This January, to prepare for the release of the new six-part season of The X-Files, we’re wrapping up our coverage of the show, particularly handling the various odds and ends between the show’s last episode and the launch of the revival.
The plan was always to transition The X-Files from television to film, but fans change.
Following the success of The X-Files: Fight the Future, there had been some mumblings about the possibility of releasing a film in the summer of 2000. Given that The X-Files was a cultural property rooted in the nineties, it seemed like a big screen adventure would have been the perfect way to bring Mulder and Scully into the twenty-first century. After all, the original plan was that the show would retire in its seventh season. (The network even had a bespoke successor selected in Chris Carter’s Harsh Realm.)

Gotta have faith…
So, understandably, the sequel to Fight the Future was postponed and put on the long-finger. As the show came to an end in its ninth season, the subject of a second X-Files feature film arose again. Still, there was a debate to be had about whether the world really wanted a second X-Files film. While the sixth and seventh seasons had slowly eroded the show’s popularity and appeal, the ninth completely collapsed it; through the combination of bad storytelling decisions and the broader shift in the political mood, The X-Files felt like a spent cultural force.

“Platonic”, eh?
If I Want to Believe would have been a strange choice for an X-Files film release in July 2000, it seemed downright perverse in July 2008.

The truth is out there. Way out there.
In fact, Carter openly acknowledges that he greatly enjoyed the free time afforded by the end of a hit network television series. Explaining what he did with all of that time off, Carter confessed, “I took three years of drum lessons. I have a kit set up right now. I love jazz and funk, because it’s hard. If it’s not hard, it’s not worth doing.” Carter had certainly earned some time off; overseeing more than two hundred episodes of a weekly television series is exhausting. (And this discounts the work Carter did on other projects overlapping.)

A close shave…
As a result, it took a little time to get all the pieces moving. It was late 2004 before the plans were made public, with Fox acknowledging their interest in taking Mulder and Scully to the big screen again. Already, it appeared to be something of a logistical nightmare. “So now it’s just a matter of making sure everybody can get together at the same time and do it,” reflected David Duchovny of the planned sequel in 2004. However, other obstacles to the movie’s development would soon emerge.

Snow escape…
Fox approached us in 2003 and said, ‘Let’s go.’ We were ready to go, but then there followed what I would call a contractual thing over the series’ profit, and what started out as a negotiation had to turn into a lawsuit – it’s complicated – in order for me to protect my right to negotiate. It took years to settle, and at that point I didn’t think there could ever be a second movie. Then, after everything was resolved, Fox called and said, ‘Remember that movie you had in mind? You’d better get ready to do it now or never, because there’s a Writers Guild strike looming.’ So it was years of stasis, and then a mad rush.
Somewhat ironically, Carter would be represented in this legal matter by Stanton L. Stein, who had represented Duchovny during his seventh season lawsuit against Carter. I Want to Believe already had a storied history before it even entered production.

Joe knows…
Five years out of sight is a long time even for a popular franchise, and when Fox gave the go-ahead to Mr. Carter and his co-writer and co-producer, Frank Spotnitz, the green light came with a low budget of $30 million, a strong expression of preference for a user-friendly PG-13 rating and a now-or-never timetable predicated on finishing the script before the writers’ strike last winter.
In many ways, I Want to Believe was fighting an up-hill battle even before those constraints were imposed upon it: a minuscule budget smaller than that of Fight the Future; a tight deadline on scripting, with no capacity for rewriting or reworking when that deadline elapsed; a preference for a rating that would undercut the movie’s ability to do horror.

For Peet’s sake…
It’s funny, but on the series, we prided ourselves each week with making a little movie. Then, when it came time to do the second X-Files movie, we were given the money and the opportunity to make, literally, a little movie. That’s what we did. We realized we had no money for big special effects. We had to come up with a story that didn’t rely on those special effects, and hence wasn’t a summer blockbuster kind of movie.
There are certainly some respects in which these restrictions are obvious. Fight the Future opened with the demolition of a government building and built to a massive alien ship buried in the Arctic. The biggest set piece in I Want to Believe is a footchase through Vancouver.

Growing the beard…
To be fair, it had always been the plan for the second X-Files film to stand on its own. Chris Carter explained, “When we finished the first movie, we said the next movie we do will be a story that stands alone, what some people call a ‘monster of the week’ story. We wanted to do a story that didn’t require you to have any knowledge of that ongoing story arc.” It makes a certain amount of sense, particularly in the context of the show’s final years.It was easy to understand why Carter and Spotnitz thought that fans might want a “monster of the week.”

