X-Files mythology, TenThirteen Interviews Database, and more

Archive for January, 2016

Social media archive: 2016 (part 3)

Archived from the Eat The Corn Facebook page.


Jan 23, 2016 12:16

Gosh, Mr.Carter no–you will make me blush! “It wasn’t until the second movie that we actually saw them in what I would consider a provocative intimacy, in the same bed together.”

TV Guide: The X-Files’ Chris Carter Is Already Preparing for More Episodes


Jan 23, 2016 12:19

“Are 51” inspiration for #TheXFiles revival confirmed:
“It was from scratch… But that’s not exactly true because I had written another script that had nothing to do with the X-Files that had certain elements in it that my wife had remembered and she said “What about this this and this?” and that became some of the raw material that I used to do the pilot episode of this limited series.”
Plus, what to make of this? “Glenn Beck is someone I have a relationship with, same with Alex Jones and his site on the internet. I find it to be fascinating.”
Bonus: “The Lone Gunmen returned so there’s no reason Krycek can’t!”

IGN: The X-Files Creator on Reuniting Mulder and Scully and the Show’s Continuing Appeal


Jan 23, 2016 12:21

Lots of interesting Carter, but oddly not direct quotes:
“Talking about additional episodes, Carter said there were a few he had written that he think could still be used today, and even more interesting, admitted he’s had an episode in his story vault that he’s wanted to bring to air for more than 20 years.”
“Besides the miniseries, however, Carter also said that he was open to making a third X-Files movie, but had a very specific set of rules that would have to be met in order to do so. Unlike the second movie, which Carter admitted was full of problems, the creator said he would have to be given the same kind of freedom and tools he and his team received while working on the first film.”

Polygon: X-Files creator talks show’s future, possibility of a third movie


Jan 23, 2016 23:41

#mythXplained “William”: Here it is, the XF episode that singlehandedly badly tarnished the reputation of the entire series and casts a long dreadful shadow to this day! (Not to mention the entirely unnecessary resurrection of a certain character.) The adoption was perhaps necessary, in the mind of Carter, in order to clear the complications and have Mulder & Scully ready to jump in the movie franchise still hoped for at the time. However since then this plan backfired somewhat — and hopefully the upcoming revival will start making amends.

9X17: William

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialTheXFiles/photos/a.371920819512324/950818294955904/


Jan 23, 2016 23:52

#mythXplained “The Truth”: what’s been called the “series finale” for the past 13 years…is no more! A highly frustrating ending to a disappointing season, only bits of this episode are memorable. As a cry to the world, Carter spends most of this episode summarizing the mythology, to *prove* that this whole enterprise is not as non-sensical as most reviewers/fans were accusing for years — but simultaneously turns the big finale into a clip show. Another unnecessary return and re-death of a dead character later… the Mulder-Scully couple reunite in a scene recreating the motel scene from the Pilot; whatever truths they will seek, they will seek together.

9X19/20: The Truth

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialTheXFiles/photos/a.371920819512324/952210421483358/


Jan 23, 2016 23:57

Today, January 23, is a full moon. I think #TheXFiles revival ep.3, Darin Morgan’s “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster”, takes place today!
Oh, what a moving tribute to director Kim Manners and assistant director Jack Hardy — among the chief Ten Thirteen people who have passed away over the past decade — in Darin’s episode!

https://images.spoilertv.com/The%20X-Files/Season%2010/Promotional%20Episode%20Photos/Episode%2010.03%20-%20Mulder%20&%20Scully%20Meet%20the%20Were-Monster/XF_sc55pt_0013DJ1_hires2.jpg.php


Jan 24, 2016 00:09

D-1 for #TheXFiles revival–yet also D-30 for “My Struggle II”! In barely one month it will all be over. It’s been a wild ride for a year since last January when serious declarations started being made for a revival — let us hope it will have not only been worth the wait but that this revival will be worthy to take its place next to some of the best work of one of the best series of the past 20 years. See you after the premiere!

