The X-Files: I Want to Believe

I want to believe that this movie was just a joke.

Back in the good old days of my youth, one of the coolest shows around was a little something called The X-Files. It took me a while to get into it, but once I watched a few episodes, I was hooked. Aliens, monsters, big government conspiracies… I ate that shit up when I was I pup. So back in 2008 when a new X-Files movie was released, I was really hoping it would turn out to be awesome. And so were a lot of other people, people who were much bigger fans than me.

And we all let out a loud, collective, “Really?”

This review requires a bit of back story. The X-Files debuted in 1993 and told the story of an FBI agent named Fox Mulder. After the disappearance of his younger sister, which he is convinced was an alien abduction, Mulder joined the FBI in order to uncover the existence of aliens and the government conspiracy hiding them from the public. Because… the FBI does that sort of thing, I guess. Not knowing how to handle a weirdo like Mulder, the FBI put him in charge of the titular X-Files, a series of bizarre unsolved cases not worth the rest of the bureau’s time. His partner is the staunchly skeptical and smoking hot Dana Scully, who constantly admonishes Mulder’s crazy theories even though they are invariably correct. Most episodes were stand-alones featuring Mulder and Scully investigating and solving a particular incident. But the rest built up what the fans refer to as the series’ “Myth Arc”. This involved Mulder’s ongoing quest to uncover the government conspiracy and discover the truth about extraterrestrial life. He found many vague and mysterious clues from a variety of less-than-credible sources, most famously the shadowy Cigarette Smoking Man, and the fans analyzed them over and over to figure out what they meant. It turns out they needn’t have bothered, because the show’s creator Chris Carter eventually admitted that the plot was made up as they went along. But still, it was going somewhere, right?

Then after a few seasons, David Duchovny left the show and I stopped watching. Apparently some more stuff happened, and the big series finale arrived. Since Duchovny had come back for the final episode, I tuned in, and I didn’t understand any of it. Apparently, neither did anyone else, because it has gone down in history as one of the most confusing and inconclusive series finales ever… at least this side of Japan. In addition to not wrapping up the Myth Arc, the finale left off with Mulder a wanted man and set a definitive date for an oncoming alien invasion. These plot points were intended to be wrapped up in a series of follow-up movies, but the first got so caught up in development trouble that it wasn’t released until six years after the show’s finale. But it finally did arrive in 2008, and that brings us to today’s subject – The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

The movie opens up in the same fashion as every episode of the series, with the familiar time and place stamp on the bottom corner of the screen letting us know when and where the events are taking place. It’s a small detail, but one of those things we fans know and love. This particular tale begins in Sommerset, West Virginia at 10:23 PM. So, naturally, the scene starts to shift between day and night like the cemetery scene in Plan 9 from Outer Space. Aha! There’s Mulder’s proof! Aliens exist and they’re going to attack Washington with an army of three shambling zombies! Actually, what we’re seeing is two different scenes cut together, one of a woman being assaulted at night, and one of an FBI search taking place the next morning. In a regular movie, this would be a pretty ordinary editing choice, but again, this is the X-Files. Time stamp, people, time stamp. The narrative is supposed to go in chronological order, otherwise the time stamp is completely meaningless. As the search goes on, a gray-haired man played by Billy Connolly runs off on his own and somehow finds a severed arm as if by intuition.

We then cut to Scully, now working at a Catholic hospital. We see her developing an attachment to one of her young, terminal patients, as doctors are so often encouraged to do, when a man appears and asks if she knows the whereabouts of Mulder. He says that an FBI agent’s life depends on him. Scully dodges the question, but it turns out she knows exactly where Mulder is and she goes to see him in his hideaway to relay the FBI’s offer of calling off their hunt for him in return for his help. Mulder, sporting a bitchin’ mountain man beard, is skeptical of their offer, but a picture of his sister causes him to reconsider.

“I vow to avenge the shitty resolution of your story arc!”

The agent in charge of the investigation, Agent Whitney, explains to Mulder that he was called in due to his experience with paranormal events. Whitney is trying to find a missing agent, one Monica Bannan, who appears to have been abducted. The severed arm seems to belong to one of her captors, and the man who found it is an ex-priest named Father Joe Cristman, who claims to have had psychic visions of the crime. However, no one is willing to trust Father Joe because he is a convicted pedophile.

