scully being good friends OR ARE THEY MORE THAN FRIENDS LOOK AT THIS VIDEO TELL ME WHAT IS RIGHT DAMN YOU:
WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE RELATIONSHIP HERE
And a clip from the best X-Files episode:
This also had Leonard Nimoy. I will not budge in my ranking.
And a clip from the worst X-Files episode:
Let us never speak of this again.
And okay, fine, an actual trailer for the upcoming X-Files:
What? This IS a real promo.
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Post by rimjobflashmob on Jan 18, 2016 22:14:01 GMT -5
I've been burning through The X-Files again on Netflix in anticipation of this, skipping a few episodes here and there, mostly the shittier MotW entries. Into the middle of season 6 right now, forgot how consistently solid the show was even after the mythology became mostly incomprehensible. And even then, it's worth it just to see Scully be an exasperated badass. Can't wait for the new episodes!
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Post by πͺ silly buns on Jan 24, 2016 13:42:23 GMT -5
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jan 24, 2016 14:12:50 GMT -5
What's extra depressing about this is they used to pay her less when they were making the show, but Anderson fought to eventually get equal pay with Duchovny, so for it to just default like that a decade later (after Anderson's also become a successful TV actor quite independently of the X-Files.) Well; at least she didn't stand for it. Anyway, here's an old trailer for the first season: And the first movie:
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jan 24, 2016 18:59:57 GMT -5
I had never seen that trailer for the show before! Thanks for linking it, DRC!
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clytie
TI Forumite
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Post by clytie on Jan 24, 2016 19:20:28 GMT -5
I remember the bad press Anderson got for demanding equal pay. People called her "difficult."
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jan 24, 2016 21:01:38 GMT -5
One final video; a perfectly normal trailer for the new season, and then, I presume, comments about it may commence:
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Post by kitchin on Jan 24, 2016 22:24:01 GMT -5
I starts now. After 23 minutes of football post-game blabbering.
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Post by Lemminkainen on Jan 24, 2016 23:28:55 GMT -5
Is the dialogue always so wooden and cliche-ridden?
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jan 24, 2016 23:36:42 GMT -5
Is the dialogue always so wooden and cliche-ridden?
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Post by ganews on Jan 25, 2016 0:20:27 GMT -5
That was indeed some crummy dialog. This was a mythology episode, but I don't know what it advanced. What can CSM possibly do in the single other mythology episode?
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jan 25, 2016 0:27:52 GMT -5
I haven't seen much of the original X-Files, and most of what I have seen is bits and pieces from when I was a young child and rarely actually paying attention to that scary aliens show. I mostly just remember that just about every climax to just about every episode I saw took place on a rainy night.
That being said, I might not be the best judge of this show, since I'm not super familiar with what is apparently a Lost-esque convoluted mythology, but I thought this was pretty terrible. It was convoluted, nearly impossible to follow, incoherent, poorly acted, extremely poorly written, unsubtle, and apart from 2015-level CGI it looked no better than episodes from the 90s. Duchovny was super wooden, especially in his voice-over during that seemingly interminable cold open. Anderson was pretty good, and she certainly deserves to be getting paid more than Duchovny for this show, but it was really annoying the way they had her whisper her last few lines about the results of the full-genome sequence of Nina from The Americans (also, sequencing a full genome like that is pretty expensive even in 2016, so how is Scully able to get one ordered no questions asked?). Also why is Scully constantly watching The Crazy Right Wing Conspiracists Soup at work, and apparently while taking breaks during surgeries, while her fellow surgeons are busy doing their jobs? Couldn't they just have shown her watching McHale's show while sitting on the couch at home or something? They might as well have just had a sign hanging from the ceiling of that OR break room, reading "THE HOSPITAL, WHERE DANA SCULLY WORKS", during all those scenes, because the writers clearly don't respect the viewers' intelligence enough to trust them to remember that Scully is a surgeon without constantly being reminded that she is a surgeon.
Joel McHale was badly miscast as a poorly written Alex Jones-type. In addition to the writers comparing him to the completely wrong right-wing media personality in the relatively conspiracy-light Bill O'Reilly (as opposed to the completely fucking batshit Jones), McHale doesn't really do a good job of playing the role. This is partly because the writers seem to think that there is are suave and charming and attractive major conservative talk show hosts out there that they're modeling the character on, when there aren't, and so when McHale tries to play to his strengths by playing up the charm, it just further underscores how unbelievable his character is. In terms of the only other actor I recognized, Annet Mahendru, aka Nina from The Americans did a good job with some poorly-written material.
And what the fuck were they talking about in that scene in Mulder's house where they keep flashing back and forth between stock footage reminiscent of a shitty cheap 1950s B movie and Nina from The Americans' face? Was that supposed to be the least bit comprehensible? If this secret conspiracy of new world order guys or fucking whoever they are wanted to abduct people to do tests on, why would they pretend to be aliens? That doesn't seem like a very covert way to operate, by hiding the existence of aliens, but then also flying around in alien technology abducting people and pretending to be aliens.
