TV
The X-Files season 11
Over the decades the series The X-Files has had many endings. The first of which was its ending in the 1998 theatrical film, then there was an ending to the series when that finished in 2002, there was also an ending to the 2008 “I want to believe” film and the ending to the series again when it returned to FOX for a short run in 2016, all of which could easily have stood as a series ending but didn’t. So this new ending to the current crop of The X-Files episodes on FOX next Wednesday is nothing new, if this time it feels more permanent than before.
What started this season as a little confusing with the first episode evolved into a strong season of The X-Files with some standout-episodes like the hilarious “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat,” the nearly dialog free “Rm9sbG93ZXJz,” the creepy “Familiar”and brilliant/gross “Nothing Lasts Forever.” For the most part, the episodes that worked this season were ones not tied to the overall conspiracy mythos. The conspiracy episodes were odd and really didn’t fit well with the stand-alone ones, but still, even a halfway decent episode of The X-Flies is better that most other series episodes out there these days.
Why does this ending to The X-Files feel different then before? It’s because this time Gillian Anderson has said she’s done with the show. Now this has happened in the past with co-star David Duchovny in the early 2000s when he effectively left the series after its seventh season. This time, though, with Duchovny pushing 60 and Gillian Anderson finding success in other shows, I could see this season of The X-Files being the last.
Well, last to a certain extent. Though I’d love to see Duchovny and Anderson return to The X-Files at some point in the future, even Darren McGavin famously kind’a sort’a reprised his role as Kolchak at age 76 in an episode of The X-Files, I think it’s more likely than not that at some point in the near future FOX will reboot the series with a brand new Mulder and Scully or with new characters replacing the old like has been done in the Star Trek and Star Wars films.
Still, to me Mulder and Scully will always be Duchovny and Anderson.
The Expanse season 3 TV spot
Comics
Infinity Gauntlet Box Set Slipcase Hardcover
This nearly 5,000 page edition, that’s no type-o folks, will retail for $450 and is out this week just in time for the release of Avengers: Infinity War.
The Mad Titan Thanos has gathered the Infinity Gems – and he plans to transform our universe into a nightmarish tribute to his true love, Death! Adam Warlock and the Silver Surfer unite Earth’s heroes and the universe’s cosmic powers to stand against Thanos and his Infinity Gauntlet…but when the dust settles, Adam Warlock’s good and evil sides – the Goddess and the Magus – may prove to be even bigger threats! Witness the birth of the Infinity Watch, as the universe must deal with infinite war and a cosmic crusade! But through all the chaos, what is Thanos’ secret agenda? Jim Starlin’s cosmic masterpiece, the 1990s’ “Infinity Trilogy,” is collected in full in this titanic box set, including every chapter, crossover and tie-in – plus an entire volume of bonus stories and behind-the scenes extras! It doesn’t get more Infinite than this!
Movies
Avengers: Infinity War trailer
The Movie Chain: #99: The Bourne Identity (2002)
Last week: The Martian
The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.
I remember how excited I got when The Bourne Identity was released. In 2002 the spy movie genera was waning with the stalwart James Bond franchise experiencing its last gasps before being rebooted in 2006. But otherwise there wasn’t much else out there spy-guy-wise. Enter The Bourne Identity.
Part of the reason I was excited about this one was that it seemed like it was a spy movie meant for my generation. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon of last week’s The Martian) was a young guy at the time and the movie was being directed by Doug Liman who’s previous film Go was, and still probably is, one of my all-time favorite films. Differentiating itself from the Bond franchise, in The Bourne Identity Jason Bourne is a man who’s lost his memory and is in a journey across Europe with Marie (Franka Potente) to find his origins. Along the way he finds that when backed into a corner or threatened he can kick almost anyone’s butt on “autopilot,” can fight his way out of any situation or get out of any building when things look bleak.
Watching The Bourne Identity today I’m surprised as to just how small this movie is when compared to the other films that would come. The big action sequence here is Bourne and Marie in a car chase, except they’re driving an old, beat-up Mini Cooper rather than some flashy car like in the Bond films. Of course, all this would come later and this “smallness” that was a feature of The Bourne Identity was chipped away in subsequent films until now there’s not much difference between Bourne and Bond.
One interesting thing — The Bourne Identity didn’t do that well at the box office when it was released. It certainly made money for the studio, but it wasn’t a smash movie that year. I think what saved the franchise from doom was word of mouth and strong DVD sales. Let’s put it this way — in 2002 The Bourne Identity wasn’t even a top 20 movie in terms of box office. In 2004 The Bourne Supremacy was in the top ten.
