The Last Word...

With The X-Files: I Want to Believe making an appearance on certain critics’ ‘worst of’ lists – critics like Canada AM’s usually amiable Richard Crouse and Aint it Cool’s Capone – and the new three-disk DVD neatly filed away on my shelf, I thought it was high time to offer my final word on the film. Critic and my pal Carsten Knox articulated the best reason for X-Files’ inclusion among the worst of 2008: the possibility of rebooting the franchise was so tantalizing, and the bar set by the original, early episodes of the TV series was so high that the inevitable end result of I Want to Believe was a crushing disappointment. Chris Carter and co. squandered a great opportunity.

What were my first thoughts as the credits rolled on July 25th 2008? I think I said out lout, ‘What? Is that it?’ That fact that what I saw looked like a later season episode (with due diligence given to the Mulder/Scully relationship as a distraction from stale storytelling) made the experience feel like at once a crushing disappointment and minimally satisfactory. Not the worst time spent watching The X-Files, but certainly not the best.

During the later seasons (seven to nine), I blamed Carter and producer Frank Spotnitz for being so blind that they didn’t realize the desperate need for earth-shattering change in the arc of the series. Even with the addition of new, somewhat likable (in the case of Robert Patrick’s John Doggett) characters, the dynamic never overcame the malaise of the post-Fight the Future hangover. Artistically speaking, there never should have been a season eight or a season nine – hell, I’d opt to dump season seven if not for the gut-busting Cops/X-Files mash-up ‘X-Cops.’

So with so many people turned off by the musty smell emanating from the series, the proposed film series should have been the perfect opportunity to bring fans back into the fold and get The X-Files back at the forefront of pop culture conversation.
How could this have been done? A few suggestions:

• New blood: Perhaps scripting or directing should have been handed over to a filmmaker or screenwriter outside The X-Files fold. Audiences needed to be reminded of why The X-Files was worth watching, but Carter and Spotnitz seem oblivious to this. An outside voice may have worked harder to appeal to more people.

• Old dog, new tricks: Scripting or directing duties could have been given to someone in the fold who had some success producing the better episodes of the series. Maybe David Duchovney could have been given the reigns or Fight the Future’s Rob Bowman could have returned for the second feature. Maybe Vince Gilligan or (if there was a God) Darin ‘Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose’ Morgan could have kicked the script around.

• Let it die: In the darkest recesses of my soul, I think this movie was never meant to be. The X-Files could have remained dormant for a few more years and allowed for a wave of nostalgia to bring it back to consciousness, therefore remembering the series as it was, and not the limp specimen it became.

The deleted scenes on the DVD of I Want to Believe add nothing substantial to the film – they are, in typical X-Files-women-distrusting fashion, a scene of Scully crying and a scene of Amanda Peet dying – and the featurettes betray nothing revelatory about the film. A 90-minute documentary (90 minutes!) on the second disk goes into the joy of working in Vancouver again with most of the original TV crew and the crew’s satisfaction at keeping the filming a big secret from the prying eyes of press and spoiler-prone bloggers. Big frakin’ deal. Maybe if more people had known about the film and what it was about, then maybe more people would have been inclined to see it. The X-Files movie was not harbouring the secret of the last cylon or knew where Ben moved the island – you know, spoilers we actually care about! Carter and Spotnitz’s insistence on total secrecy is indicative of their delusion that the show is as relevant as ever, which, in and of itself is why they made no effort to spruce up their venture.

It was the episode 'The Erlenmeyer Flask' and the scene where Mulder happens upon a storage locker filled with tanks containing bodies in suspended animation that first caught my attention and hooked me onto the show. No such striking images were present in I Want to Believe, which is one issue, but the problem with the film is the profound difference of opinion between the producers of the show and the audience as to what the thrust of The X-Files was: Chris Carter’s ‘search for God’ vs. two lives (Mulder and Scully’s) on hold while pursuing unexplained phenomena. I wonder what a movie that took the fan’s point of view might have looked like.