IMDb RATING
7.0/10
111K
YOUR RATING
Mulder and Scully must fight the government in a conspiracy and find the truth about an alien colonization of Earth.Mulder and Scully must fight the government in a conspiracy and find the truth about an alien colonization of Earth.Mulder and Scully must fight the government in a conspiracy and find the truth about an alien colonization of Earth.
- Awards
- 6 wins & 11 nominations
Jeffrey DeMunn
- Bronschweig
- (as Jeffrey De Munn)
Christopher Fennell
- 2nd Boy
- (as Chris Fennell)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaChris Carter originally wanted to end the television series after the fifth season, and continue the show mythology with a series of films, beginning with this one. The Fox Network, however, saw the series as too profitable, and forced Carter to write this film as a tie-in between two seasons of the show, a task which he found very daunting.
- GoofsAs Mulder and Scully are climbing down the rocks above the corn field, she is wearing flat-soled shoes. When they enter the beehive, she has high heels. (And not a scratch on them either!)
- Quotes
Special Agent Dana Scully: I need this building evacuated and cleared out in ten minutes! I want you to call the fire department and have them block off the city center in a one mile radius around the building.
Security Guard: Ten minutes?
Special Agent Dana Scully: DON'T THINK! JUST PICK UP THAT PHONE AND MAKE IT HAPPEN.
- Alternate versionsThe video release has additional footage not shown in the theatrical release:
- In the opening scene you now see more of the alien. In the theatrical release we see it fight off one of the cavemen, killing it, and the other caveman gets up to see it lying on the ground draining out the black blood (or what fans know as black oil). In the video release, we see it run off after it kills one of the cavemen, and when the other caveman gets up, he tracks it down and then kills it using the broken end of his torch.
- In the scene with Mulder talking to the Well Manicured Man in the car, he reveals to Mulder that Samantha, Mulder's sister, was abducted by aliens at the request of her father, William Mulder, so she could be part of the colonization project, thus ensuring her survival in the colonization of Earth by the visitors. Also revealed is that when plans went awry, Mulder was intended, by his father, to seek the truth and reveal what had been done.
- There is also an added scene in the video release with Mulder running down the street after the hospital scene.
- SoundtracksCrystal Ship
Written by Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore and Robby Krieger
Performed by X
Produced by Ray Manzarek
[plays in the background while Mulder is sitting at the bar complaining about his life to the female barista]
Featured review
As good as it possibly could be
The X-Files movie really is as good a big screen adaptation as you could possibly hope for.
It helps that it's entirely controlled by the people behind the series, and that the programme had cinematic qualities in the first place. On repeat viewings, however, the story is revealed to be thin, and lacking in incident. Its need to tie into events of the series makes it not wholly satisfying as a stand-alone vehicle, though it should still be understandable to those that have never seen an episode.
David Duchovny as Mulder seems surprisingly at ease in his limited way, while Martin Landau is good as far as plot devices go. Gillian Anderson is unfortunately encouraged to overstate her lines, particularly in the beginning, while a cameo by The Lone Gunmen is perhaps the only indulgence that would be lost on non-fans.
There are inevitable concessions to the cinema format, of course. Not the touted mild use of expletives, which happened from time to time on TV anyway. But the alien presence that mutates to owe a debt to Ridley Scott's Alien, or the near-kiss between the two leads. Thankfully, the first point actually makes a logical sense and carries the story forward. The second is something that was also long overdue, and silly that it took so long. For two people who obviously feel about each other the way Mulder and Scully do, to go five years without even kissing is stretching credulity.
Ultimately, though, it lacks any clear focus for a casual film audience, and flits repetitively from action sequence to sloppy exposition and back again throughout its duration. Creator Chris Carter, like Gene Roddenberry with Star Trek before him, is not the smoothest writer of his own series, though he does adequately most of the time. Worst example is the opening Mulder/Scully scene which is laughably trite, and there are plenty more examples of Carter's trademark purple prose. Yet it does have a beginning, middle and end, and can be watched back-to-back with a TV episode with no noticeable jumps in style. In that sense, then, it is a most successful big-screen adaptation of a television series.
Hard-core X-File fans will be inclined to award an extra mark to the total, then. But for a non-committal audience, this is a "6" as they would have no idea from watching this that the frail, fag-smoking pensioner is the series' major villain.
It helps that it's entirely controlled by the people behind the series, and that the programme had cinematic qualities in the first place. On repeat viewings, however, the story is revealed to be thin, and lacking in incident. Its need to tie into events of the series makes it not wholly satisfying as a stand-alone vehicle, though it should still be understandable to those that have never seen an episode.
David Duchovny as Mulder seems surprisingly at ease in his limited way, while Martin Landau is good as far as plot devices go. Gillian Anderson is unfortunately encouraged to overstate her lines, particularly in the beginning, while a cameo by The Lone Gunmen is perhaps the only indulgence that would be lost on non-fans.
There are inevitable concessions to the cinema format, of course. Not the touted mild use of expletives, which happened from time to time on TV anyway. But the alien presence that mutates to owe a debt to Ridley Scott's Alien, or the near-kiss between the two leads. Thankfully, the first point actually makes a logical sense and carries the story forward. The second is something that was also long overdue, and silly that it took so long. For two people who obviously feel about each other the way Mulder and Scully do, to go five years without even kissing is stretching credulity.
Ultimately, though, it lacks any clear focus for a casual film audience, and flits repetitively from action sequence to sloppy exposition and back again throughout its duration. Creator Chris Carter, like Gene Roddenberry with Star Trek before him, is not the smoothest writer of his own series, though he does adequately most of the time. Worst example is the opening Mulder/Scully scene which is laughably trite, and there are plenty more examples of Carter's trademark purple prose. Yet it does have a beginning, middle and end, and can be watched back-to-back with a TV episode with no noticeable jumps in style. In that sense, then, it is a most successful big-screen adaptation of a television series.
Hard-core X-File fans will be inclined to award an extra mark to the total, then. But for a non-committal audience, this is a "6" as they would have no idea from watching this that the frail, fag-smoking pensioner is the series' major villain.
helpful•5822
- The_Movie_Cat
- Aug 2, 2000
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- X-Files: The Movie
- Filming locations
- Whistler, British Columbia, Canada(snow scenes beginning and end of movie)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $66,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $83,898,313
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $30,138,758
- Jun 21, 1998
- Gross worldwide
- $189,176,423
- Runtime2 hours 1 minute
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1
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![Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny in The X Files (1998)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZDhkYTM1MmEtNTFhMC00NDEyLWI1MGQtMTkzMTcwMmM3ZTkzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDk3NzU2MTQ@._V1_QL75_UX90_CR0,1,90,133_.jpg)