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialTheXFiles/photos/a.371920819512324/952147748156292/


Jan 25, 2016 23:46

10X1: an epic review for an epic episode!

You can skip to the parts that interest you most. In short, a great return to form, although some story directions are odd but we will refrain from passing quick judgment before seeing episode 6 as well.

What are your first impressions?

10X1: My Struggle

 


Jan 28, 2016 11:12

10X2: a return to s1 general paranoia and expertly shot scares + an unprecedented insight into Mulder & Scully’s feelings

What are your first impressions?

10X2: Founder’s Mutation

 


Jan 29, 2016 20:16

Excited about this one!

THE POWER TO BELIEVE TURNS OUT TO BE THE STRONGEST FORCE THERE IS ON AN ALL-NEW “THE X-FILES” MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, ON FOX

Episode Written and Directed by Creator Chris Carter; William B. Davis, Robbie Amell and Lauren Ambrose Guest-Star

When an art gallery that’s showing potentially offensive artwork is bombed, Mulder and Scully seek some way to communicate with the comatose bomber in order to prevent a future attack. Meanwhile, a pair of younger FBI agents on the case (guest stars Robbie Amell and Lauren Ambrose) push Mulder and Scully to examine their own beliefs as Scully seeks answers from neuroscience and Mulder from mysticism in the all-new “Babylon” episode of THE X-FILES

SpoilerTV: The X-Files – Episode 10.05 – Babylon – Sneak Peeks, Promo, Press Release & Promotional Photos *Updated*


Jan 31, 2016 9:44

Interview with Garfield Whitman, Production Manager in The After and #TheXFiles revival

https://www.facebook.com/groups/8273206453/posts/10154024902461454/

http://x-fileslexicon.com/exclusive/whitman.html

10X2: Founder’s Mutation

The X-Files 2016: Introduction | 10X1: My Struggle

Billed as the second part of a two-night premiere by Fox, The X-Files return to self-contained cases with this episode — however in the tradition of many season 1 episodes not all is as it seems and the mythology points its nose midway through.

10X2_office

Spoilers after the jump.

(more…)

10X1: My Struggle

The X-Files 2016: Introduction | 10X2: Founder’s Mutation | 10X3: Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster

After this introduction, let us now get into the meat of this: the episode itself.

10X1_MS

My Struggle” is written and directed by Chris Carter. It has the difficult task to do no less than the following: introduce the concept of the show, its central characters, its main intrigue, to new viewers; refresh the memory of fans on where the story stood when we last saw our heroes; reintroduce the main characters and what makes them tick; cover the time gap between 2008 and today; address and advance the mythology; present an episode’s worth of intrigue, with beginning, middle and end; last 44 minutes; and satisfy fans as much as possible.

Spoilers after the jump

(more…)

The X-Files revival: an introduction

After “a thirteen-year commercial break“, as per Chris CarterThe X-Files are back! — and with them the entire trio of creator Chris Carter and actors Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny.

Some history: The X-Files, 2002-2016

Writing these words does seem surreal. Things could have developed differently. A victim of its own success, the “original series” (a term we are going to have to get used to from now on!) exceeded its welcome on television and ended in 2002, going well beyond Chris Carter’s original ideas for about five seasons and continuing past the point where it would have made sense to make a clean break from the two main leads and focus on new leads entirely. By that point, the series was well past its peak popularity and Carter’s vision to transition into a feature film franchise was compromised; lawsuits with Fox involving Carter and Duchovny did not help either. With 2008’s I Want To Believe, Carter had stayed true to the idea he has expressed since 1998, of doing a stand-alone story for the second film, and enriched it with Mulder and Scully’s personal story. A very interesting enterprise but marred by many flaws (EatTheCorn review here), the second film did not generate enough momentum to lead into a third film, which Carter has teased as a return or one could hope a resolution (as far as resolutions go in The X-Files) of the mythology. The franchise was put on cold storage, being remembered only in anniversary events for an aging audience like any antiquated show before it.