Also, all those flashback scenes were really poorly done. Roswell is so played-out in sci-fi shit, and those scenes seemed like they were trying to be as generic as possible. And what the fuck was with the scene where Lieutenant Unsubtle Bad Guy shoots the alien. "That thing looks dangerous; let's kill it so that it's really clear to the viewers that we are the cartoonishly evil bad guys, and so Young Version of That Old Guy In the Hat and Jacket has something to be outraged about."
At least the final conversation between Mulder and Scully didn't take place in the rain.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jan 25, 2016 0:33:36 GMT -5
The unsolved mysteries of...Unsolved Mysteries!
I still want to know what happens next, because the X-Files was my favorite show of all time for a long time and I'm a huge nerd about it. However, WOW Duchovny was not living up to his name as one of history's greatest acting robots.
Also, the marks on Sveta's stomach triggered my tryphophobia something awful.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jan 25, 2016 0:34:53 GMT -5
One thing I did like that McHale did was his own follow-up to Mulder's "the government is full of lies!" rant, because it felt very tongue-in-cheek to me.
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Post by rimjobflashmob on Jan 25, 2016 2:17:45 GMT -5
I dunno. I'm a pretty staunch defender of the worst episodes of the X-Files, mythology or no. And that was a fucking travesty.
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Post-Lupin
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Post by Post-Lupin on Jan 25, 2016 14:47:04 GMT -5
As someone who stopped watching the show regularly after S3 but caught bits, including that travesty of a finale.... 1) Roy Batty's Pet Dove nailed most of the weaknesses of the episode. 2) Seriously, the tradecraft on both sides of the Conspiracy is so fucking awful that either Mulder, Scully, Skinner and everyone they ever met would be dead by now, or the entire world would know about the Conspiracy. To have characters act so uber-paranoid and utterly fail at the basics was laughable then, more so now. 3) Annet Mahendru was appallingly bad. 4) UFOS CAN'T MELT STEEL BEAMS SHEEPLE oh wait 5) For Our Consideration: How The X-Files Set Ufology Back 20 years.
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Post by ganews on Jan 25, 2016 14:52:52 GMT -5
5) For Our Consideration: How The X-Files Set Ufology Back 20 years. IT'S BULLSHIT ANYWAY
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Post-Lupin
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Post by Post-Lupin on Jan 25, 2016 15:06:01 GMT -5
5) For Our Consideration: How The X-Files Set Ufology Back 20 years. IT'S BULLSHIT ANYWAY Nuanced comment! Come back when you're read CG Jung, Jacques Vallee, John A. Keel and Mac Tonnies on the subject.
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Post by William T. Goat, Esq. on Jan 25, 2016 17:31:59 GMT -5
So, let me get this straight:
-There is a conspiracy to trick everyone into thinking there is a conspiracy -The American government is secretly plotting to take over America
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jan 25, 2016 18:27:07 GMT -5
So, let me get this straight: -There is a conspiracy to trick everyone into thinking there is a conspiracy -The American government is secretly plotting to take over America Let me explain with the Simpsons again and then I'll go away
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jan 25, 2016 20:01:05 GMT -5
5) For Our Consideration: How The X-Files Set Ufology Back 20 years. IT'S BULLSHIT ANYWAY Seriously. I'm certain there's life on other planets, but they sure as fuck haven't visited us yet.
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Post by rimjobflashmob on Jan 25, 2016 23:54:24 GMT -5
Episode 2 still had weird pacing issues but I fucking LOVED it otherwise.
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Post-Lupin
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Post by Post-Lupin on Jan 26, 2016 3:41:20 GMT -5
Seriously. I'm certain there's life on other planets, but they sure as fuck haven't visited us yet. And this is how X-Files set Ufology back 20 years in a nutshell. The authors I mentioned have no truck with the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). They look on the phenomenon from all sorts of other angles: psychological, sociological, other forms of the paranormal. ETH - the assumption that UFOS have to mean ALIENS - is the most popular default and it colours thinking on the subject, to the point you both express. And it is, as you note, not easily tenable if at all... meaning that if you can't accept aliens, you automatically reject most of the interesting stuff about the phenomena.
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Post by pairesta on Jan 26, 2016 7:43:52 GMT -5
I've only seen part one. Seems rushed, like scenes were missing. The sudden cut to Scully drinking champagne with McHale in his limo was jarring. Ditto Mulder deducing everything from the girl telling him she was abducted by men, not aliens.
"We specialize in treating children born without ears." I almost laughed at that. What the fuck. "We specialize in people with physical deformities that are very easy to simulate by photoshopping their faces."
This is something that's occurred to me in the intervening years, but it seems front and center now, what with your Teds Cruz running about for president: the right wing bent of the show makes me uncomfortable.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jan 26, 2016 8:08:37 GMT -5
Seriously. I'm certain there's life on other planets, but they sure as fuck haven't visited us yet. And this is how X-Files set Ufology back 20 years in a nutshell. The authors I mentioned have no truck with the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). They look on the phenomenon from all sorts of other angles: psychological, sociological, other forms of the paranormal. ETH - the assumption that UFOS have to mean ALIENS - is the most popular default and it colours thinking on the subject, to the point you both express. And it is, as you note, not easily tenable if at all... meaning that if you can't accept aliens, you automatically reject most of the interesting stuff about the phenomena. I'm not sure it's the job of a TV show to accurately represent a field of study of why people think they see UFOs or aliens or any other paranormal phenomenon.