Surgical precision…
The final season had seen the mythology become an albatross around the show’s neck as it became bogged down in prophecy and “super soldiers.” Indeed, the show’s fixation upon its own mythology – and the desperate need to prove that the mythology all made sense – turning the two-hour season finalé into a slog. The Truth was less of an ending and more of a clip show. In many ways, it felt like the show was making a desperate attempt to salvage its legacy by arguing that the mythology did make sense.

A cold reception…
Whatever the reason, the broader consensus on the relative merits of the mythology episodes as compared to the “monster of the week” stories had shifted in the years since the show went off the air. While the mythology had driven discussion and discourse on the show while it was on the air, retrospective evaluations of the show tend towards the “monster of the week” stories. It should be noted that – as a rule – the strongest episodes of the ninth season tend to be those least connected to the overarching mythology.

Chill out…
The Truth also postponed any true closure to the mythology, with the entire episode built around a deadline of 2012. The teaser to the episode have Mulder discover that colonisation of Earth was due to take place in December 2012, as the Mayans had predicted and which was (likely coincidentally) massive blockbuster territory. (As much hype as summer blockbusters get, Avatar and Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens were both December releases; as were the Lord of the Rings trilogy.)

An axe to grind…
In the context of 2003, a standalone “monster of the week” made a great deal of sense. After all, the best “monster of the week” stories felt like standalone horror films, so doing a standalone horror film starring Mulder and Scully made a lot of sense. It made a lot more sense in the context of the explosion of low budget horror films at the turn of the millennium. While companies like Platinum Dunes were flooding the market with cheap knock-offs, Mulder and Scully served as a recognisable brand. Who wouldn’t want to see a big-screen version of Home?

“Have you seen this boy?”
“This’d be funnier if Doggett were still around.”
So I Want to Believe gloriously fudges the cliffhanger ending to The Truth. Mulder makes only a fleeting reference to the season finalé. “They put me on trial on bogus charges and tried to discredit a decade of my work,” he complains. However, Scully downplays the importance of all that. “Mulder, if the FBI wanted to get you, I have no doubt that they could,” Scully assures her former partner. “I think they’ve just been happy to have you out of their hair.” In fact, Mulder and Scully are offered a pardon in return for their assistance on the case of the week.

The charges are parked.
(Also, the parking is charged.)
There is a logical reason to avoid getting into the finer details of The Truth. After all, The Truth aired at a point where The X-Files was considered to be a spent creative force. The show had been a cultural juggernaut at its peak, but it faded from prominence during its sixth and seventh seasons. As a result, it seemed reasonable to assume that cinema-goers would not be overly familiar with the continuity of the later seasons; and so elements of the show’s final years were consciously downplayed. I Want to Believe was largely disinterested in the show’s final seasons.

Sick burn!
The archetypal version of The X-Files was very much the peak of the Vancouver years, spanning from the third through the fourth season. The show’s memory came to fixate upon that, an internal nostalgia. There were early indications of this in the tie-in media. Resist or Serve might have been set in the seventh season, but its continuity and iconography largely drew from the fourth and fifth. Frank Spotnitz’s comic work for Wildstorm to coincide with I Want to Believe was set at a hazy point in the past, some time between the second and fifth seasons.

He hasn’t a prayer…
And so I Want to Believe consciously calls back to that era of the show, even making a point to film in Vancouver. According to Frank Spotnitz, the film was specifically tailored to these locations. I Want to Believe unfolds in a very snowy New England setting, which is an environment that the later years of The X-Files would have had a great deal of trouble replicating. The movie’s supporting cast features a lot of veteran X-Files guest stars, but primarily from the first five seasons.

“Why no, Agent Whitney, I have never heard of this “Fox Mulder.” It could not possibly be me, for you described a beardless man!”
It should also be noted that a large portion of the supporting cast from I Want to Believe had associations with some of Ten Thirteen’s other productions based in Vancouver. Alex Diakun appeared (in different roles) in both the first and seconds season of Millennium. Stephen E. Miller was a recurring player on the third season of Millennium. Sarah-Jane Redmond was a recurring guest star on both Millennium and Harsh Realm. I Want to Believe is very firmly tied to the show’s Vancouver era.

