Discovering THE X-FILES only four years ago, I didn’t have the long and arduous wait other fans did to hear that it was back in town. Over a decade separates season 9 and 10 (with one movie in between) and it seems as if the dark, grimy, shadowy 90s look of THE X-FILES is long gone. In its place is the colour scheme and tone of a light modern cop show, or dare I say…a sitcom.
Watching the first episode was a bit of a slap to the face as our aged duo is welcomed back with blindingly stylised vibrant imagery. Perhaps what makes this new tone worse is to see it brutally juxtaposed against the original title sequence from the ‘good ol 90s’. For a programme about government cabals and weird unexplained phenomena, the whole colour scheme is completely off kilter and is incredibly distracting.
With this unfortunate mis-step the gritty nature of the show is largely eroded under the weight of luminous visuals and crappy TV CGI. It reminded me of a scene in SCRUBS where JD imagines his life as a sitcom.
Now, this sort of cinematography is fine for the light-hearted comedy episodes and thankfully this season got its comedy bang on. Episode 3 is perhaps one of the funniest X-Files episodes ever and we got to see a glimmer of the old banter between Mulder and Scully.
I think the major problem with this season is exactly in the tone and execution and not so much the story and writing itself, albeit the dialogue can be painfully clunky at times. We are now living in the age of the Internet, where conspiracy theories run amuck and people are more sceptical of the powers that be. The response to this comes in the form of Joel McHale’s character Tad O’Malley, a conspiracy news guru, who despite having good intentions and had the potential to be interesting and eccentric, is actually an incredibly bland character. The casting of Joel McHale really doesn’t help the whole sitcom vibe either.
There are still elements of the old great X-Files peeping in now and then and the problem is more in the direction of the show. The X-Files of old was always a bit campy, goofy and thrilling, and I feel that the writing is somewhat in line with previous seasons. The direction feels like someone who has been away from the medium for a decade (here’s looking at you Chris Carter) and is having fun with new camera tech and lighting and completely forgetting what the old X-Files actually looked like. Today, the show could be made even darker and intense and yet has done a complete U-turn in the opposite direction.
Perhaps the ageing of Mulder and Scully has slowed down the pace of the show. Duchovny is still in terrific shape and Anderson seems to have been slowed down a bit and has a wispy voice and a very ‘different’ face. This is no slight on Anderson, but at times she looks so different it is difficult to reconcile her with her younger self. It isn’t so much that she has aged, but that in some shots she looks like a different person. I realise this may be seen as petty, but I just don’t feel like it is Scully I am looking at.
The new characters Agents Einstein (Lauren Ambrose) and Miller (Robbie Amell) are extraordinarily dull. They are sort of half-assed shadows of Mulder and Scully, and feel like characters in some routine cop show. The supposed new age Mulder and Scully could do without existing and I would have preferred a greater focus on Mulder and Scully or the introduction of new characters worthy of the show’s past (i.e The Lone Gunmen or Doggett).
What once was a legendary show has now become an oddly brighter shadow of its former self. Whilst I think it can get back on track with a few drastic changes and a massive overhaul in how it is produced. It seems like THE X-FILES has taken quite a few bad hits in this latest offering. I hope THE X-FILES can find its feet again and become something reminiscent of its brilliant past, but if it can’t do that it has to be left alone.
Verdict
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsBX-8vWgCc