This week, on Portrait of a Stereotype

The agents go to question Father Joe, and Scully wastes no time badgering him about his past and telling him that God hates him.  You know, like the professional she is. The other agents, actually doing their jobs, take Father Joe to the crime scene to see if he has any psychic visions. He has a vision of the crime, but can’t figure out where Bannan is now. Then he starts bleeding out of his eyes. Meanwhile another woman is abducted by a man driving a snow plow.

And then the movie again declares “Fuck the fans!” and reveals that Mulder and Scully have been a couple since the end of the TV series, ruining our hopes of seeing the classic X-Files duo as they were back when the writing was good. We didn’t come to see this shit! We came to see Mulder come up with crackpot theories hinging around the rituals of some Mesopotamian cult that only existed for three years back in the 12^th century BC, and Scully looking at him like he’s an idiot even though she’s seen that exact thing happen at least five times by now, and the both of them making wise-ass remarks about each other and the innocent victims. That’s the recipe for delicious entertainment. Yes there was always sexual tension between them. That was the fun of it. But you don’t actually put them together! That ruins the whole formula! It undoes everything we liked about them in the first place. It’s like… It’s like…

No, that one was good.

No, that one worked, too.

That one. THAT one!

While Mulder and Scully… ugh… cuddle, Scully mentions that the severed arm contained traces of animal tranquilizers and medicine for radiation sickness. Mulder decides to shave his beard and Whitney calls them, saying that Father Joe is having another vision. They arrive at the scene and Whitney tells them that Joe has led them to the same place as before.

“I know. I’m standing right next to you.”

While Whitney is absolutely astonished by the fact that Mulder’s facial hair is, by some magic, removable, the rest of the agents get tired of looking for the body Father Joe keeps insisting is out there and give up. Mulder tries to help Father Joe keep looking, but Scully gets fed up with him and accuses him of trying to use this case to gain closure on his sister’s death – which is bad, because if you save a woman’s life while thinking about someone else, it doesn’t count. Mulder ignores Scully’s protests, like he always does, and keeps searching until he finds the body Father Joe was talking about.

Scully returns to the hospital to find that the administration is transferring her young patient to a facility for end-of-life care. Instead of acknowledging that this is a tragically necessary action, she throws a hissy fit and says she can cure his ailment with long and torturous stem cell therapy. Of course, since this is a Catholic hospital and Scully is, herself, a devout Catholic, suggesting the use of stem cells – which the Church forbids on ethical grounds – makes absolutely no fucking sense. So, yeah… way to be the moral compass of the film, Scully. Mulder calls Scully later that night, while she… wait… no… she couldn’t be…

SHE’S GOOGLING STEM CELL THERAPY????? What. The. FUUUUUCK???!?? Dana Scully, medical doctor formally employed by the United States government, has no better resources at her disposal than fucking Google. Really. REALLY? Homicidal rage… building… building…

OK, the next scene goes back to Mulder, and at least he is acting like his usual self. He’s found that the body Father Joe led them to wasn’t Bannan’s, meaning that the culprits have been kidnapped several other women. Father Joe has another vision, this one of the woman who was taken from her car, who is now being held in a dog cage. He seems less sure of this vision, and when they bring him to the woman’s car he can’t see anything at all. Mulder and Whitney, however, are able to deduce from her belongings that she had been to a swimming pool shortly before being abducted, and so they investigate the nearest indoor pool. It turns out both victims used the same pool before they were abducted, and also had the same rare blood type. Scully deduces that they were taken for organ harvesting, and Mulder entreats her to help him track down the culprits. Instead she gives up and breaks up with him. Let’s all take a moment to pretend to be sad.

And just to taunt us with how little the movie gives a shit about continuity, Scully immediately starts extolling the virtues of never giving up to the parents of her patient when they ask to stop the stem-cell treatment. She then visits Father Joe to yell at him some more, but he ruins her fun by having a seizure. Meanwhile the FBI identifies their suspect, a Russian medical transporter who’s been stealing organs for his cancer-ridden husband. Of course, gay marriage isn’t legal in West Virginia, and the reason the two moved there from Massachusetts is never divulged, so the whole marriage thing is just a huge, unnecessary plot hole. What is actually important is that the sick man is one of the 37 altar boys that Father Joe molested years ago.

