I Believe!

My reaction to The X-Files: I Want To Believe wasn't quite as ecstatic as the exclamation point in this blog's title suggests but I definitely let out a relieved sigh early on in the film when I knew that I was feeling the vibe of an authentic X-Files case again. And throughout the rest of the film's running time, I continued to feel that my faith had been restored. In fact, I felt slightly embarrassed to have been so skeptical of the film in the first place. It's not an outstanding film, it's not spectacular (especially not by summer movie standards), and it wouldn't even place in my top twenty of the show's episodes - but it is engrossing for the most part and it gives us a new Mulder and Scully adventure that feels like more than just nostalgia. My only gripe would be that Mulder and Scully don't really do much investigating together per se but it's their bond that drives the picture.

After watching I Want to Believe, I'm totally ready to chastise 20th Century Fox for forfeiting this movie's already slim commercial chances in the middle of a grueling summer season. I don't think it ever would've been a huge hit but it could've been a modest success in the fall or late winter (this is a January movie if I ever saw one) rather than the flop (a small scale flop, perhaps, but a flop nonetheless) that it ended up being. Series creator (and director and co-writer of I Want To Believe) Chris Carter probably needs to shoulder some blame as well - I don't know if the intense secrecy around this movie was solely his call but it completely backfired, in my opinion.

In an ideal world, it'd be better for people to find out only once they're in the theater itself that they've come to watch a movie about Gay Russians involved in black market organ harvesting and Frankenstein-like experiments but for some of us, knowing that kind of info ahead of time is what might motivate us to buy a ticket. Carter and co-writer Frank Spotnitz didn't quite get as bizarre with this storyline as I might've hoped but even with not taking it as far as they could've, it's still a movie about Gay Russians involved in black market organ harvesting and Frankenstein-like experiments so it's not the usual multi-plex fare, that's for sure. Add a pedophile priest who sees visions on top of it and it's suddenly not hard to see why 20th Century Fox might've failed to market this with much enthusiasm. But I give credit to Carter and Spotnitz for telling a story they, well, believed in.

I just wish that Carter and Spotnitz had more time to finesse their story as this only ranks as an average-to-sub-average episode of the show and it had the potential to be much more. Part of the failing is that the villains are intriguing but aren't given nearly enough development. Another is that the climax is too limp - the slow burn approach taken by Carter is fine but there should've been more of a pay-off. Also, it's a bummer to see Mitch Pileggi return as Walter Skinner only to see him given absolutely nothing to do. His one and only scene with Mulder cries out for something more between them - even just a funny line - but it never comes. I just wonder if the writer's strike hampered Duchovny and Pileggi from improvising a better moment between their characters than what was on the page.

But the film's faults aren't fatal ones. And I much prefer this over the first X-File movie, the enervating Fight the Future (1998). It's a challenge for this to feel exactly like a classic X-Files adventure with Mulder and Scully no longer working as FBI agents but I Want To Believe is a satisfying continuation of the show. Anderson and Duchovny are still a winning pair and at its best, I Want To Believe made me realize how much I'd missed their mutual passion - not just for each other but for their work in saving lives. Even though she's mostly out of the loop of Mulder's investigation, Carter and Spotnitz give Scully a pertinent subplot concerning her efforts as a doctor to save a terminally ill child (not as mawkish a storyline as it might appear). As we see both of them stubbornly persisting when the world is telling them to give up, we're reminded that where ever life might take them, both Mulder and Scully will continue to be the patron saints of lost causes and unpopular opinions. After the failure of this movie to make The X-Files a viable commercial property again, The X-Files itself can be considered its own lost cause but I hope Carter won't give up on trying to bring it back again one day.

It'd be a shame if this was where Mulder and Scully's journey had to end but if it is, I feel like it leaves them on a much better note than the last episode of the series did. For me, it's the dark horse of the Summer of '08 - a film that'll have to wait to find more believers on DVD.

X'd Out

Realizing that I don't want to see the new X-Files movie has really taken the wind out of my sails. Seriously, it literally makes me feel physically deflated. As an avid X-phile, the fact that I feel completely indifferent to seeing an X-Files movie just isn't right. This should've been one of the must-see movies of the year for me, bar none. I'm one of the few fans who found a lot to like about the troubled last couple of seasons of the show (a lot to be frustrated by, too, but it was far from all bad) but here we are, with Mulder and Scully on their first case in six years and I just can't be bothered. The almost universally bad reviews have had a lot to do with my attitude, of course, but whereas usually I'd just ignore all that and go ahead and make up my own mind, I feel like taking the advance word on this to heart is the smarter move. I don't think this one is going to surprise me at all - not enough so that I can't wait a few more months to see it.

