The X Files (sometimes known just as The X Files: Fight the Future) is a 1998 movie which is part of the television series The X Files. The film's main tagline is "Fight the Future" and was placed close enough on posters that people assumed this was part of the film's title.

Although the movie can be viewed separately, and certainly - during its theatrical release - was viewed by many non-fans of the show, it plays an integral role in the ongoing storylines of the show.

Major cast members

These actors are those who also have roles on the TV show:

• David Duchovny as Special Agent Fox Mulder
• Gillian Anderson as Special Agent Dana Scully
• Mitch Pileggi as Assistant Director Walter Skinner
• William B. Davis as Cigarette-Smoking Man

• John Neville as Well-Manicured Man
• Dean Haglund as Richard 'Ringo' Langly
• Bruce Harwood as John Fitzgerald Byers
• Tom Braidwood as Melvin Frohike
• Don S. Williams as First Elder

The following actors do not appear on the TV show:

• Martin Landau as Alvin Kurtzweil
• Jeffrey DeMunn as Ben Bronschweig
• Blythe Danner as Assistant Director Jana Cassidy
• Terry O'Quinn as Darius Michaud
• Armin Mueller-Stahl as Conrad Strughold
• Glenne Headley as Barmaid (uncredited)

Plot synopsis

As the show's fifth season ended, the X-Files had been shut down, and Mulder and Scully were assigned to other projects. The movie opens with them assisting Darius Michaud's FBI team staking out a building in Dallas which has had a bomb threat. They discover the bomb across the street but it explodes.

Through evidence given him by a paranoid doctor, Mulder grows to believe that the bomb was deliberately allowed to explode to destroy evidence of some victims of the alien virus. Despite the fact that he and Scully are in danger of losing their jobs at a hearing led by A.D. Jana Cassidy, and attended by A.D. Skinner, they pursue the evidence. But when Scully is stung by a bee infected with the virus, and is kidnapped, a desperate Mulder seeks her out. The Well-Manicured Man tells him where to find her, in Antarctica, and what the antidote is but in doing so, loses his life.

Mulder journeys to Antarctica and saves Scully, in the process discovering a secret lab run by the Cigarette-Smoking Man and his colleague Strughold. The lab is destroyed when the alien ship lying dormant comes back to life.

Later, Mulder and Scully give evidence at the hearing where Cassidy routinely ignores their remarks. At another outpost - in Tunisia - the Cigarette-Smoking Man learns that the X-Files office has been reopened...

Trivia

The movie was actually filmed in the hiatus between the show's fourth and fifth seasons, and reshoots were done during the filming of the show's fifth season, which meant that some episodes of that season did not revolve around Mulder and/or Scully, because one or both actors were not available. Examples include "The Unusual Suspects," "Christmas Carol," "Chinga," and "Travelers."

The movie was responsible for introducing the show to a new group of fans. Many old fans of the show, however, believe that it reached its peak in the fourth or fifth season, and the movie was the beginning of the show's demise. For more on this ongoing debate, see the main X-Files page.