In a far away magical land we call the 1990s,The X-Filesused to rule the world.

So, naturally, it had to be made into a movie.

(But money more than anything else.)

The X-Files: Fight the Futureused to be my favorite film.

I think Ive seen it about, oh, 142 times.

I kid; its been way more than that.

And if you do, I hope youll enjoy rediscovering them again.

The script was written in ten days.

Thats right; he took a break from vacation from work to work some more.

Theres your inspiration for the day.

The pre-production period was only ten weeks.

Just so you know, the usual prep time for a movie is six monthsat theleast.

It was way past crunch time.

Filming was very nearly postponed.

All sets were constructed at the same time.

What else were they going to do with that cash, anyway?

Carter constantly haggled with 20th Century Fox about the budget.

Director Rob Bowman storyboarded the hell out of this movie.

When they were done, he had a book of storyboards that was thicker than a dictionary.

Even so, Bowman still had to improvise during principal photography.

Thus, the director had to spend extra time ad libbing solutions on location to make things work.

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were only available for 75% of the shooting time.

This made the filming all scenes involving Mulder and Scully the first unit crews top priority.

To accommodate this, everyone worked sixteen hour days, six days a week for most of the summer.

An obsessive fan snuck onto the set one night and nobody noticed.

(Remember those?)

Filming the chase scene in the cornfield was uncomfortable for Anderson.

In her words, it was her least favorite experience of the whole shoot.

Corn stalk leaves are pretty sharp, you know.

Plus, she was getting whacked in the face by all of the stalks that Duchovny just ran through.

So was that scene at the playground in Texas.

I dont think wearing a wool suit helped much, either.

A snake wrangler was hired on for protection on set.

(Okay, I made up that last part.

But admit it: that wouldve been a badass way to blow off some steam.)

The glacier sequence was a production nightmare.

Russel wanted to simulate daylight using big heat lamps to match the location footage.

Nowak just wanted to stop their manmade glacier from melting.

Since nobody likes carbon monoxide poisoning, they devised a better ventilation system for the set for safety purposes.

Man, she had a rough shoot.

#ThatsShowbiz

14.

The human host props took forever to get right.

Yet creating the corpses of the infected fireman proved to be more of a challenge than they intitially anticipated.

Aint nobody got time for that.

The SFX crew spent most of their time designing the newborn alien creature.

Chris Carter specifically requested that the alien have an air wisdom to its appearance, also.

But to save time (and money too), both were made from the same sculpture.

Too bad we didnt get to see more of either version during the movie.

It took a whole night of filming to get Mulders big scene with Kurtzweil in the can.

It had all the exposition in the world, didnt it?

Its astonishing how Martin Landau was able to memorize it all.

This raised the stakes for the whole first unit.

Everyone finally got to go home and sleep after that.

But probably only for an hour or two, because, again, they had no time to waste.

That bee is more amazing than you ever knew.

Professional bee wrangler Dr. Norman Gary thought it wasnt going to happen.

The bee performers that passed this experiment/audition were chosen for use in the movie.

From that day forward, that little bee was the bee experts top favorite bee ever.

The hallway kiss between Mulder and Scully did happen.

See for yourselfhere, andhere.

He was in the final scene of the movie for gods sake.

Why did he never show up in the mythology again?

Rumor has it that Chris Carter couldnt coordinate with Armin Mueller Stahl to make an appearance on the show.

Could have been a money thing.

Maybe Strugholds still sitting around somewhere in Tunisia, counting all the benjamins he makes from hismining company.

Oh, who cares.

As villains go, he wasnt that threatening anyway.

20.Fight the Futurewas given a promotional budget of $60 million.

Um…why didnt they allocate that to fund the film again?

Anyway, this media push resulted in a ton of merchandise thats still around to this day.

See that lunchbox up there?

I used to have that.

I didnt use it often since it was too pretty to put food in.

Ooh, but look!

you might see the alien in there somewhere.

Yknow, hedoeslook sort of wise from this angle.

I get what you were doing, Chris Carter.

Thanks, Todd MacFarlane (and, by extension,Spawn.)

But nobody thank Matell, because the world did not needX-FilesBarbies.

Its comic adaptation is one of the worst ever.

I wish I was joking.

Apparently Carters dialogue heavy script wouldnt translate well to the panel format.

(Go figure.)

22.Fight the Futureowes a lot to HammersQuatermassfilms.

To be fair, so does the TV series.

Disclaimer: Ive never actually seen the Quatermass films in their entirety.

This sounds kind of familiar, doesnt it?

(Oh, and theres a big UFO buried underground, too.)

The films climax was shamelessly recycled in anX-Filesvideo game released a few years later.

Scully sleeps through the whole damn thing again.

Dana, what the hell girl?!

Theres a hidden track on the movies soundtrack album that tells you everything you oughta know aboutThe X-Filesmain conspiracy.

If you havent heard this yet, its a must listen for any self-respecting X-Phile.

I consider these few minutes to be The Truth.

Basically, this movie is a greatest hits package for the TV show.