If nothing else, The X-Files‘ feature films have showed that the franchise is too multifaceted for individual stories to satisfy everyone. If more films had closely followed, what was left unsaid in the second film would have a chance to develop and the whole would be elevated above its individual components; if the films were to focus on the mythology, there wouldn’t be the opportunity to verse into other paranormal themes, horror, comedy, experiment out of the norm. As much as it tried to bring feature film quality into the world of television, across the wide range of its fans and critics The X-Files is remembered fondly not for one of its aspects but for the sum of what it could do: for being a multi-episode series.

And so, a return to television. EatTheCorn has already argued that other avenues than a prestigious feature film could be a valid future for the franchise — see our recollections on the occasion of the passing of December 22, 2012, and at the 2013 20th anniversary panel at San Diego Comic Con, where key people still saw the feature film as the only option. Keep also in mind that FOX’s feature film branch and FOX’s television branch are two rather distinct entities, and this revival was certainly made possible in television thanks to the arrival at the top management of people with whom Chris Carter has had good relations with since the very beginning of the show in 1993 — namely, Dana Walden and Gary Newman, CEOs of Fox Television Group since July 2014. Conversely, the feature film industry is more wary of a franchise transitioning from television to film rather than the other way around, and Carter would still have a lot of people to convince were he to make that third film.

The return has been brewing for a couple of years. Carter and Walden attribute the fan excitement of the 20th anniversary as a catalyst. Frank Spotnitz has been mentioning that discussions were going on throughout 2014. IDW’s The X-Files comic series, expertly held by writer Joe Harris (and covered extensively at EatTheCorn), have brought novelty to the brand since their launch in June 2013. Kumail Nanjiani’s The X-Files Files podcast and of course fan activity online have also helped. The revival was put out there as an idea in January 2015, and a firm decision came in March; shooting took place between June and September; post-production lasted till December; and here we are barely a year later. Things went very quickly once the will was there.

But one has to make the obvious question: was a revival necessary? And one has to shed the knee-jerk reaction of the cliché of the unconditional fan, who will ask for more whatever might happen, or EatTheCorn’s obsession with seeing a continuation or closure of the show’s mytharc. With the passage of time and the endless cyclical urge of popular culture to eat itself, we live at a time of a revival/recycling/retooling/reneologismation of the landmarks of the 1980s and 1990s — the examples of that are everywhere. The X-Files was sure to come at some point, not because it has something more to say but because of the mere fact that its first incarnation had success, and thus presents an good case for easy return on investment (not to mention the opportunity of increasing the price of sales of Fox’s back catalog to streaming services like Netflix, which is a very important financial argument in the present days). What more does The X-Files has to say? This is the question that the revival needs to answer.

Behind the scenes of the revival

From the first declarations that Carter made on the revival, it came as a surprise that it was going to be a much more ambitious enterprise than “just” a matter of adapting his ideas of the continuation of the mythology, elements that he might have been keeping for a third X-Files feature film, to a multi-episodes television event. In fact it became something else entirely from that as well, but we will come back to that.

Carter wanted to revive the old show entirely: propose a series of episodes that would recreate the format of mythology, stand-alone scary stories and experimental; return to Vancouver to shoot, the place that defined the show’s identity and look in the first five seasons, same as for I Want To Believe; reunite with the band of writers that made its success; reunite with as many people as possible in the crew (just to name the most obvious that participated in this revival: composer Mark Snow and sound editor Thierry J. Couturier; visual effects supervisor Mat Beck; casting director Rick Millikan; production designer Mark S. Freeborn; production assistant Gabe Rotter; cinematographer Joel Ransom; editor Heather McDougall); and with the cast. Reunite the TenThirteen family. The project of the revival, what many would have expected to be a one-shot single-story event, including this fan, became something much more ambitious. A new season of the show, albeit with fewer episodes (initially 8, but trimmed to 6 for no other reasons than scheduling), and a season that could be, and has been conceived to be, the first of many!

Everything is made to channel the old show again. Its success, even, is measured by how close it is to the original: Dana Walden has said that “We are excited creatively by what we’ve seen. These episodes are incredibly consistent with the original series.

