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THE X-FILES returns, in HD and widescreen


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4 hours ago, Lord Hanna said:

How do the blu rays look compared to let's say, the netflix quality? 

Thinking of buying the set, but it's quite expensive. Wondering what the video quality is like compared to netflix. 

Also, if you have time, any extras worth getting the blu rays for (episode commentary, etc) ?

I don't know anything about the netflix quality, but if it wasn't based on the HD restoration they recently did it isn't the same by far. They really rescanned the film material in 16:9, and it is very good quality. There was a problem with the blackness in season 8 but that's being dealt with.

The old DVDs weren't that bad, either, of course, but there is really a big difference.

There are also a lot of commentaries of core episodes that weren't on the old DVDs (apparently recorded for special collection sets that were released somewhere in the last years). Additionally there is also other bonus material - Carter talking about core episodes, stuff about special effects, and so on).

2 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

With the second episode, the cold opening, that was classic X-Files.  It set a real tone.  The rest of the episode followed suit.  Where it differed was that it connected so well with what went on in the first episode and the overall story.  What I mean by that is that the best stand alone episodes in the early days would, occasionally, seem like they could easily connect back to the conspiracy plot, even if they didn't come out and say that it did ("Eve" from Season 1, for example). 

Yeah, back in the first two seasons a standalone could develop into a mythology episode or be included into the mythology simply because of the topics that come up in the episodes.

From what I've heard they really have a personal arc they are touching upon throughout the six episodes. Not everything is connected to the alien conspiracy, but the personal issues about William and their former relationship will sort of come up in all the episodes.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

I don't know anything about the netflix quality, but if it was based on the HD restoration they recently did it isn't the same by far. They really rescanned the film material in 16:9, and it is very good quality. There was a problem with the blackness in season 8 but that's being dealt with.

The old DVDs weren't that bad, either, of course, but there is really a big difference.

There are also a lot of commentaries of core episodes that weren't on the old DVDs (apparently recorded for special collection sets that were released somewhere in the last years). Additionally there is also other bonus material - Carter talking about core episodes, stuff about special effects, and so on).

 

Awesome, thank you for the information. I'll definitely be getting them. 

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3 minutes ago, RumHam said:

That was a great episode. Easily the best one in fifteen years. 

That was really good. I've watched the 3 new episodes, but I've gone back and started the series since I haven't seen the originals. I'm 4 episodes into Season 1 and enjoying it, but is it going to be 200 episodes of weird and crazy stuff happening and Scully continually insisting that there is an explanation for everything?

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3 hours ago, RumHam said:

That was a great episode. Easily the best one in fifteen years. 

It was. Man, did I laugh when the whole were-man thing came up. Not to mention the nod to Scully's immortality.

3 hours ago, Jack Bauer 24 said:

That was really good. I've watched the 3 new episodes, but I've gone back and started the series since I haven't seen the originals. I'm 4 episodes into Season 1 and enjoying it, but is it going to be 200 episodes of weird and crazy stuff happening and Scully continually insisting that there is an explanation for everything?

Scully's character approach/opinion changes throughout the series, of course. She eventually sees things, and goes through things that make it pretty much impossible for her to keep up her view, but her take on things remains scientific. Just because she has seen things doesn't mean she accepts every crackpot theory Mulder comes up with, nor is she the one putting forward such theories. Her first very personal brush with the supernatural is waiting for her in the first season episode 'Beyond the Sea'.

But there is another side to her character as well. She is the religious one of the two, and is open to that kind of thing. There are few religious episodes sprinkled throughout the show in which Scully is the believer and Mulder the skeptic.

In season 8 Scully eventually becomes 'the believer' in a sense, since Mulder has disappeared, and she works alongside a new agent, John Doggett, trying to find him. By that time Scully (and Skinner) has seen enough stuff about aliens and UFOs to believe in that kind of thing.

Not to mention that Scully becomes also skeptical (and cynical) about the intentions and machinations of the government in the wake of the things she sees and goes through. If hear something of the stuff she says in season 3 and compare it to season 1 Scully then you realize how much she has changed since then.

