The X-Files (also known as The X-Files: Fight the Future) is a 1998 American science fiction thriller film based on Chris Carter's television series of the same name, which revolves around fictional unsolved cases called the X-Files and the characters solving them. It was directed by Rob Bowman, written by Carter and Frank Spotnitz and featured five main characters from the television series: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Mitch Pileggi, John Neville, and William B. Davis reprise their respective roles as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, Well-Manicured Man, and the Cigarette-Smoking Man. The film was promoted with the tagline Fight the Future.
The film takes place between seasons five (episode "The End") and six (episode "The Beginning") of the television series, and is based upon the series' extraterrestrial mythology. The story follows agents Mulder and Scully, removed from their usual jobs on the X-Files, and investigating the bombing of a building and the destruction of criminal evidence. They uncover what appears to be a government conspiracy attempting to hide the truth about an alien colonization of Earth.
Carter decided to make a feature film to explore the show's mythology on a wider scale and appeal to non-fans. He wrote the story with Frank Spotnitz at the end of 1996 and, with a budget from 20th Century Fox, filming began in 1997, following the end of the show's fourth season. Carter assembled cast and crew from the show and other well-known actors such as Blythe Danner and Martin Landau, to begin production on what they termed "Project Blackwood". The film was produced by Carter and Daniel Sackheim. Mark Snow continued his role as X-Files composer to create the film's score.
The film premiered on June 19, 1998, in the United States, and received mixed reviews from critics, but was a box office success, earning $189 million worldwide against a budget of $60 million. A sequel, titled I Want to Believe, was released ten years later in 2008.
Plot In 35,000 B.C. during the Ice Age, in what will become North Texas, two cavemen hunters encounter an extraterrestrial life form in a cave, which kills one and infects the other with a black oil-like substance. In 1998, a boy falls into a hole and is infected by the black oil that seeps from the ground. Firefighters who enter the hole to rescue him do not come out. A team of men wearing hazmat suits later extracts the bodies of the boy and the firefighters. Meanwhile, FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, investigating a bomb threat against a federal building in Dallas, discover the bomb in a building across the street. As the building is evacuated, Special Agent in Charge Darius Michaud remains, ostensibly to disarm the bomb. Instead, he simply waits for the bomb to detonate.
At the Office of Professional Review hearing supervised by FBI Assistant Director Jana Cassidy, Mulder and Scully are chastised because the firefighters and the boy were also in the building during the bombing. That evening, Mulder is accosted by paranoid doctor Alvin Kurtzweil, who explains that the "victims" were already dead and that the bombing was staged to cover up how they died. At the hospital morgue, Scully examines one of the victims, finding evidence of an alien virus. Meanwhile, The Smoking Man goes to Texas, where Dr. Ben Bronschweig shows him one of the lost firefighters, who now has an alien organism residing inside his body. The Smoking Man orders Bronschweig to administer a vaccine to it, but to burn the body if it fails. Later, the alien organism gestates and kills Bronschweig.
Mulder and Scully travel to the site of the hole in Texas, where they find it has been hastily turned into a new playground, and encounter the boys whose friend fell in. Driving in the direction the boys indicated, the pair encounters a train of white gasoline tankers and follows it to a cornfield surrounding two glowing domes. Inside the domes, grates in the floor open and swarms of bees fly out, overwhelming the agents. They flee through an adjacent cornfield, chased by black helicopters, and escape when the helicopters disappear.
In D.C., Scully attends another OPR hearing; meanwhile, Mulder meets with Kurtzweil to obtain more information. Scully arrives at Mulder's apartment to tell him she has been transferred to SLC but plans to resign from the FBI. The two are about to kiss when Scully is stung by a bee that had lodged itself under her shirt collar. She falls unconscious while Mulder calls paramedics, but the ambulance driver shoots Mulder and takes Scully away. She is seen later in an isolation unit being loaded onto a plane. An unconscious Mulder is picked up by another ambulance. Not severely injured, he slips out of the hospital with the help of The Lone Gunmen and FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner. He then meets a former adversary, the Well-Manicured Man, who gives him Scully's location and a vaccine against the virus that has infected her. As Mulder leaves, the Well-Manicured Man shoots his driver and then kills himself in a car bomb before his betrayal of The Syndicate is discovered.
48 hours later, Mulder finds Scully in an underground facility in Antarctica, which also contains many humans suspended in ice-like enclosures. He breaks Scully's confinement and uses the vaccine to revive her, but this disrupts the facility, and the cocooned aliens begin trying to escape. After Mulder and Scully escape to the surface, an alien vessel emerges from beneath the ice and travels into the sky. Mulder watches it disappear into the distance as Scully regains full consciousness.