Of course the revival makes use of current themes for the stories and of modern film-making technology, it certainly looks very fresh; but other than that, the “revival” could easily be modified to be a “reboot”, i.e. the recreation of the original starting from a blank slate, an X-Files for the 21st century. Yet story threads still dangle embarrassingly in the absent centre (William, anyone?) and characters do feel like they are defined by the weight of the past; this is a continuation, not a reboot. This mix of old and new defines this revival.

What can be discussed and argued then is the mixture of “old” and “new”. How far does the new show stray, or evolve, from the old one? How much does it want to? In the run-up to the revival, we explored different possibilities, different possible futures for The X-Files. Out of the wide range of possibilities, out of that fourteen-year playground of the imagination for armies of fans across the world, a choice has been made, a single path has been taken, and the other possibilities are no more.

The new writers’ room

The six-episode revival is shaped by Carter and the people he has surrounded himself with. He has referenced in interviews that he wanted the whole gang of the original 3-5 seasons back — Frank Spotnitz, Vince Gilligan, Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa — however not everyone was available at such a short notice. Spotnitz’s absence is particularly notable since over the years he had become very much identified as the biggest creative force along with Carter and the two lead actors: they co-wrote both films, they co-wrote most of the mythology over seven seasons, he was imagining himself as participating in a future X-Files endeavour as well when asked in interviews over the long gap years of the past decade, as recently as 2014. Yet it so happened that success hit him at the same time and he was busy with launching his own series, The Man in the High Castle — both series were actually shot simultaneously in Vancouver in thesummer of 2015! Whether the revival series would have taken a different path with him is something to wonder at — particularly concerning the romance between Mulder and Scully, something he has always been an articulate proponent of.

The writers team for this revival ended up consisting in Chris Carter, Glen Morgan, James Wong and Darin Morgan. It already is a bit of a dream team, and a team that has not worked closely together since seasons 1-4 of the show! This sets the tone for what will follow.

Morgan and Wong (“the Wongs”) are of course responsible for some of the series’ best episodes, and to a great extent they are responsible for the identity of the show, being the writers of the show’s first non-alien, monster-focused episode (1X02: Squeeze and its sequel 1X20: Tooms); they developed the characters immensely, particularly Scully (1X12: Beyond the Sea, 4X13: Never Again); they created the characters of Skinner, the Lone Gunmen, Scully’s mother and father and sister Melissa; they injected a great sense of paranoia in the mythology (1X16: E.B.E.) and gave the show episodes where the supernatural could be something optimistic and not necessarily scary (2X08: One Breath) as well as some of its most horrific B-movie-guilty pleasures (2X14: Die Hand die Verletzt, 4X03: Home). After they left The X-Files and Millennium in 1998 and after some other projects, Morgan and Wong stopped being a creative duo after 2006 and went on their own ways; this is the first project in which they work together since a decade.

Darin Morgan is another celebrated writer, with only four-and-a-half episodes (4 + 3X22: Quagmire) but all of them in people’s “best of” lists. His unintentionally comic episodes expanded what the show could be and made fun of its codes and characters while managing to present a good X-file, mixing both cynicism and humanism.

Carter remains the main creative force since the show’s inception, however it will be interesting to ponder which story directions were his own and which came as a result of a back-and-forth with the rest of the writers. Each one writes the script and directs “their own” episodes, however the general story of the episodes and the arc they follow is a result of several interactions involving all of them — this time, not in the TenThirteen offices in Los Angeles, but in Glen Morgan’s garden!

Also, another important point is that Chris Carter is not the only on getting credit as an Executive Producer — the well-known last image of each episode — he is now joined by Glen Morgan. This puts Morgan on equal footing as Carter as the person who has the last word on any decision, from vision to script to film, and essentially makes this revival a Carter-Morgan project. What hadn’t happened in The X-Files and Millennium has happened now, almost two decades later!

On to the episodic reviews/first reactions.

Social media archive: 2016 (part 2)

Archived from the Eat The Corn Facebook page.


