brian denham | the m0vie blog

The X-Files (Wildstorm) #0 (Review)

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Darren

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 X-Files: I Want to Believe marks a point of transition for The X-Files.

It seems to represent the point at which The X-Files truly stops its forward momentum; the point at which the show embraces its status as an artifact of the nineties rather than a living (and evolving) entity. There had been indications of this with the release of Resist or Serve, a video game which seemed to treat the seventh season as the “end” of The X-Files, but I Want to Believe embraced it on a much larger scale and on a much larger platform. The X-Files was not so much pushing forward as looking backwards.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

This reality was reflected in a number of ways. The importance of the eighth and ninth seasons was consciously downplayed, to the point where a gag in I Want to Believe hinges on the audience forgetting that both Mulder and Scully had worked at the FBI during the Bush administration. Doggett and Reyes were consigned to a blu ray bonus feature, an evolutionary branch of The X-Files to be cut off for the sake of convenience. I Want to Believe even took Mulder and Scully back to snowy Vancouver, a literal journey backwards.

The Wildstorm comic book pushes this reconceptualisation of the show to its logical conclusion, as if imaging some alternate world where The X-Files‘ so-called “golden age” of the second through fifth seasons had somehow lasted over a decade. The Wildstorm comics tease a glimpse of The X-Files frozen in amber, trapped for an eternity.