At another hearing, Scully's testimony is disregarded, and evidence in Texas is destroyed. To the hearing moderator, she hands over the only remaining proof of their ordeal—the bee that stung her—while noting that the FBI is currently unable to investigate this evidence. Outside, Mulder reads an article about the domes and crop fields in Texas that have been covered up. Scully reveals that she is willing to continue working with him: "If I quit now, they win." At another crop outpost in Tunisia, the Smoking Man warns Conrad Strughold that Mulder remains a threat, explaining what Mulder has found out about the virus. He then hands him a telegram revealing that the X-files unit has been reopened.
Cast
David Duchovny as Special Agent Fox Mulder Gillian Anderson as Special Agent Dana Scully Martin Landau as Alvin Kurtzweil Blythe Danner as Jana Cassidy Armin Mueller-Stahl as Conrad Strughold Mitch Pileggi as Assistant Director Walter Skinner William B. Davis as Cigarette-Smoking Man John Neville as Well-Manicured Man Dean Haglund as Richard "Ringo" Langly Bruce Harwood as John Fitzgerald Byers Tom Braidwood as Melvin Frohike Jeffrey DeMunn as Ben Bronschweig Jason Beghe as FBI Man at Bomb Site Michael Shamus Wiles as Black-Haired Man Terry O'Quinn as Special Agent in Charge Darius Michaud Lucas Black as Stevie Gary Grubbs as Fire Captain Cooles Don S. Williams as First Elder George Murdock as Second Elder
Glenne Headly makes an uncredited cameo as a bartender.
Production
Conception and pre-production "We wanted it to be true to the TV show, for one thing. We didn't want The X-Files to become something else in the movie, just because we had a bigger budget to work with. Yet, we were also mindful that it had to be a culmination of something for the people who had been watching the show for five years, as well as an introduction of these characters and this story to people who hadn't." — Frank Spotnitz talking about the development of The X-Files film.Duncan 1998, p. 4. After five successful seasons, Chris Carter wanted to tell the story of the series on a wider scale, which ultimately meant creating a feature film. He later explained that the main problem was to create a story for which the viewer would not need to be familiar with the show's setting and the various story arcs.
Carter and Frank Spotnitz wrote major parts of the script in Hawaii over Christmas 1996. They used the same method that they had used when writing episodes and sketching out scenes for the series on 3x5 index cards. By the time the Christmas break had ended, the whole narrative for the film had been written. Upon his return from Hawaii, Carter looked for spare time to write the script. He returned to Hawaii and in ten days wrote about half of the 124-page screenplay for the film.Duncan 1998, pp. 4-5.
Carter gave 90 pages of the screenplay to Fox which received it well. While not officially greenlighted, he got a budget from Fox and began to make plans for production. Carter then enlisted Daniel Sackheim as a producer on the film. Sackheim had previously produced the pilot episode of The X-Files and directed several episodes in the first two seasons. The X-Files marked his first contribution as producer to a feature film. Carter's choice for director was Rob Bowman, who had been the series' executive producer and a director before the production base was moved from Vancouver to Los Angeles.Duncan 1998, pp. 5–6.
During production, the filmmakers went to great lengths to preserve secrecy, including printing the script on red paper to prevent photocopying, and leaking disinformation to the media and giving the film the codename "Project Blackwood". The code was cracked by fans who speculated on the meaning behind it. During the North Texas scene, "Blackwood County" can be seen on the fire trucks responding to the infected boy. According to Spotnitz, "Blackwood" held no particular significance.Duncan 1998, pp. 10-11.
At the beginning of the pre-production phase, Carter and Bowman were busy with the television series, leaving Sackheim to work alone. Sackheim hired executive producer Lata Ryan, who had previously collaborated with Steven Spielberg for his 1993 film, Jurassic Park. Once hired, Ryan was allowed to read the script in front of the Ten Thirteen Productions staff members—but not to take it away. At this time, most of the staff members had not read the script for themselves. After Ryan accepted the offer of becoming executive producer, Chris Nowak was hired as production designer, Ward Russell as director of photography and Bill Liams as construction coordinator. According to Ryan, they had secured all key personnel six weeks before principal filming began.Duncan 1998, p 11.
Writing and casting
Both Carter and Spotnitz wanted to make the film "bigger" than the series, so they decided to start and end the film at an "extreme place" and explain aspects of the story arc that the show had not. While gathering research materials, they learned that the Earth was once covered with ice and decided to open the film in Texas in 35,000 BC with human "Primitives" as the first characters to appear.
The film included known actors from the show such as David Duchovny as Fox Mulder, Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully, Mitch Pileggi as Walter Skinner and William B. Davis as the Cigarette Smoking Man, as well as new actors and characters to the franchise. These included Martin Landau and Blythe Danner. The signing of these actors broke with what had become tradition for The X-Files. Carter had purposely cast virtually unknown actors for the television series, to make it more believable; "As soon as you put in an actor whose face is very recognizable, you've got a situation that works against the reality of the show."Duncan 1998, p. 18. He saw creating the film as a chance to break this rule. He offered Glenne Headly the small role of a bartender. A fan of the show, she accepted enthusiastically.
Set design