Holy theories…
This is a scene shot very close to Vancouver; you know, twenty minutes away at the GDRD, where we filmed the original abduction in the X-Files pilot, a long time ago. But there was enough snow on the ground that we could use the location.
I Want to Believe represents a literal homecoming for the show, and it feels like the production team are making a conscious choice to favour the show’s Vancouver era over its later years.

Eye see…
- We do see an alien conspiracy – Russian aliens, who have set up a colony to create hybrids.
- These aliens are abducting people, and using their bodies for advanced genetic experimentation.
- In a gruesome twist on AAT, the aliens are trying to literally graft their alien “consciousness” onto the native women.
- All of this is going on in West Virginia, Ground Zero of the human/alien hybridization database in the original series.
Knowles is quite right here, a detail that is often overlooked in discussions of the film. (It should also be noted that the film explicitly acknowledges one connection; but that is still to come.)

Yes we Can(ada)…
The use of ice in the film evokes a whole host of X-Files continuity. The third act emphasis on Mulder wandering off in the snow to complete his quest recalls both the climax of End Game and the climax of Fight the Future. Even the use of the ice bath as part of the treatment forges a visual connection from I Want to Believe to Colony and End Game. The recovery of a body (or body parts) frozen in ice and thawed for analysis recalls the central plot point of Gethsemane, in which Mulder investigated a supposed alien body found in the ice.

“Law enforcement! Freeze!”
Boiled down to its essence, I Want to Believe is arguably the quintessential mythology story; it just doesn’t have anything to do with colonisation. It is the story of (in this case legal) aliens conspiring to abduct innocent (and mostly female) victims so as to exploit their bodies for their own ends. Much like the conspirators, Franz and Janke are trying to fashion a “hybrid” body from their experiments; a “hybrid” body that would allow them a longer life. Franz and Janke are committing horrible acts for their own ends, and to protect their families.

“I will be your father figure…”
With all of this going on, I Want to Believe‘s somewhat selective attitude towards continuity becomes quite telling. The decision to ignore the continuity of The Truth is not simply an attempt to avoid alienating new or casual viewers. Even beyond all the dense references to episodes like Beyond the Sea or Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose or Unruhe, the film treats the small appearance of Walter Skinner at the climax as a big dramatic moment that assumes some familiarity with the character.

I really wish we got to Seymour Skinner…
It seems strange that the FBI would go straight to tracking down two fugitives (one charged with murder of an army officer) when there are two other experts in the X-files on staff. According to Kersh in Three Words, Doggett had a better record than Mulder when it came to closing X-files. The absence of Doggett and Reyes makes sense considering how keenly I Want to Believe glosses over the events of the final seasons, but it makes even more sense when Drummy and Whitney are considered as stand-ins.

Filed under X…
However, while the eighth season allowed Doggett to earn his place on the X-files, I Want to Believe makes the rather mean-spirited decision to brutally kill off Dakota Whitney by shoving her down a shaft in a half-complete building. (The film even impales her for good measure, perhaps the most striking example of what Fox executives deemed the movie’s “torture porn” aesthetic.) It seems like the movie is punishing Whitney for her hubris; for the arrogance of assuming she could step into a narrative vacancy left by one of the show’s two leads.

“Well, this is going swimmingly…”
A larger part of Mulder’s arc in the seventh and eighth seasons was learning to let go of the X-files and his family’s history with the government conspiracy. His mother passed away in Sein und Zeit, while the Cigarette-Smoking Man disappeared from the show following the events of Requiem. The events of Closure finally allowed Mulder to make peace with the loss of his younger sister. The eighth season allowed Mulder to reconstruct the family that had been shattered by the abduction of Samantha.

Unearthing the past…
… or, de-icing it, at least.
Indeed, I Want to Believe is so eager to ignore the fact that the eighth and ninth seasons happened that it even opts for a cheap shot at the expense of the Bush administration. Catching a photograph of President Bush hanging in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Mulder and Scully exchange an awkward glance as the iconic notes of the X-Files theme play in the background. It’s a nice (if blunt) gag; but it ignores the fact that both Mulder and Scully worked at the FBI during the Bush administration, as much as I Want to Believe might want to gloss over that.

