ShockTillYouDrop.com's Visit to the XF2 Set
Posted at 6:13 AM (PDT) on Wednesday, April 16, 2008

A Set Visit to the X-Files Sequel

By Ryan Rotten
ShockTillYouDrop.com

This latest X-Files marks a return home for Carter and his crew. When the series began in '93 lensing took place in Vancouver before the production ultimately moved to Los Angeles. Familiar faces of X-Files' past populate the crew providing the director with a comfortable insulation. John Bartley, director of photography on seasons one through three, is working second unit alongside first assistant director and ex-Lone Gunman Tom Braidwood. Meanwhile Bill Roe, from the Los Angeles days, resumes his duties as d.p. on first unit. Then, of course, there's Duchovny and Anderson as Mulder and Scully, respectively. They're joined this time by newcomers Amanda Peet, Billy Connelly and Xzibit, in a slice of arguably inspired casting...

In the interim, Carter and Spotnitz tabled sequel notes they scribbled together and later revisited them with slightly more mature eyes. "We feel there is a lot to be proud of with the X-Files and we wanted to move forward knowing we had a real story to tell and a reason to tell it," Spotnitz says. "I think we have that. I already think this is going to be something we're all proud of and feel good about."

"I was surprised by how alive they still were in our imaginations," he adds referring to protagonists Mulder and Scully. "We arrived at what they would be doing at this point in their lives and what happened to them the last six years. For eight years I wrote and produced this show, I spent many hours thinking about Scully and Mulder so in a sense they're very real to me."

The sequel, as Spotnitz said, picks up six years after the show's conclusion. Real time has elapsed which has brought about change in the lives of Mulder and Scully. What those changes are, we're never told save for the fact that the two are drawn back into the world of X-Files by one case in particular. Carter likens the film's air of secrecy to a Christmas present. It's something we can shake. Something we can hypothesis about but when all is said and done, he'd prefer to have all of the details blown wide open when the sequel arrives in theaters on July 25th...

Carter adds: "I think the first three seasons really helped lay the foundation for the rest of the show. If you look at those first three, you'll see connections to what you're going to see in the movie. We're trying to scare the pants off of you. It's not a mythology episode but it owes to the character's lives, what they've been through, the relationship and the arc of the show."

As a result, this level of intimacy with the characters means scaling back on locations and not going as global as the first film did. "[The story] comes from the heart and who these characters are," Spotnitz reinforces. "That is part of why it's such a pleasure to do, we were freed of the complications and the machinery of the plot which had gotten quite complicated over nine years. We didn't really have to service a lot of that, we could just tell a really good scary, stand-alone story and go deeper into the characters of Mulder and Scully and their relationship than you could in a weekly series. Mulder and Scully bare a lot of scars from their experiences and you can't do a movie like this without recognizing that ." Much More...

On-set interview with Gillian Anderson

On-set interview with David Duchovny