Next week: Dance the night away!
Rumor Control
I’ve been overdosing on sci-fi lately. It’s easy to do. These days sci-fi is the most popular type of genera programming so it seems as if every week or two there’s some new sci-fi movie or TV series to come along that demands attention. Be it a series like Black Mirror or movie like Mute, more and more is available every month.
And that’s not taking into account all the classic sci-fi series and movies out there too. In the last few weeks I’ve bought films like 2010, Outland and Akira and series like Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica as well. Some weeks, especially when the Olympics were on and there weren’t too many things to watch, I was sci-fi all the time. If I wasn’t working through series like Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams then I was sampling shows like Altered Carbon while also catching movies like Alien Resurrection on TV. It’s almost like TV programmers have finally figured out that more people than just the geeks like me are into sci-fi and have started adjusting their programming accordingly.
One Sunday I was flipping back and forth between Mad Max: Fury Road and Alien: Covenant with The Martian airing a little later on. I was in heaven.
What’s really cool are things like the two original Netflix movies that debuted the last few months. First was The Cloverfield Paradox and then Mute. While I didn’t think that either of these movies were great, I still dug both of them a lot and thought they were each a lot of fun.
And all these shows and movies seem to be just the tip of the iceberg as it were in 2018 sci-fi wise. There’s also the upcoming new ABC show The Crossing, Krypton on Syfy and Netflix series Lost in Space to look forward to as well as returning shows like The Expanse and Westworld too. And that’s just what’s coming out in the next few months. If the flood of sci-fi that’s been coming out for some time now continues into 2018 I can only imagine what wonders we’ll be brought.
I’ve been watching so much sci-fi the last few weeks/months I had to ask myself the question, is it too much? On the one hand how can “too much” sci-fi be a bad thing? On the other hand there’s so much of it coming out, and so much is good, is the flood of it diluting sci-fi in general? Like will people one day look back on 2018 at some point in the future where sci-fi has returned to its traditional levels, a few series on TV and a few movies a year, and see this year as an aberration?
I’d suppose so. I think we’re living in this weird time when there’s so many outlets for TV be it cable, broadcast, streaming, on demand, online, digital download… and all these outlets want their own original programming means that programmers are willing to take chances on things they might not have a few years ago. So instead of just getting clones of CSI and Grey’s Anatomy we get a lot of interesting shows too like The Orville and Counterpart and what sounds like interesting series like Fahrenheit 451.
I always seem to be able to find interesting things to watch, even in times like in the early 2000s when it was very hard to do so. But these days when there’s so much TV out there and so much of it is great I think it’s now possible to find great things I want to watch just in my favorite niche of sci-fi. My concern is that I’ll get lost in my little pop-culture bubble, will become so immersed in sci-fi that I’ll forget to pop my head out and take a look around at what else is out there. I love sci-fi and I can’t get enough of it, but there’s more out there TV and movie-wise than just sci-fi. Am I right, or am I crazy and should I just enjoy all my sci-fi programs while they last?
Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy takes place in the 1970s within the “Circus,” or the code-name for British intelligence, where a Soviet mole has be discovered in their top echelon. Those in charge might know the mole’s there, but no one’s quite sure exactly who it is that’s feeding the Soviets all the British secrets they can handle. Enter Smiley who was booted out of the agency some time before and can be brought into investigate since he’s the one person everyone’s sure isn’t the traitor.
There are shows I don’t watch because I don’t have enough time and there are shows I don’t watch because I don’t get whatever streaming service or cable outlet they happen to be on that I don’t get. I’d love to watch shows like Star Trek: Discovery, The Runaways or Ash vs Evil Dead, but because I don’t pay for CBS All Access, Hulu or Starz means I don’t have an opportunity to check out those shows.
Now it’s an entirely different matter. There are so many shows that are “great” the problem is I don’t have enough room to list them all or time to write about everything. I have to think that there’s surly some “great” shows these days that don’t get critical acclaim since today shows can’t just be “great,” they also have to be “innovative” or “ground breaking” or “unique” too to get loads of people to watch them.
It’s happened in the movies already. The 1970s were considered a high watermark of cinema in the US yet by the mid–1980s things had devolved to the point where everyone was chasing big box office successes rather than wanting to make interesting movies. For example, in 1976 a movie about Watergate All the President’s Men was the third highest grossing film in the US that year. By 1986 the third highest grossing movie was Platoon, but that was overshadowed by the likes of Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee as the two highest grossing movies that year.