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The X-Files: Fight the Future: (Mark Snow) Rare is
it that a feature film based on a television series is released right in
the middle of that series' lifespan on the small screen, but
producer/creator Chris Carter and his regular
The X-Files crew
managed to pull it off. Even more remarkable is that the film not only
fit into the storyline of the show perfectly, but it also was a success
on its own. Generating positive buzz from people who had never seen a
single episode on TV,
The X-Files: Fight the Future intelligently
satisfied both avid fans and the regular mainstream... a rare feat.
Directed by one of the show's regulars, the film's successful run
promised of the possibility of another film in the future, though none
has come in the following ten years. The plotline of the film runs like
an extended episode, with larger production budgets for locations, sets,
soundtrack, and guest stars. The fact that the film leads fans to an
alien spacecraft in Antarctica is no surprise to aficionados of the
series, and the script even opened several new plotlines for future
episodes to reference. Composer Mark Snow had been writing music for the
series for all of its five seasons to the date of the film, and had his
own cult following as a result. He had received six Emmy nominations
spanning work for
The X-Files and
Millennium and had begun
to venture into television and video films with varying success. His
work for the
The X-Files episodes was typically dominated by
synthesizers, for the weekly television schedule never afforded him the
time to work with an orchestra. With two months and a significant number
of re-cuts to work around in producing the score for the feature film,
Snow was given a large enough budget to hire a studio orchestra to
create a beefed-up, more complex version of his weekly
X-Files
music. In the early days of the show --and the film came at the end of
that period-- Snow's music was not really that listenable outside the
show. Only in later years of the series did he explore more harmonic
ideas for the growing romantic aspect of the show's overarching
plotline. The feature film score serves as an interesting transitional
score for the two sounds.
As expected, the electronically whistled title theme
for the show is translated to
Fight the Future, and its
incarnations are among the highlights of the score. In "Threnody in X,"
Snow provides the theme over masculine, synthetic rhythms reminiscent of
the
Terminator films. In its favor are those rhythms and harmonic
bass accompaniment, though fans will immediately note the absence of
some of the elements of the theme in the show that truly make it what it
is. Gone from the theme (and the entire album) is the trademark echoing
effect that is almost as famous at the whistling... a serious omission.
This performance would be heard during a helicopter-shot driving scene
in the middle of the film, curiously. The theme rarely makes subsequent
appearances, with its fragments finally put together once again for the
finale's "Crater Hug" cue. The action and suspense cues seem like an odd
combination of Snow's non-
X-Files efforts and the dissonant
experimentation of Elliot Goldenthal. The Goldenthal influence is clear
in several places where Snow plants incongruous layers of shrieking
strings and brass, in some cases mirroring what Goldenthal did the same
year in
Sphere. The resemblance to some of Snow's superior
feature efforts is best heard in the back-to-back "Crossroads" and "Corn
Hives" cues, which introduce the composer's trademark synthetic choir
from the era. The driving orchestral rhythms in "Crossroads," led by
timpani and largely absent of the murky electronics, produce the single
best cue of the score. A few pieces later in the score will remind of
other composers, including James Horner's
Aliens in "Corn
Copters" and an adaptation of the title theme into James Bond fashion in
"Cargo Hold." The more ambient cues are highlighted by the translation
of the solo piano into the film. Many of the motifs heard regularly in
the show are not featured in the film, however. Fans of the show will
find considerable merit in the score, though coming on the heals of his
simply spectacular score for the television production of
20,000
Leagues Under the Sea only months earlier, Snow is capable of
better. Traditional orchestral film score fans will find parts of it
tedious, with only ten of the 67 minutes on album worthy of compilation.
Snow has, quite sadly, slipped from mainstream view in the years since
The X-Files concluded on television.
*** Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download
The insert contains notes about Snow and the score. The wacky-colored font used for the notes
and credits is very difficult to read.