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I actually watched all three of the new episodes last night, having finally finished season nine and the 2008 movie. They really didn't do a good job explaining why Mulder and Scully would want to return to their old jobs. Scully especially, since she was helping those poor earless kids. I guess their reasoning was that she discovered she had alien DNA, but come on was that really a shock? You gave birth to the alien jesus baby! Plus I find it hard to believe she never had her DNA tested and compared to William's back then, with all the talk about harvested ova and surrogate mothers. 

It's not like it would have been hard to come up with a more compelling setup. They easily could have established that the X-Files were still being run by some combination of Doggett, Reyes and that young blond agent whose name escapes me. One of them goes to Mulder or Scully for help only to be turned down, but then they're killed/hurt/kidnapped leaving some cryptic message and Mulder and Scully have an actual motivation for taking over the X-Files while the other agent(s) recover. 

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3 hours ago, RumHam said:

I actually watched all three of the new episodes last night, having finally finished season nine and the 2008 movie. They really didn't do a good job explaining why Mulder and Scully would want to return to their old jobs. Scully especially, since she was helping those poor earless kids. I guess their reasoning was that she discovered she had alien DNA, but come on was that really a shock? You gave birth to the alien jesus baby! Plus I find it hard to believe she never had her DNA tested and compared to William's back then, with all the talk about harvested ova and surrogate mothers. 

It's not like it would have been hard to come up with a more compelling setup. They easily could have established that the X-Files were still being run by some combination of Doggett, Reyes and that young blond agent whose name escapes me. One of them goes to Mulder or Scully for help only to be turned down, but then they're killed/hurt/kidnapped leaving some cryptic message and Mulder and Scully have an actual motivation for taking over the X-Files while the other agent(s) recover. 

The premise for their return to the FBI in the comics is very much better (people showing up stealing x files data and targeting everyone who has ever worked on them). They really sucked at giving them a good reason for a return. The underground/hiding part was already off the table after the second movie, but just having some dude showing up asking for Mulder and an abductee coming forth isn't a reason at all.

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28 minutes ago, Jack Bauer 24 said:

Was Mulder's X-Files theme song ringtone just a cool easter egg, or did he have it in previous seasons?

That was new. I don't think any of his older phones would have even supported custom ringtones. 

10 minutes ago, Martini Sigil said:

Ha! .... me too.... then I noticed the Homage to Kolchack with Guy's clothes.... This reminded me of "A piece of the Action" from the original Star Trek.

Fun fact:

Quote

[the script] was actually a modified version of "The M Word," an unproduced episode Morgan wrote for Frank Spotnitz's short-lived Night Stalker remake (and note that Guy Mann's wardrobe resembles what Kolchak wore on the original series). You can read "The M Word" script here, if you're curious about what changed beyond substituting Mulder and Scully for Kolchak and Reed. 

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/review-why-tonights-x-files-made-the-whole-revival-worthwhile#gqXYj3cuOqjeQCcp.99

 

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16 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I enjoyed it a lot once I got over the fact that I was watching a comedy.

Pretty much the same for me. I watched it with my gf who has never watched the X-Files, and she said it wasn't at all what she expected. I had to explain this episode was certainly not representative of the tone the show usually has. 

But hey, Rhys Darby! :D 

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11 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Ffs that Mulder hallucination scene was cringe worthy. Not digging the comedic aspects of these new episodes at all

Younger versions of Mulder & Skully felt pretty lazy too. And was a waste of Lauren Ambrose. 

Yeah, I'm not sure what to think of this new X-Files. When I heard that this was going to be only 6 episodes, I was sure that it would cover one story-arc to answer some big questions, but after the really in-your-face first episode, it just went into an episodic format. Enjoyable episodes, but not really sure what the people involved in the writing process were trying to get out of this.

For this episode, I was digging the hallucination scene until we find out it was caused by a placebo. It seems to me that Anderson and Duchovny are just having fun with these episodes, knowing that it will probably be their last.

I do have to wonder if they're intending to start a new round of seasons with the two young agents, and this was just a passing of the torch episode (or season). 

And I have to ask: was the old X-Files ever so heavy on the portrayal of the political and social issues of the day?