“Yes, Mulder. His name is Christian. But your name is Fox, so don’t judge.”
In fact, Christian is such an obvious stand-in that I Want to Believe openly (and repeatedly) acknowledges it. When Mulder asks Scully how old Christian is, she immediately sees what he is hinting at. “You think it’s because of William,” Scully responds. Mulder admits, “I think our son left us both with an emptiness that can’t be filled.” Later, during a heated argument at the hospital, Scully demands of a fellow member of staff, “Would you do it if it were your son?” Father Ybarra cuts in, “It’s not her son, and he’s not yours.”

Judas priest…
The ninth season of The X-Files was full of misfires and decisions that did not work out as intended. The attempts to minimise William’s in William only served to make him more important. The staff felt that William’s presence tied Mulder and Scully down, but his absence created a void that could not be ignored. Even more than a decade after The X-Files hastily wrote the character out of the mythology in William, the character is the subject of discussions and interview questions. Paradoxically, William made the character a greater focus than he had been before.

“You really think there’s a Darin Morgan episode in our future?”
Over the course of I Want to Believe, Carter repeatedly connects trauma and its consequences. At several points in the film, Carter cuts between brutal events and the horrific aftermath of these attacks. It is most obvious at the start of the film, as Carter cuts between the abduction of Monica Bannon and the subsequent manhunt. Later on in the film, Carter cuts between Janke disposing of a body and the FBI’s recovery of that body. Although not the same trauma, a later sequence has Drummy finding a severed head just as Whitney is murdered.

White out…
I Want to Believe plays into the broader themes of The X-Files as a story about responses to trauma. In many ways, the show was about past horrors returning to haunt the current generation; Piper Maru and Apocrypha suggested that ghosts were little more than voices of conscience for past misdeeds. Mulder’s quest was driven by the loss of his sister, and the bulk of the mythology was about uncovering a series of abuses perpetuated by those in power and stretching back decades.

What’s up, doc?
Indeed, the movie’s climax suggests that Father Joe was linked to Franz up until his death. “Father Joe died of lung cancer, right?” Mulder asks Scully. “The same as that man that Dr. Frankenstein tried to give a new body.” Mulder presses the point, “What time did you pull those tubes from that woman’s neck. What time did you cut off the blood supply to that man’s head? That’s when Father Joe died. You get me his death certificate and I’ll show it to you, and then I’ll take it to the FBI and I’ll show them.” It’s all connected.

Grizzly Fox…
This is all so wrong in so many ways. If they’re really gay, why would they even consider putting his head on the body of a woman? Yes, his AB- blood type is rare, but almost one percent of the population has it, so it wouldn’t that hard to find a male body.
Given the movie’s creepy visuals on the matter, it’s hard not to see this as playing into the stereotype that gay men secretly want to be women. But, uh, wouldn’t sex reassignment surgery be a lot easier? (And unlike secret Russian Frankenstein experiments, it’s even covered by some health plans!)
Or perhaps the movie is saying that he’s “not really gay” — that he’s only been acting that way because of the childhood sexual abuse at the hands of another of the movie’s characters. But again, why would this make him want to be female? It’s another completely fictional movie psychosis — Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs all over again.
What makes this doubly ironic is that the movie is dedicated to Randy Stone, a gay man. MSNBC film critic Alonso Duralde noted in his review of the movie that Stone was The X-Files’ original casting director and also co-founded the Trevor Project, a support group for GLBT youth.
I Want to Believe is very much a film about a gay man hoping to build a body (built primarily from female parts) for his lover. It is a very awkward and very troubling plot point, which is only compounded by the thematic connection that the movie makes between Father Joe’s abuse and Franz’s violence.

Nothing could be father from the truth…
There are thematic reasons why I Want to Believe would place this emphasis on the female victims. A recurring theme of the show’s mythology is the exploitation of the female body by male authority; in episodes like Nisei and 731, this is very clearly rendered as a feminist subtext to the show. However, tying that exploitation of the female body into broader sexual themes – making Franz and Janke gay, making Franz a victim of childhood sexual abuse – renders the choice remarkably tonedeaf and offensive.

A cup o’ joe…
While it’s true the villains in this story happen to be gay, it was not our intention to suggest that being gay, transgender or a victim of pedophilia is in any way villainous. It should go without saying that nothing could be farther from the truth. The sexual orientation of the villains, their connection to Father Joe, and the motive for their crimes were all intended to deepen the mystery, not to make any kind of moral judgment. In truth, theirs is a love story that is meant to parallel Scully’s story (the lengths that both will go to save a loved one, the not-so-coincidental overlap in scientific research, etc.). If we have offended anyone, you have my deepest apology.
Spotnitz was quite frank in his apology, and seems reasonable to infer that there was no malice intended in the movie’s unpleasant subtext.