Jan 15, 2016 15:41

Behind the scenes at #XFilesRevival, many revelations from Carter!
Carter “wrote a third movie—which has yet to see the light of day” ?!
On the CSM being back: “In Episode 6, you’re going to see exactly what the product of that failure to die [in the 2002 series finale] was.”
Season 11? “Carter hopes the hard-core fans are satisfied, and since much is left unresolved at the end of Episode 6, another miniseries is possible.”

TV Insider: Inside ‘The X-Files’ Revival, and the Surprises Mulder and Scully Will Face


Jan 15, 2016 18:35

Confirmation: #XF3 has been written!!! It exists somewhere in Chris Carter’s laptop!
“Chris Carter wrote a third #TheXFiles movie before Fox ordered the limited series”
@[96190405425:274:20th Century Fox], pick up that budget sheet and make it happen!

 


Jan 15, 2016 18:54

Another trailer, for #ΤCA16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi_9YuMynW0


Jan 16, 2016 00:45

The “Story and visual influences on The X-Files” guide is being updated. Film, TV and literature inspirations, both story-wise and cinematography-wise, complete with visual comparisons! — here is Season 1.
D-9 days!

Story and visual influences on The X-Files : Season 1

 


Jan 17, 2016 21:15

We reenter the “Carter universe” in one week. On this occasion, EatTheCorn presents an original look on “The Obsessions of Chris Carter” than can be seen throughout his entire corpus: history and memory, loss, religion, trust, family. A very interesting article by French academic Séverine Barthes (Paris IV-Sorbonne).
D-7!

The Obsessions of Chris Carter

 


Jan 18, 2016 22:08

#mythXplained “NIHT”: And so the most controversial season begins. Carter went away during the summer holidays, leaving Spotnitz to develop what would have been the “Next Generation XF”, and Carter came back at the very last minute as a show-runner for season 9. Instead of making a clean break with Mulder, Scully and the whole mythology around them and focus just on the new faces, season 9 chooses to make Mulder the absent centre (again), make baby William into a mystery (again), make Scully the weeping caretaker (alas!), and add soap operatic drama making Reyes less interesting (introducing her ex Brad Follmer). Nevertheless, these two episodes are perhaps the season’s most interesting mythology episodes, with more mysteries around the Supersoldiers (governmental? alien?), more genetic experiments and more conspiracy theories (chloramine in tap water). It goes downhill from here.

9X01 / 9X02: Nothing Important Happened Today

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialTheXFiles/photos/a.371920819512324/943552282349172/


Jan 18, 2016 22:14

#mythXplained “Trust No 1”: NSA surveillance, constant paranoia, Terry O’Quinn, suspicions of experiments on babies: what could go wrong with such an episode? Yet this episode comes out as some of the most bitter experiences of watching The X-Files: not just the horribly out of place melodrama of the Scully and Mulder e-mails and love sickness, but also the focus yet again on whom we know we will not see, and the cheesiness of the kryptonite-like magnetite and the scene of destruction of a Supersoldier. Many interesting things, but not the XF we knew…

9X08: Trust No 1

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialTheXFiles/photos/a.371920819512324/945841692120231/


Jan 18, 2016 22:19

#mythXplained “Provenance/Providence”: The setting is familiar: religious cults, secrets buried underground, alien-as-God parallel, flashbacks revealing truths about the military, hints of greater forces at work (here, while Doggett is recovering at the hospital)… And yet it comes down to this: William is the object of an alien prophecy. The X-Files had gotten us used to more subtlety and more interesting storylines. Regardless, the decision has already been taken: The X-Files will be ending with this season and after these episodes everything accelerates to the conclusion.

9X10: Provenance / 9X11: Providence

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialTheXFiles/photos/a.371920819512324/947798358591231/


Jan 19, 2016 12:26

Sad news from our friends at @[109517928483:274:BacktoFrankBlack Campaign]: despite a very interesting five-issue special featuring the return of Frank Black and his dark/light universe, it seems IDW will not be producing more “Millennium” comics. IDW does have many plans for The X-Files though, so perhaps another crossover would not be impossible?…

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10154462798328484&id=109517928483

No matter what you are hearing, IDW has no plans to continue the Millennium comic unfortunately. Lots of rumors and speculation with no facts, we on the other hand have spoken to IDW.


