X-Files – Exordium

I've always been a huge fan of The X-Files, way back to the original broadcast run. I can even remember the promo spots before it aired - What's with the music? Who's the redhead? Aliens and other weird shit? Cool. I watched religiously each week. The source material is now almost 20 years old and I still think that this show is one of the best ever created. I watched this edit years ago and never left a proper review. I watched it again recently and and thought I should fix that.

A/V Quality: Cropping the 4:3 ratio to 16:9 inevitably reduces the video quality. However, the end justifies the means in this case. The edit looks like a movie, not a TV show. The picture looks a little dark and I did notice some stuttering in scenes with motion, but it was not unwatchable. I think the sacrifices made to make it 16:9 were worth it.

Visual editing: Great job with removing the commercial fades, but there were still too many fade in/outs for my liking. I did notice one errant frame in the scene with Skinner, Mulder and the CSM, but no real issues otherwise.

Audio editing: No jarring, hard cuts. Perfectly fine.

Narrative: The toughest thing with a TV to movie fanedit is removing the episodic nature of the source material. I don't think that this edit succeeds with that, at least through the first half or so of the edit. The second half flows much nicer and it feels like a real movie. There are some strange scenes that did not seem to serve the plot and some scenes where plot points are introduced and not resolved (what happened to the helicopter chasing Mulder and Scully? Who is the cop in the woods calling for the fire department?). I think further cutting could have been made.

Enjoyment: Despite my criticisms above, I really enjoyed this edit. It's one of the few fanedits I've watched more than once, so I guess that's something. Fans of the X-Files will love this. If you're new to the series this is the perfect introduction. The only question left is, where are parts 2-9?

March 5, 2010 @ 12:20 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

November 27, 2009 @ 8:21 pm

so nice to see some X-Files again and I love them in widescreen. This was obviously a lot of work and I had a lot of fun watching this movie, even though it did not truly play like a movie for me. Thank you, Throwngcpr.

December 3, 2008 @ 6:46 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

February 20, 2009 @ 5:07 am

First off – I really liked this. It was a fun adventure collecting a few important stories throughout season 1. In all it felt SLIGHTLY connected, but it was pretty obvious when one story ended and a new one began. I’m not sure if this could be avoided, but as a “movie” this isn’t seamless and kinda breaks apart when under scrutiny (Like who are all of these other characters? They are never introduced). As a “tv mini-series” this works well, and how I chose to think about it while watching it. :)

I think it will be important to introduce characters in your next mythology episode.

Regarding technical quality, I did notice a few hard audio cuts and the picture quality was a bit lacking (probably from cropping) but not too distracting. There was an odd transition from M&S on the hill being chased by the helicopter and then …?

The pacing really gives this away as a TV show cut into a movie… very rollercoaster like. It didn’t BOTHER me, but just was very telling.

I think that several scenes could have done better with a different cropping selection (a lot of heads are chopped) and really nothing exciting is happening at the bottom of the screen except for a few text placements on occasion, but that is being picky.

What I DID like was really streamlining the stories. Cutting out a lot of unimportant characters helps this move along (like the kids at the airbase, etc.).

There is room for improvement technically, so i’m giving this a 4/5. I really look forward to more mythology xfiles edits in the future!