Get your (Da)kota, you’ve pulled an assignment…
Similarly, the show’s sexual politics were decidedly conservative. In the episode Gender Bender, Mulder and Scully are astounded when a sexual serial killer targets victims of both genders; they seem to accept that a killer who can change genders is more likely than a bisexual. While the gay characters who appeared in episodes like X-Cops and all things were undoubtedly written with a great deal of affection and consideration, they still feel like stereotypes rather than real people.

Taking holy orders…
The X-Files was a product of its time, and its sexual politics were very much rooted in 1993. However, the show never seemed to advance from that point. The sexual politics of I Want to Believe are not that striking when considered in the context of Gender Bender. However, the world had moved on significantly in the intervening fourteen years. The X-Files seemed frozen in time. Given that I Want to Believe harked back so strongly to the show’s mid-nineties peak, it should not have been such a surprise that its sexual politics had failed to evolve with the time.

Taking a bath on this one…
I Want to Believe is steeped in the storytelling cues of the serial killer genre, emphasising Carter’s fondness for that particular strain of horror. After all, Carter had created the television show Millennium to dish up that sort of horror on a weekly basis. I Want to Believe borrows from several of Carter’s favourite films; Drummy discovering the head in the box recalls the ending to se7en, the theme of killing-as-transformation recalls the work of Thomas Harris, while the “use a predator to catch a predator” storytelling device is an homage to The Silence of the Lambs.

Hopes were cooling fast…
It should be noted that The Silence of the Lambs was criticised for being transphobic in the early nineties in spite of that explicit dialogue. Certainly, Thomas Harris’ reactionary portrayal of Margot Verger in Hannibal did little to help convince the world that his sexual politics were progressive. Director Jonathan Demme has acknowledged the transphobic reading of The Silence of the Lambs, admitting it is a failure on his part but a very important way of raising awareness of transgender issues.

Character Mulder-vation…
Serial killer films were not Carter’s only point of reference for I Want to Believe. In keeping with the idea of I Want to Believe as a most archetypal X-Files story, it makes sense that Carter would draw so heavily from Frankenstein. Mary Shelley’s classic novel (and its feature film adaptations) had been a huge influence on The X-Files. This was most obvious in how the show approached science, but also in particular beats. The Post-Modern Prometheus is the most obvious, but Mulder’s journeys to the ice in End Game and Fight the Future also reference the novel.

“Why do you keep asking me about evidence Xzibits, Mulder?”
I so loved Frankenstein movies when I was a kid, and I got to kinda do one over the course of the series. This was a chance to do one with real science, real Frankenstein science.
Even the red herrings to the press drew on the Universal monster canon, including a prop werewolf head.

For somebody who is familiar with the X-files, Whitney was far to eager to split up and wander off on her own…
I Want to Believe is interesting in its approach to Mulder and Scully. Although the two characters had spent an extended period of time together in the eighth season, and had been reunited in The Truth, the feature film represents the first time that the duo have investigated a “monster of the week” case together since Je Souhaite. With that in mind, a lot of the decisions made in telling the story seem quite strange. Most obviously, Carter and Spotnitz opt to separate Duchovny and Anderson for extended periods of time; it feels like a missed opportunity.

The killer might yet get away Scot free…
As with the last X-Files film, I Want to Believe leans rather heavily on the idea of splitting the duo up. “Mulder, you think I don’t understand, but I do,” Scully confesses. “This stubbornness of yours, is why I fell in love with you.” Mulder acknowledges, “It’s like you said, it’s why we can’t be together.” It is not too far removed from the archetypal conflict between the duo in Fight the Future. This emphasis seems to suggest that Carter and Spotnitz believe that audiences want Mulder and Scully together.

Doors to the past…
This creates a conflict, as Carter is clearly not entirely comfortable with a sexualised romantic relationship between Mulder and Scully. As a writer, Carter is much more interest in chaste dynamics than in sexual relationships; Frank and Catherine Black seem more like best friends than a married couple, while Thomas Hobbes and Sophie Greene are separated from one another almost immediately. To Carter, characters searching for an emotional connection are more intriguing than traditional romantic couplings.