Jan 19, 2016 22:54

201 episodes, 2 movies = 205 references! The illustrated guide into the story and visual influences on The X-Files has just been updated.
From “The Mothman Prophecies” to “Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography”, from H.P. Lovecraft to “Alien”, from “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” to Semisonic’s “Closing Time”, and many many more…
I tried to hit exactly 203 references, but then I figured this list can only grow, so why bother?

Story and Visual Influences on The X-Files: Updated


Jan 21, 2016 17:24

Chris Carter himself on #TheXFiles revival:
“In this context, it seemed like a perfect time to rattle some cages and shine a light on the dark and distrustful mood toward government that polls tell us pervades our country.”
“Over the past ten months about 500 people came together to make six episodes of the best TV we know how.”
“Mulder and Scully, colleagues who developed a tempestuous affection and intimacy, have a child together, William. He was put up for adoption when they feared for his life, due to the same conspirators Mulder so believes in. This becomes a very personal story that is explored through the course of these six episodes.”
via @[183227235893:274:YahooTV]

Yahoo: Chris Carter on Reviving ‘The X-Files’: ‘I Knew We Had Stories to Tell’


Jan 22, 2016 9:54

Vancouver on display #TheXFiles

Vancouver Is Awesome: 10 Vancouver landmarks in the original X-Files TV show


Jan 22, 2016 11:02

#TheXFiles teases from Anne Simon:
Genetic modification technology will play a major role, she said.
CRISPR-Cas9 makes it possible for us to alter the DNA of living cells, including human cells. And this science will tie into a “really big” plot twist, that will “kind of explain the whole conspiracy theory and what the cigarette-smoking man was doing.”
From 2X08: One Breath:
BYERS: The Thinker reports the protein chains are a result of branched DNA.
MULDER: Branched DNA?
LANGLY: The cutting edge of genetic engineering.
BYERS: A biological equivalent of a silicon microchip.
LANGLY: This is way beyond cutting edge. This technology fifty years down the line.
MULDER: What’s it used for?
FROHIKE: Could be a tracking system.
BYERS: Developmental stages of a biological marker.
MULDER: You mean a high-tech identity card?
LANGLY: Or something as insidious as grafting a human into something… inhuman.
(The computer beeps again.)
BYERS: Good theories, gentlemen, but all for naught.
(He points at a protein data map.)
This branched DNA is inactive. It’s waste product. Whoever was experimenting on Scully is finished. Now it’s nothing more than a biological poison.

BuzzFeed: Genetic Engineering Will Be A Big Part Of The “X-Files” Reboot


Jan 22, 2016 11:41

The world’s #TheXFiles most original marketing is in Madrid! A 400 kg Roswell UFO! Details: https://t.co/lYI0ecXFnu

https://www.facebook.com/foxtves/photos/a.230148732610/10153246993537611/


Jan 22, 2016 16:20

Congratulations to Chilean fans, who after the 2008 XF Expo are coming back with a #TheXFiles convention throughout this weekend!

https://www.facebook.com/events/1506334549669209/

23 JAN 2016 AT 15:00 – 25 JAN 2016 AT 00:00 UTC+01
VII Convención The X-Files
Sala Auditorium Telefónica

Story and Visual Influences on The X-Files: Updated

With less than a week to go for new X-Files (!)…

After more than 3 years after its launch, the massive list of influences on The X-Files — films, TV shows, scenes, cinema techniques, works of literature — has been updated! The list is complete with image “proof” and comparisons, and links to IMDb or Wikipedia for your “to (re)watch” or “to (re)read” lists.

As always, suggestions for further enriching the list are welcome!

Grand total: 205 references…

We’re going to the movies!

Introduction | Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | Season 5 | Season 6 | Season 7 | Season 8 | Season 9 | Movies