Like I said, I won't trash a film I haven't seen yet but it does leave me at a loss me that Chris Carter couldn't even come up with a movie that a fan as diehard as myself would even want to see. How is that even possible? To me, that rates as an X-File in and of itself.

Maybe 20th Century Fox just didn't come up with the proper campaign to sell this with but I have a feeling that their hands were tied by a lackluster product. After seeing the first underwhelming trailer for I Want To Believe, I figured that more promising footage must be on the way soon but it never materialized. I'd go to the wall to defend the show - and I wish that this movie would've shown the crop of cult TV upstarts like Heroes and Lost who their daddy is - but I'm feeling nothing but doubt.

If only Carter would've taken whatever steps were needed to bring back some of the talented writers who helped make the show so stellar in the first place - writers like Darin Morgan, Glen Morgan, James Wong, John Shiban and Vince Gilligan. To have some of these people involved in the new movie could've resulted in a satisfying relaunch of the franchise. I think that, unlike Carter, these writers would've been far more attuned to what the fan's expectations were.

But in collaborating with frequent X-Files writer Frank Spotnitz (apparently the last Yes-man standing), it looks like the screenplay they authored missed the 'X' they were supposed to be aiming for.

Now, it may turn out that I'll see this movie down the line and love it. I might kick myself for not rushing out to see it on the big screen. It may restore my faith in the franchise. Will that happen? Let's just say that I want to believe - but I'm just too afraid to find out.

Summer X-travaganza

In the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly (#1001), Stephen King spends his ‘Pop of King’ column musing on what constitutes a truly scary movie and whether the size of a film’s budget has anything to do with it. As an example of accomplishing major scares with minimal funds, he points to this summer’s sleeper hit The Strangers. Fair enough. But then he also goes on to doubt that the upcoming X-Files movie will be any good because it looks too much like a big budget Hollywood blockbuster (“the new X-Files movie, on the other hand, looks big…” he notes, going on to say “…but horror is not spectacle and never will be.”).

I dunno – to an extent I agree that down and dirty, low budget horror is scarier than slick studio productions (although I also think this commonly shared attitude too easily forgets the indelible impact of such studio-produced films as The Exorcist, Alien, and The Shining) but in this instance he’s using the wrong film to make his case. After all, don’t X-Files fans have the right to expect a certain level of excitement in keeping with the tone of the series? If anything, the new movie looks modest compared to some of the show’s bigger ‘mythology’ episodes (and the previous X-Files movie - Fight the Future - from 1998). The only "big" element I’ve seen featured in the X-Files trailers so far is, well, helicopters and that doesn't quite stamp it as a summer movie-league spectacle. If anything, for the sake of selling tickets to anyone outside of the show’s core audience I think that The X-Files: I Want To Believe could afford to look a little more spectacular.

King also disparagingly compares The X-Files movie with 20th Century Fox’s other current horror offering, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, even though he has yet to see The X-Files. Why does he give the premptive edge to The Happening? Because “M. Night Shyamalan really understands fear”. Well, does he understand it that much better than Chris Carter? To date, Shyamalan has made one great undisputed horror classic (The Sixth Sense), a couple of other movies (Unbreakable, Signs) whose merits continue to be debated, and a few that – for right or wrong – have far more detractors than supporters (The Village, The Lady in the Water, and The Happening). On the other hand, Chris Carter is responsible for nine seasons worth of arguably the scariest show ever to air on TV in addition to three intense seasons of a worthy companion show (Millennium). Did Carter pen all the best episodes of these shows? No – but Carter presided over both The X-Files and Millennium with a strong, overriding instinct as to what would make for the scariest television possible. Has Shyamalan ever offered anything quite as insinuatingly creepy as the second season, Carter-scripted X-Files tale of a death fetishist “Irresistible”? Not to my mind. So if we’re talking about who has the better résumé when it comes to scaring audiences, please give the edge to Carter.

And if we’re talking about someone with something to prove, as King says in regard to Shyamalan and The Happening, I think Carter has just as much to prove in showing that The X-Files is not just ‘90s nostalgia.

Will The X-Files: I Want To Believe deliver the same scares as the best episodes of the series? I’d love to think so. But whether it does or not, it appears to be staying true to what made the series a fan favorite in the first place. So why would King go out of his way to downgrade it based on such sketchy reasoning? Who can say? Maybe it’s just the X-Files fan in me that senses that a conspiracy must be afoot.