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Yes. That has to be the worst single episode of TV I've ever seen. For the following reasons:

  • It was insanely rushed. Within 10 minutes, the world is going to hell and Scully has figured out the basics of a decades-old conspiracy scheme. This is the kind of stuff that should have been set up over an entire season. The episode desperately wanted to turn everything on its head, but didn't have time to do it.
  • Half the episode was Scully and Einstein doing doctor speak that the average viewer had no chance of making sense of. I don't give a shit about which nucleotides are affected by what vaccines. I had no idea what they were figuring out, and therefore I didn't care.
  • No sense of scale or consequence. Most of the episode was - I assume for budget reasons - two characters in a room or Malley talking to the camera. If they want to sell the idea that a crisis really is unfolding, show us instead of talking about it. They only started doing this with the lines of cars in the last minutes.
  • A complete misuse of the Cigarette-Smoking Man. There was absolutely no sense of where he got his power from or what he had done to effectuate the crisis. Last we saw him, he was sitting in a mountain smoking a pipe before getting blown up. For him to work as a villain, we'd have to have more of a sense of where he gets his power from. In the old days, the Cabal had clearly infiltrated the government and held positions of high power. As far as we could tell, CSM was just a disfigured old man with no connections who put a global conspiracy into motion through sheer force of will ...
  • ... even though there was absolutely no sense what his motivations were. The good old "rebooting the human race"? Why? His dialogue with Mulder revealed absolutely nothing about why he did what he did, and it felt like a forced exchange between two characters who had absolutely nothing left to fight for or care about.
  • What the hell was Reyes offered that made her change from X-Files hero of multiple seasons into accomplice to world destruction? I was never really a huge fan of her and Doggett, but what the hell?
  • And just because the decimation of the world's population wasn't enough, they just had to throw a UFO in there in the last second. "Because then they might renew us for another season!"

After these six episodes, I'm more than ready to put the X-Files behind me. Not a single one of the episodes knocked it out of the park for me. Whether it was the scripts asking me to believe the unbelievable or the lead actors acting tired beyond their years, all episodes were off key in some way or another. Goodbye Mulder and Scully, goodbye nineties.

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38 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

Yes. That has to be the worst single episode of TV I've ever seen. For the following reasons:

  • It was insanely rushed. Within 10 minutes, the world is going to hell and Scully has figured out the basics of a decades-old conspiracy scheme. This is the kind of stuff that should have been set up over an entire season. The episode desperately wanted to turn everything on its head, but didn't have time to do it.
  • Half the episode was Scully and Einstein doing doctor speak that the average viewer had no chance of making sense of. I don't give a shit about which nucleotides are affected by what vaccines. I had no idea what they were figuring out, and therefore I didn't care.
  • No sense of scale or consequence. Most of the episode was - I assume for budget reasons - two characters in a room or Malley talking to the camera. If they want to sell the idea that a crisis really is unfolding, show us instead of talking about it. They only started doing this with the lines of cars in the last minutes.
  • A complete misuse of the Cigarette-Smoking Man. There was absolutely no sense of where he got his power from or what he had done to effectuate the crisis. Last we saw him, he was sitting in a mountain smoking a pipe before getting blown up. For him to work as a villain, we'd have to have more of a sense of where he gets his power from. In the old days, the Cabal had clearly infiltrated the government and held positions of high power. As far as we could tell, CSM was just a disfigured old man with no connections who put a global conspiracy into motion through sheer force of will ...
  • ... even though there was absolutely no sense what his motivations were. The good old "rebooting the human race"? Why? His dialogue with Mulder revealed absolutely nothing about why he did what he did, and it felt like a forced exchange between two characters who had absolutely nothing left to fight for or care about.
  • What the hell was Reyes offered that made her change from X-Files hero of multiple seasons into accomplice to world destruction? I was never really a huge fan of her and Doggett, but what the hell?
  • And just because the decimation of the world's population wasn't enough, they just had to throw a UFO in there in the last second. "Because then they might renew us for another season!"

After these six episodes, I'm more than ready to put the X-Files behind me. Not a single one of the episodes knocked it out of the park for me. Whether it was the scripts asking me to believe the unbelievable or the lead actors acting tired beyond their years, all episodes were off key in some way or another. Goodbye Mulder and Scully, goodbye nineties.

Thank you. My feelings exactly. 

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