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Post-Lupin
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Post by Post-Lupin on Jan 26, 2016 8:15:32 GMT -5
And this is how X-Files set Ufology back 20 years in a nutshell. The authors I mentioned have no truck with the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). They look on the phenomenon from all sorts of other angles: psychological, sociological, other forms of the paranormal. ETH - the assumption that UFOS have to mean ALIENS - is the most popular default and it colours thinking on the subject, to the point you both express. And it is, as you note, not easily tenable if at all... meaning that if you can't accept aliens, you automatically reject most of the interesting stuff about the phenomena. I'm not sure it's the job of a TV show to accurately represent a field of study of why people think they see UFOs or aliens or any other paranormal phenomenon. Indeed not; but its success (and, significantly, Carter's disinterest in anything but ETH) have been such a huge influence that the entire field has been pulled down by its weight. Not deliberate, but a damn shame.
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Post by Sanziana on Jan 26, 2016 12:34:15 GMT -5
Seriously. I'm certain there's life on other planets, but they sure as fuck haven't visited us yet. I've got a feeling we'd all be dead by now if they had. Yes, I'm fun.
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Post by UnarmedAndDangerousVorta on Jan 26, 2016 18:16:26 GMT -5
This Race to Witch Mountain reboot was gorey. How many Continuum alum is Chris Carter gonna cast?
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jan 26, 2016 19:41:20 GMT -5
I've only seen part one. Seems rushed, like scenes were missing. The sudden cut to Scully drinking champagne with McHale in his limo was jarring. Ditto Mulder deducing everything from the girl telling him she was abducted by men, not aliens. "We specialize in treating children born without ears." I almost laughed at that. What the fuck. "We specialize in people with physical deformities that are very easy to simulate by photoshopping their faces." This is something that's occurred to me in the intervening years, but it seems front and center now, what with your Teds Cruz running about for president: the right wing bent of the show makes me uncomfortable. Does the show have a right-wing bent? Even Mulder, the stupid one who believes everything with the tiniest shred of evidence, was super disdainful of McHale's extreme gun-rights positions, and one of them criticized real-life conservative shitbag Bill O'Reilly. It doesn't seem like the kind of show that would vote for Ted Cruz if it were a sentient entity that had been afforded suffrage. Although keep in mind of course that this is like one of two or three full episodes of the X Files that I've seen since I was in elementary school, so I'm missing a lot of context in which to place Sunday's episode.
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Post by Douay-Rheims-Challoner on Jan 26, 2016 23:15:03 GMT -5
The X-Files' politics are, basically, the Paranoid Style; conspirational fears about malevolent government agendas. These can and on the X-Files have taken the form of left-wing and right-wing fantasies, and the two traditions borrow so much from each other (FEMA camps were feared by hippies long before the Tea Party banged on about them) the distinction is hard to parse. To put it another way, the X-Files tends to lean outside the Overton Window of acceptable politics, as neither 'Bush did 9/11' or 'the NSA is evil' are within bounds for Presidential candidates to spout off - although this leaning is at least for window dressing, as colour for its indulging fascination with weirdness. All the same I watched "My Struggle" back to back with the Person of Interest episode "Control Alt Delete," which underlined how outdated so much of the X-Files paranoia feels - Person of Interest far better reflects the obsessions of the era of NSA and Edward Snowden and nebulous cloud hacks and omnipresent digital technology. For me the most ludicrous part about Joel McHale's character's show was that he tried to tie his Alex Jones conspiracies into Roswell, an effort to bridge the paranoias of the Cold War with the fears of the War on Terror - but to attempt something like that was at least necessary; if the X-Files is to return it needs to at least try to be relevant, even if this effort felt clumsy and ham-fisted. The whole thing suffered from feeling like it was endlessly rehashing vague outlines of the show's old story beats - the one scene with Skinner is essentially his entire character arc AGAIN, as he's played out in varying ways since the show's third season - can you trust him as his bosses are untrustworthy but no maybe you can. The same arguments from Mulder and Scully about an amorphous ever shifting truth and quest, a handful of thrown off lines trying to exist as connective links (they have to deal with 2012 somehow; and I gues that vague shrug is about as good as they got - I'd hoped the reveal would be that aliens did invade in 2012 just nobody knows about it and then it gets very They Live.) I digress. Second episode this Wednesday over here will check in on thoughts on that then I suppose. Post-Lupin To be fair I can't think of any fictional media about UFOs offhand that don't treat them as extraterrestrial - the saucer itself became so synonymous with spaceship it was often used in contexts where it represented a human spaceship, like Forbidden Planet (and is the base of the starship Enterprise design.) The X-Files is rare as a science fiction series where UFOs play a key role that is also willing to consider the possibly that some or all of it might be a hoax. There was also a point where Mulder became convinced the abduction of his sister was more spiritual than extraterrestrial in nature.
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