I love TV series, although I don't necessarily have the time to follow all the good ones. The thing is with good TV series, they don't cater to the lowest common denominator, so more often than not they get cancelled due to low ratings, often before their story arc gets resolved.
Sometimes these prematurely-cancelled TV series get a second life, on the silver screen. I'm not talking about adaptations like The A-Team, Miami Vice, or Starsky and Hutch, but a continuation of the story using the same cast members and writers who appeared on TV. Usually, these movies are produced so that their fans, who are always near-fanatical in their support, get a resolution that they they've been robbed off due to the cancellation.
Recently, I coincidentally watched two of such movies, The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008) and Veronica Mars (2014).
X-Files was such a hit when it came out in the 1990s, and it captured the feelings of paranoia and mistrust towards the government, as embodied by two FBI agents investigating supernatural cases. It ran for several seasons, before it veered into extra-terrestrial, government conspiracy and alien abduction territory, and cancelled. I Want to Believe has (former) FBI agents Mulder and Scully being asked to help in solving the abduction of an FBI agent, as the only lead the bureau has seems to come from a former priest who seemingly displays clairvoyance abilities.
Meanwhile Veronica Mars the TV series was about the titular character, a teenage private eye who investigates the cases taking place in her hometown, Neptune. The premise may sound cheesy and childish, but it was anything but. It combined elements of film noir and teenage soap well, and the story arcs were genuinely interesting before it got canned on a cliff hanger at the end of its third season.
The movie picks up almost ten years after the events of the third season, with Mars reluctantly coming back to her hometown to help her highschool sweetheart beat a murder charge, and also to attend her high school reunion.
The two movies and TV series have one similarity in that they are both mystery shows, and as series, they both had episodic mysteries, and the bigger slow-burning, season-long mysteries. The movies being limited in airtime duration, don't have this opportunity to engage the fans, and have to be much more straightforward. They can't really have anything unresolved by the end of the movie.
Secondly, these movies seem intent on recapturing the essence of what made them great as TV shows back then, something which isn't necessarily possible. X-Files the TV show was great because it was among the first shows to tap into the paranoia and mistrust. But these sentiments are not exactly fresh these days anymore.
And the movies have to take into account the time that has elapsed since the shows ended, which can be detrimental to the new story that they want to tell. X-Files the series supposedly ended with Mulder as a wanted fugitive, but the movie explains it away by having FBI give Mulder a pardon for helping them with their agent's disappearance. Just like that. And suddenly Mulder and Scully are in a relationship? Huh? They always had a thing for each other in the show in a subtle way, but the movie made it so overt and icky.
In Veronica Mars' case, I remember her PI father being charged for murder just before the show got cancelled, but none of that is mentioned in the movie. And suddenly her sweet heart, Logan is in the navy, but he's not actually on active duty?
I don't know, it seems that when it comes to hit TV shows, that which is dead should just be let to rest in peace, and not revived haphazardly like some aberration, like the Frankenstein monster, just because David Duchovny or Kristin Bell can't find another decent acting gig.
At the very least, they should stick to their original medium like what another one of my favourite TV shows, Arrested Development did. It was revived for a fourth season some years after its cancellation, but it stayed a TV show, and did not have to rush its plot. As a result, it managed to retain a high level of its original run's quality (although Portia de Rossi's forehead and hairline did look weirder than before).
I give X-Files: I Want to Believe 5.5/10 and Veronica Mars 6/10.
And the movies have to take into account the time that has elapsed since the shows ended, which can be detrimental to the new story that they want to tell. X-Files the series supposedly ended with Mulder as a wanted fugitive, but the movie explains it away by having FBI give Mulder a pardon for helping them with their agent's disappearance. Just like that. And suddenly Mulder and Scully are in a relationship? Huh? They always had a thing for each other in the show in a subtle way, but the movie made it so overt and icky.
In Veronica Mars' case, I remember her PI father being charged for murder just before the show got cancelled, but none of that is mentioned in the movie. And suddenly her sweet heart, Logan is in the navy, but he's not actually on active duty?
I don't know, it seems that when it comes to hit TV shows, that which is dead should just be let to rest in peace, and not revived haphazardly like some aberration, like the Frankenstein monster, just because David Duchovny or Kristin Bell can't find another decent acting gig.
At the very least, they should stick to their original medium like what another one of my favourite TV shows, Arrested Development did. It was revived for a fourth season some years after its cancellation, but it stayed a TV show, and did not have to rush its plot. As a result, it managed to retain a high level of its original run's quality (although Portia de Rossi's forehead and hairline did look weirder than before).
I give X-Files: I Want to Believe 5.5/10 and Veronica Mars 6/10.
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