Rooting for a Doggett/Drummy spin-off, “Angry Cop, Angry Cop.”
This is most obvious in the eighth and ninth seasons of the show. The eighth season suggests that Mulder and Scully have become a family unit and accepted their roles in each others’ lives. The final shot of Existence is Mulder and Scully cradling their child together as the camera pulls back to offer them some privacy. It is a great place to leave them. However, once it becomes clear that the show is not leaving them, everything changes. In Trust no 1, when the Shadow Man boasts that Mulder and Scully only ever had sex once, it seems like Carter is being entirely earnest.

“Well, the tak force’s chilled beverage requirements are met for the next year.”
As a result, I Want to Believe is hugely unsatisfying to everyone; noromos have to put up with the idea of Mulder and Scully as a romantic couple, while shippers barely get a chance to see them together. The film is intensely frustrating, even as it demonstrates why Carter would take extreme steps like separating Mulder and Scully before the launch of the revival and even arguing that their relationship was always platonic. While Carter seems to acknowledge that mainstream audiences want to see Mulder and Scully get together, he is not comfortable writing them together.

Things come to a (fore)head…
So we came up with a movie that was about faith and forgiveness and redemption. And then you put it up against The Dark Knight in late July, in the heat of the summer, and what happened to us was that we met with some valid criticism, and also what I call lazy criticism.
I Want to Believe was released a few weeks after The Dark Knight had torn through various box office records. Both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson cited The Dark Knight as a reason for the film’s under performance.

Wow, flashlights have got a lot smaller since we started…
If the idea of an X-Files film franchise had stalled following the television show’s cancellation, then I Want to Believe put the final nail in the coffin. The X-Files would not be surviving as a series of standalone theatrical films released once every few years. The high-profile failure of I Want to Believe was likely a large part of the decision to bring The X-Files back to television. While a film like I Want to Believe was a crushing disappointed as the first new X-Files story in six years, it might have fared better as part of a larger season order or in another context.

Let’s hope the trail doesn’t go cold…
If there is a third movie it’s got to be a gigantic movie. It would have to be a big-budget movie; that’s what X-Files fans want. We tried to do a very small movie about faith the second time out. And it was released in the middle of summer tentpole movies. It was a misstep in that way. I think [a third movie] has to be more like the first movie.
It was simply not feasible to tell a story like I Want to Believe on the big screen and expect the audience to show up. An X-Files movie had to be more than simply a return to the show’s classic television aesthetic.

“You know, you never once asked what happened after I went into Kersh’s office…”
As with I Want to Believe, the production of My Struggle I would take the team back to Vancouver and acknowledge the region’s importance to the show. While Carter and Spotnitz populated I Want to Believe with veteran supporting actors from the show’s first five seasons, Carter would recruit some of the strongest writers of the Vancouver era to work on the revival. It should be noted that Carter is the only writer and director on the revival to have written (or directed) for Ten Thirteen after The X-Files moved to Los Angeles. The future lay in the past; at least to start.

A legal alien.
There are other links, as well. “Don’t give up” serves to bridge I Want to Believe and My Struggle I, the sentiment serving as a meta commentary on the long-term survival and viability of The X-Files as a franchise. I Want to Believe signalled a change in how The X-Files was approached. Sitting so far from both The Truth and My Struggle I, it serves as a convenient dividing line. I Want to Believe seems to mark the point at what the show is far enough gone that it exists more as a pop culture memory than as a living organism.

Putting some Skin(ner) in the game…
I Want to Believe allows Carter and Spotnitz to effectively mythologise the mythology, to filter their own story through abstraction and metaphor. The original run of The X-Files itself becomes a cultural object exerting its own gravity and weight. I Want to Believe feels like the point at which The X-Files can almost become its own influence, folding over and weighing on itself in the same way that Kolchak: The Night Stalker or All the President’s Men weighed upon the original run.

