PlasmaSplasm

The following is my review of the second X-Files movie, I Want To Believe. It is incomplete, but is so long you probably will be thankful for that. I had written it right after seeing the movie in theaters, but then something stopped me. I forget what it was. A question for the ages, I suppose. Anyway, without further ado, my incomplete-but-you-get-where-I’m-going review of The X-Files: I Want To Belive originally entitled “I really, really want to believe. Really.”

CAUTION: SPOILERS EVERYWHERE

So, the whole crew saw the new X-Files movie last night. I have been in a sort of X-Files vacuum until now; not wanting to see or hear anything about the movie until I actually saw it. You see, I am a HUGE fan of the show. And, when I say huge, I really, really mean it. I won’t go into declaring how huge, but just know that I hung on until the very end - until the very last disappointing episode of the 9th season. I even liked Doggett and Reyes. They were a poor substitute for what the show had been, though. But I digress. My point is that I loved that show until the bitter end and then I bought it on DVD - all of it.

The movie was released the same weekend as Comic-Con, thereby taking away about 100,000 members of its core audience. Why they would do that, I don’t know. Why they wouldn’t wait one more week and make some sort of awesome last-minute marketing push, I also don’t know, but I guess it’s too late for all of that. Under normal circumstances, I would have absolutely insisted that we see it opening day - if not at midnight. But I had the Con to go to, so I waited until Tuesday. I can’t image I’m the only one like me. Fox basically shot themselves in the foot that they had already had to chew off to escape from a claw-trap. They allowed their core audience to have an excuse to not see the movie on opening weekend, not only dropping the weekend totals, but also giving that audience a chance to hear from all their non-nerd friends about how bad the movie is. Good job Fox! Now, I know I am only talking about the nerds in Southern California that weekend - but there just happened to be 100,000 of us, for chrissakes! That’s a pretty chunk of change when your movie only grosses $10 million.

I did not set out to write a critique of Fox’s marketing skills; I had intended to review the movie. So, I will get on with the task at hand.

First of all, here’s what I expected from this movie: a really good monster-of-the-week episode. I expected our agents to be agents. I expected “I’m a medical doctor” Scully to perform an autopsy or two. I expected Mulder to be in a suit. I expected there to be flashlights. And I expected Scully to have red hair.

At least I got one of those things.

I guess they kind of wrote themselves into a corner in the last episode of the series. Mulder had to be in hiding; Scully had to leave the FBI; and then there were some helicopters blowing some shit up, which I still can’t quite piece together. Basically, the X-Files no longer existed and our agents were out of jobs. That kind of left a monster-of-the-week episode hard to do. But they tried anyway. And they failed. Miserably. This wasn’t even an X-File! It was a missing person. Yeah, sure, there was a guy who was claiming psychic visions, but he was no Luther Lee Boggs or Clyde Bruckman (both of whom were referenced in the movie). There wasn’t even a clear villain in this - or villainous power, as the case may be in some of the episodes. There was no clear explanation as to why the villain existed. Was he trying to beat cancer? That was alluded to. Was he just a sick puppy who liked to experiment? Was he an even sicker puppy who’s life-long dream was to have a woman’s body? And not just the fake kind that’s made out of an inverted penis and a bunch of hormones? And what did his child abuse have to do with it? Did it make him evil? Did it make him want to be a woman? Really! I’m really confused here!

And now, on to the Mulder-Scully relationship crap. Now, admittedly, I was always one of those girls that knew Mulder and Scully were meant for each other. I was always nervous about how they would handle it, but I just knew it was meant to be. Actually, it was. They loved each other and they didn’t have to kiss or date or fuck to prove it - until they did. Surprisingly, I liked how the show handled it. They just did it. They didn’t make a whole hoopla about Mulder and Scully kissing for the first time, or whatnot. Sure, they played with us a lot in episodes like “Small Potatoes” and “Triangle”, but when it came to the real thing, it was just done. One morning, Scully is getting ready for work and you realize she’s in Mulder’s apartment. Simple as that. Enough said. I felt like they tried to handle it similarly in the movie, too, but it didn’t quite work out. You get the impression in the beginning that they haven’t seen each other in quite a while; that Mulder is in hiding and Scully knows where to find him if she has to. You also get that impression when they kiss and she complains about his scratchy beard. Jump ahead a bit, though, and Scully is talking about their “home.” Did they decide to move in together at some point in the course of the movie? Did I just completely misunderstand the beginning?

As for character motivation, I thought Mulder was good, Scully was flawed. Probably the most annoying part of the film is where Mulder and Scully are in the hospital having the overly drawn-out argument about how Scully can’t follow him into the “darkness.” Blah blah. Mulder is obviously fine with a little investigative work. In fact, I’m reminded of the good old days when Mulder would get excited over exsanguinated cows. For some reason, Scully can’t do it. Why? Is it because she’s a stick in the mud? Lord knows. And her connection to the boy just didn’t work. I’m pretty sure we were supposed to have Scully and Mulder’s son William in mind the whole time, but at the very least, William was a few years younger than this kid and had supernatural powers (or did those go away at the end? Whatever.). Just because it’s a boy we’re supposed to draw this attachment to him? Is he Scully’s only patient? That seems odd, right? Also, Scully the medical doctor did all of her stem cell research on Google the night before a procedure? Really? I tried to rationalize it by theorizing that she was actually pulling together a bunch of literature for the parents to look at, but I really don’t think that was it.

Next, I want to pick on the writing, which was terrible. Now, Frank Spotnitz has written some good episodes of the show, as has Chris Carter, so it wasn’t impossible for them to crank out a good script. But why not go with the best?