We rate James Wong most highly for helping to make The X-Files such absorbing television. His Final Destination films show how much invention he can bring to the business of killing people.
Fi1m perspective
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson make the unexplained events in The X-Files (1993) worth staying with, even when the programme becomes too fond of keeping secrets. We enjoyed their company enough to forgive some of that delay. James Wong helped establish the tone, characters and structure that made this possible, working alongside his writing partner Glen Morgan. We rate him most highly here, contributing to a series whose appeal depends on more than the next fright.
Wong and Morgan helped develop both the monster-of-the-week episodes and the longer-running mythology. The individual stories give the programme fresh threats; the mythology asks us to keep watching for answers, sometimes longer than we would like. Wong joined in 1993 as a writer and co-executive producer, and made his directing debut on the programme in 1996. By then, he had already helped to establish what an episode could do, making the writing partnership essential to any account of his work behind the camera.
His feature debut, Final Destination (2000), puts elaborate death sequences at the centre, and Final Destination 3 (2006) returns to that strength. These films find invention in how someone might die, upsetting the expectations that audiences bring to slasher films. That is a specific, useful talent in horror, though ingenuity about a death is not enough on its own to make us care about a character. It is the character writing of The X-Files that keeps our recommendation warmest there.
The One (2001), starring Jet Li, took Wong into action; Dragonball Evolution (2009) met a poor response from critics and audiences. His subsequent television work has included writing and producing on American Horror Story, 9-1-1 and the X-Files revivals of 2016 and 2018. We would not treat that varied list as a promise that every title will suit. Start with The X-Files, and allow a little patience for questions it is reluctant to answer.
Biography
James Wong (also credited as Jim Wong) is a Hong Kong-born American television writer, producer and film director. He was born on 20 April 1959.
Wong frequently collaborates with writing partner Glen Morgan. They joined the production team of the Fox series The X-Files (1993) as writers and producers in its early seasons, contributing key episodes such as "Squeeze" and "Home". Wong also directed episodes including "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", for which he received an Emmy nomination. The pair later co-created Space: Above and Beyond (1995) and worked on Millennium (1996).
Wong directed and co-wrote the feature films Final Destination (2000) and Final Destination 3 (2006), as well as The One (2001). He has also directed episodes of series including 9-1-1 (2018) and returned to The X-Files for later seasons.
