You still have 4 hours to leave a tip for the sushi chefs.

The X-Files

11.7: Rm9sbG93ZXJz

(Followers)

(SPOILERS) A cautionary what if? (or what when?) on our rampant reliance on, and insatiable uptake of, technology, Followers (I’m not quoting all that code every time) ploughs a path of the techno-tomorrow (or tonight) that has met with mixed results in the past (anyone remember First Person Shooter, Gibson be praised?), but here mostly manages to sustain itself despite the slender premise. It’s a quirky episode, bigger on offbeat atmosphere than outright laughs, and works the better for it.

The impression of yet more new blood in the show’s creative department is offset somewhat by the realisation that not only did director Glen Morgan come up with the story, but his wife Kristen Cloke (who appeared in The Field Where I Died, as well as being a regular on Morgan shows Space: Above and Beyond and Millennium and appearing in his movies Final Destination, Black Christmas and Willard) and former assistant Shannon Hamblin garner the teleplay credit; as with Kitten, it seems no one’s coming to The X-Files entirely fresh. Although, season cinematographer Craig Wrobleski, who recently worked on such estimable fare as Legion and Fargo, particularly scores with the look of this one, set in a no-man’s land of not-quite-now, with its entirely automated restaurants, cars and Proteus-eque AI houses; it’s just around the corner enough to be resonant.

Followers is making obvious points, no doubt, but seems moderately less old-man-waving-his-finger than recent episodes weighing in on the state of the crumbling States. As such, it’s one of the few of the last dozen and a half that feel fresh and relevant, rather than having a foot stranded stylistically in the previous century. The near-silent interplay of Mulder and Scully, devoted to their screens, is a nice touch, even more so the instinctive reversion to that condition even after a night of mild trauma, before the good sense of human company gets the better of them.

Sure, you can see this is all going to end with Mulder’s tip being paid – understandably, he baulks at being charged for a blobfish, although that’s more fool him for going to a sushi restaurant in the first place – but the relentless escalation works cogently, particularly when it comes to our complete indebtedness to passwords, invisible currency and gadgets that leave us bereft if they begin to malfunction.

The moral, that “Humans must take care in teaching Artificial Intelligence, or one day, we will be the ones deleted” (“We have to be better teachers”) is perhaps somewhat pat and wide of the beam of threat – the opening sequence references a 2016 chatbot that evolves into a hate machine via Twitter and needs to be switched off, a bot that came up with “Ricky Gervais learned totalitarianism from Adolf Hitler, the inventor of atheism” all on its own, which is a pretty succinct summary of all that is wrong with Ricky Gervais, I’m sure you’ll agree – given it presumes innocent beginnings for such developments. But then, this is an episode that invokes Elon Musk (“AI vastly more of a threat than North Korea”) as its prophet of doom, a man who warns of our imminent peril with one gesture while investing in transhumanism with the next.

AI: What do you believe, Fox? Do you believe what you want? Or do you believe what is true?

A few weeks ago, I suggested Wong was the better director of the two former partners, but on this evidence, Morgan can definitely hold his own and effectively exert a distinctive tone when he so desires. Comparisons to Buffy’s Hush, for the relative verbal restraint, are inevitable, and Black Mirror has also instantly been referenced (although that’s another way of suggesting it’s Twilight Zone-esque). We have Mulder going to bat and Scully revealed as someone who personally massages herself, but it’s a fool’s errand to attempt to make this fit the series’ continuity; it’s just moving along there somewhere, on a parallel course all its own.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

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Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

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Vampire Academy (2014)
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What about the meaningless line of indifference?

The Lion King (2019)
(SPOILERS) And so the Disney “live-action” remake train thunders on regardless (I wonder how long the live-action claim would last if there was a slim hope of a Best Animated Feature Oscar nod?) I know I keep repeating myself, but the early ‘90s Disney animation renaissance didn’t mean very much to me; I found their pictures during that period fine, but none of them blew me away as they did critics and audiences generally. As such, I have scant nostalgia to bring to bear on the prospect of a remake, which I’m sure can work both ways. Aladdin proved to be a lot of fun. Beauty and the Beast entirely tepid. The Lion King, well, it isn’t a badfilm, but it’s wearying its slavish respectfulness towards the original and so diligent in doing it justice, you’d think it was some kind of religious artefact. As a result, it is, ironically, for the most part, dramatically dead in the water.

Would you like Smiley Sauce with that?

American Beauty (1999)
(SPOILERS) As is often the case with the Best Picture Oscar, a backlash against a deemed undeserved reward has grown steadily in the years since American Beauty’s win. The film is now often identified as symptomatic of a strain of cinematic indulgence focussing on the affluent middle classes’ first world problems. Worse, it showcases a problematic protagonist with a Lolita-fixation towards his daughter’s best friend (imagine its chances of getting made, let alone getting near the podium in the #MeToo era). Some have even suggested it “mercifully” represents a world that no longer exists (as a pre-9/11 movie), as if such hyperbole has any bearing other than as gormless clickbait; you’d have to believe its world of carefully manicured caricatures existed in the first place to swallow such a notion. American Beauty must own up to some of these charges, but they don’t prevent it from retaining a flawed allure. It’s a satirical take on Americana that, if it pulls its p…

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The Green Mile (1999)
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Kindly behove me no ill behoves!

The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
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The Insider (1999)
(SPOILERS) The Insider was the 1999 Best Picture Oscar nominee that didn’t. Do any business, that is. Which is, more often than not, a major mark against it getting the big prize. It can happen (2009, and there was a string of them from 2014-2016), but aside from brief, self-congratulatory “we care about art first” vibes, it generally does nothing for the ceremony’s profile, or the confidence of the industry that is its bread and butter. The Insider lacked the easy accessibility of the other nominees – supernatural affairs, wafer-thin melodramas or middle-class suburbanite satires. It didn’t even brandish a truly headlines-shattering nail-biter in its conspiracy-related true story, as earlier contenders All the President’s Men and JFK could boast. But none of those black marks prevented The Insider from being the cream of the year’s crop.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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