The X-Files (1998)

There are times when TV shows go beyond their medium and explode into something else entirely. For audiences of 2026, it’s hard to explain just how huge The X-Files were in the 90s. There’s nothing like it today, and the reboot of 2016 didn’t land with modern viewers. But in 1998, it was big enough to get its own movie in-between the fifth and sixth seasons of the show. The X-Files was working Sunday nights on two levels, the monster of the week, and the conspiracy. The movie bridges the conspiracy between seasons. The movie opens with Agents Mulder and Scully working in Dallas because The X-Files have been shut down. It was all part of the fifth season plot. What was startling about it is the opening bombing of a federal building in Dallas. The movie came three years after the Oklahoma City bombing, and the image of the façade of the building destroyed in Dallas evoked such intense memories of what people had seen a few years earlier. There were some gasps and murmurs in the theater when it was shown. It can be argued the movie sets up the downfall of the series. People had been promised one of the show’s big mysteries would be resolved. It was, and it was a letdown, which is usually the case when you drag out a mystery for too long. The reveal is just never going to match the build-up and feel unsatisfying. The movie had another problem. How to get people who don’t watch the show to come see it. So, there’s a bit of exposition at one point to catch everyone up to speed. However, and this is the problem Star Trek has always faced, if you aren’t watching the show, what’s going to convince you to come to a theater to see a movie about it? It made about $84 million at the box office, which is just about what you would expect. Which brings us back to the original issue with a movie based on a TV show, if you don’t watch the show, can you enjoy it? The answer here is yes. It works as a thriller and David Duchnovy and Gillian Anderson’s chemistry had been honed by years of working together. It might not get you to open The X-Files, but it will give you insight into when conspiracy theories lived in the shadows and not in the day’s news.