The Truth is... Don't Bother
This X is a Mystery Best Left Unsolved
In 1998, a hit television series called The X-Files made the leap to the big screen. The highly-anticipated film was supposed to have the answers for which the television series had only hinted. Unfortunately, The X-Files movie was something of a disappointment, for both the box office and its fans. Now, a decade later, series creator Chris Carter is attempting to resurrect the nearly forgotten series. But some things are best left to memory.
Written by: Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter
Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Xzibit and Mitch Pileggi
Rated
(for
violent and disturbing content and thematic material)Running time: 105 min.
FilmGuru's Rating : 3 out of 10.
After a half dozen years since the end of The X-Files, it should be no surprise that life has moved on for our favorite characters. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) has returned to medicine, working at a children's hospital. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), by contrast, seems to have given up on the world. He lives in a secluded house and spends his days cutting out newspaper articles and gathering information.
When an FBI agent is abducted, the bureau calls in Mulder for his expertise in the paranormal hoping he can corroborate the psychic visions of a former priest.
Father Joe (Billy Connolly) has been having visions of the abducted agent, but no one can make a connection between the priest and the woman. The FBI seems reluctant to trust Father Joe because he is a convicted pedophile. The visions he has don't lead the FBI to the missing agent, but to severed limbs and body parts frozen in ice – suggesting a bigger mystery.
In my opinion, the greatest mystery is how Carter managed to get a made-for-television reunion episode greenlit as a feature film. The X-Files: I Want to Believe has no grandeur, no jaw-dropping special effects, no "you couldn't do that on television" moments that justify this being released in theaters. This is, quite simply, a vanity project.
The film focuses exclusively on the relationship between Mulder and Scully. Everything else is window dressing. There are no answers to far-reaching conspiracies or the mythology of The X-Files. If it were an episode during the series, it would be yet another monster-of-the-week episode without any consequences to the larger story.
While FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) does make a welcome cameo near the end of the film, fans may be disappointed that the film features no other cameos.
Gone are The Cigarette Smoking Man, Mr. X and Krycek – all killed off during the final seasons of the series. Even the Lone Gunmen (the conspiracy-minded trio of geeks who regularly helped Mulder and Scully) were eventually killed off and thus, unavailable to reprise their roles. Missing without explanation are FBI agents John Doggett and Monica Reyes, who starred in the final two seasons of the series.
As a refresher on the series and to prepare for the movie, I purchased the recently released DVD set titled The X-Files: Revelations. Billed as the "essential guide" to the new movie, the set ultimately had little relevance to the film other than the fact that two of the episodes dealt with people with supposed psychic gifts. The remainder of the episodes seemed to focus on character more than plot, as – unfortunately – does the film.
At the WonderCon panel in 2007 (excerpts of which are available on The X-Files: Revelations), Carter was asked why fans should care about this new movie six years after the series ended and a full decade after the first film. He glibly answered that it would scare us. The only thing that frightened me was that the second attempt at a movie failed as miserably as the first.
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