The X-Files: Fight the Future (PG-13, 1998)

common sense media says

Same TV show sci-fi on a king-sized f/x budget.


parents & educators say

What parents need to know

Parents need to know that this is pretty much what you'd expect from a typical X-Files TV episode, but with PG-13 amped-up profanity and violence. Fox Mulder curses, people bleed and get shot in the head, and there are massive explosions. A heavy paranoid-conspiracy mindset suggests that acts of terrorism (specifically the Oklahoma City bombing) could be perpetrated by untrustworthy U.S. government officials doing inside jobs -- a worldview some parents might not want to encourage.

Positive messages: Though government authorities are repeatedly shown as untrustworthy, corrupt, and potentially evil, Agents Scully and Mulder uphold the FBI traditions and rules (including not abandoning a fellow officer). They also represent two different aspects of human inquiry. Mulder is imaginative and open to even the weirdest possibilities. Scully is more hard-headed and scientific. They have an incipient romance, not explored in depth here, but show professional appreciation and loyalty to each other.
Violence: Alien claws gash humans; humans stab aliens. Explosions and gun shots.
Sex: A few off-color references. Agent Scully is supposed to be naked in suspended animation, but we don't see much.
Language: "S--t" and "asshole."
Consumerism: Not applicable.
Drinking, drugs, & smoking: Agent Mulder gets drunk in a bar. A villainous character ("The Smoking Man") smokes a lot.

More on The X-Files: Fight the Future

What to talk about

Talk to your kids
Families can talk about the difference between the TV show and the movie. Would it be better if there were hard-and-fast answers? How about the world and the political climate since The X-Files became popular? Does its message of endless conspiracy and shadowy cabals manipulating events still look appealing in a "Homeland Security" climate? Do you trust the government to tell the truth about UFOs? What about September 11th and Iraq, then? And is the comparison even fair?

What's the story?

What's the story?
Fans of TV's The X-Files are the main audience for this theater-screen extrapolation of the paranormal-paranoia one-hour chiller. Dovetailing with a long, complicated saga threading in and out of TV episodes, THE X-FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE finds FBI investigators Fox Mulder (David Duchovney) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), formerly running a special branch devoted to the weird and supernatural, now demoted to "routine" police work -- like a mammoth terrorist explosion leveling a government building in Dallas. Mulder, however, learns the bombing was a diversion, to destroy evidence that an extraterrestrial virus had been unearthed from its Ice Age cave nearby and is infecting humans. Apparently space beings, aided by a worldwide conspiracy of elite human traitors, have been slowly colonizing Earth for many years. But thanks to the vicious monsters produced by the virus, the process now looks less like a peaceful Invasion of the Body Snatchers infiltration and more of a grisly Alien massacre -- unless Mulder and a slightly disbelieving Scully can expose the plot before it's too late.

Is it any good?

Is it any good?
 
Though one might expect an X-Files-based feature to take the series and its themes into fresh directions, this UFO-show doesn't gain much more altitude. The cast has the privilege of swearing, and the special effects and sets are more expensive. One very minor character held over from the TV show dies (or...does he?); others make brief fan-pleasing cameos. That's pretty much it.

As with the small-screen scripts, we get a tantalizing sci-fi plotline, full of questions, maddeningly unresolved by the finale, with shadowy villains still gloating that Mulder (who pops up mysteriously in Arctic for an especially farfetched and mystifying climax) still don't know what's really going on. If he doesn't, neither do we, and the show's repeated message to "trust no one," especially government authorities, starts to seem a little stale and lazy. When a drunken Mulder urinates on an alley poster for Independence Day, it may be a clue to what the filmmakers here thought of that simple-minded blockbuster. At least it had a storyline any average viewer could follow.

Movie themes & details

Movie Details
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
Director: Rob Bowman
Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Martin Landau
Genre: Science Fiction
Run time: 122 minutes
Theatrical release: June 19, 1998
DVD release: January 23, 2001
MPAA Rating: PG-13
MPAA explanation: some intense violence and gore.

This review was written by Charles Cassady Jr.
 
 

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Most useful reviews by all members

fluffyfuzz
kid, 13 years old
 
this movie is very simalar to the alien movie aliens growing inside bodys and then bursting out of them

code2264
teen, 16 years old
 
yes awsome
it makes you thinnk.....

KennyMcCormick
teen, 13 years old
 
The X-Files Movie!
Great movie for The X-Files fans!

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