Life is but a dream…
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: chris carter, frank spotnitz, homophobia, i want to believe, legend, myth, mythology, non-review review, reflexive, review, shippers, Television, the x-files, transphobia |
Finally! A review of this one…hmm, for a brief moment I thought this was going to get harsher but finally you treated it kindly.
The subplot of Scully trying to heal the boy doesn’t blend well to the rest of the script, it seems like it’s simply placed to give Mulder & Scully something to talk about William and keep Dana busy, in the end we don’t even know if she succeeded or not. When the revival was announced I was hoping they would reveal what happened, but it wasn’t even mentioned (and I highly doubt it will, this movie belongs to that ‘let’s pretend it didn’t exist’ approach for future installments like season 8&9).
Other problem I had when this came out (and still have it) was the way the ‘climax’ was resolved, the film does a decent effort building the moment toward the final minutes, but then it lacks action, all it took was Scully and Skinner firing a couple gunshots to solve everything, Skinner picks up Mulder and we’re back into a sunny day, in very simplistic and boring way, frankly I’ve seen much better resolutions in the TV series but this being a big screen feature supposedly had to offer something ‘bigger, better, faster, more’!.
I think that even if ‘I Want To Believe’ were a TV standalone ep, it wouldn’t be the best one on any of the XFiles seasons, maybe if it was cut down to the classic 44 minute mark it could be more compelling.
To be fair, I don’t think it’s a ringing endorsement of the film. Maybe more a sympathetic skewering. (Okay, not a skewering, but I do like awesome alliteration.)
You’re right about the climax. Particularly given Skinner shows up out of nowhere to help save the day. (Why can’t Scully do most of that herself, with a little re-write or tweaking?) Why isn’t he involved from the outset? Why doesn’t Whitney use him to contact Mulder and Scully? How come he doesn’t meet them at the Hoover Building?
It’s interesting that you should mention its possible inclusion in a television season. I was talking to somebody who suggested that it would have been a lot more pallatable if it had been packaged with a Darin Morgan episode and a Glen Morgan episode and a James Wong episode. Putting it as a standalone film arguably hurts it a lot. (It’d be like releasing The List as a standalone film, which is an episode I admittedly like a lot more than I Want to Believe, but which is by no measure a highlight of its season.)
X-Files is bigger than Mulder and Scully. These characters are played out.
The sad fact is no one wanted to take a risk. And the asinine fans contributed that, probably, at the end of the day.
The same is true of arguably any revival in contemporary pop culture, but I think the trend is to go backwards. I think there’s an argument to be made that taking The X-Files back to Mulder and Scully and Vancouver in I Want to Believe is part of the broader move backwards that gave us the Daniel-Craig-as-novice-Bond reboot and the Chris-Pine-as-James-Kirk Star Trek reboot. (Taken to its logical extreme, the original T-Rex in Jurassic World.)
That doesn’t make the film good (it is messy and ugly and unsatisfying, despite some interesting ideas), but I think it speaks to the moment.
I actually thought this film was a bit of a masterpiece. Fix the “action climax” (Skinner was unnecessary) and it’s almost like a serial killer movie by Bergman. Loved the parallels all over the place.
As both a gay man and a lifelong X-Files fan, I feel compelled to offer a defence of the film against allegations of homophobia. It’s made quite clear that Janke is targeting his victims for their rare blood type irrespective of gender, and while 1% of the general population may offer up potential male victims, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that in what is evidently a very remote region of rural West Virginia, Janke had to take what he could get in the limited timeframe he had. He wanted to save his husband’s life, regardless of what body parts he might ultimately be attached to. It had nothing to do with gender reassignment.
The fact that both victims depicted in the movie happen to be young women speaks more to horror cinema’s male gaze than it does to homophobia. The vicarious titillation of seeing women subjugated, trapped in boxes and exploited is far more unsettling in a deep-seated way beyond The X-Files. Besides, nowhere in the movie is either of the villains’ sexuality specifically established. They’re married, but either or both of them could be bisexual for all we know. To presume otherwise is as egregious as anything in the movie.
Representation is important, and The X-Files doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but personally speaking I have no need to be pandered to in seeing only virtuous gay men on screen, especially in the horror genre. To paraphrase Darin Morgan’s script for “Humbug” – we must accept that homosexuals are just as capable of being villains and murderers as heterosexuals. The fact that they were motivated only by love, and not sexual gratification, can arguably be seen as a positive. Our love is just as worthy of dying – and perhaps killing – for as yours.
Personally I was more offended by “Founders Mutation” having Scully of all people describe homosexuality as a “lifestyle choice” (in 2016 not 1993 no less) and depicting closeted gay men leading secretive lives that might explain their sudden deaths, or else dropping to their knees within three minutes, than I was by I Want to Believe.