“Thirty Seven?"

Mulder and the agents find the guy they’re looking for, and the classic X-Files chase-scene-through-conveniently-dark-and-empty-buildings ensues. The suspect drops a bag that for some inexplicable reason contains Monica Bannan’s severed head, and at the end of the scene he kicks Agent Whitney down an open elevator shaft. No, not Agent Whitney! She was such an interesting and well-developed character who I totally had sympathy for and stuff!

Understandably pissed, Mulder goes to see Father Joe in the hospital, where Scully has learned that he has terminal lung cancer. That causes seizures, right? After Father Joe learns that the sick man was one of his altar boys, he theorizes that his visions have been through the sick man’s eyes. However, he also insists that Monica Bannan is still alive, causing even Mulder to lose faith in him. But Mulder believes the second woman may still be alive, and goes back to Sommerset to keep looking. But the Russian realizes that Mulder is getting close and uses his snow plow to flip Mulder’s car.

Scully, finally doing something useful, notices an article in her stem cell research about medical experiments in Russia designed to transplant living heads from one body to another. And since some guy in Russia did this, obviously our culprits must be doing the same thing. That’s how Russia works, you know. All the doctors in Russia do their medical research as one big group project. Scully tries to tell Mulder what she’s found, and that Bannan is still technically alive after all, but he was separated from his phone in the car crash and is now wandering blindly through a blizzard. But of course, he’s Mulder, so he manages to stumble across the entire operation just as the doctors are beginning their procedure, and they knock him out before he can cause a ruckus.

Scully remembers that Agent Skinner is contractually obligated to appear somewhere in this movie and calls him in. She then remembers an offhand reference Father Joe made to a Bible verse in a completely unrelated context and realizes that it’s a message from God that she should rifle through some guy’s mail. She conveniently finds the address of the building Mulder went to, and together with Skinner rushes in to put a stop to the operation and rescue Mulder.

“It’s all right, Mulder. They got my obligatory cameo into the movie after all.”

Father Joe dies at the same time as the Russians’ cancer patient. The FBI lists him as an accomplice to the crime, renewing Mulder’s outrage at the government for covering up the truth. He and Scully make up and get back together. Let’s all take a moment to pretend that we care. And the movie ends with Scully going in to perform another operation on her young patient, refusing to give up on him.

So that was X-Files: I Want to Believe, and it seems the only proper way to summarize the movie is, what the fuck was that??

Remember how this movie was supposed to carry on the Myth Arc? That whole “imminent alien invasion” thing? What happened to that? Which part of this movie addressed that issue? I don’t even think the word “aliens” was mentioned at any point in the film. So what was the point of all this? And OK, yeah, it was still reminiscent of an episode of the series, which was mostly stand-alone episodes anyway, but if a stand-alone is all you’re doing then why even bother? The fans have been patiently waiting to see how the story continues, and after eight years this is what we get? Fuck you!

But let’s forget about the Myth Arc? Does I Want to Believe hold up as a stand-alone? Well… no, of course not. None of what made The X-Files a great series made it into the movie. Let’s recap the formula: 1) Mulder makes some zany crackpot theory about a monster that only Amazonian Satanists ever believed in. 2) Scully acts as the voice of reason and is always wrong despite always being right. 3) Mulder makes insensitive jokes about the victims. 4) Scully makes jokes about Mulder. 5) Unmistakable sexual tension. None of that stuff happened in the movie. Instead, Mulder plays second fiddle to Billy Connolly, Scully is a whiny bitch who does nothing helpful, and the two of them are in the blandest, most annoying relationship imaginable. It ruins their characters and undoes everything that made them interesting in the first place. Besides all that, the story is built up entirely of plot holes, meaningless distractions, and loose threads. What happened to Bannan? I’d sure as hell like to know, since I watched an entire damn movie about her kidnapping. But the writers didn’t feel that detail was important enough to mention at the end. No, just so long as Mulder and Scully kiss and make up, everyone’ll be happy. Yeah, that’s what the fans of this classic science-fiction/government-intrigue drama are interested in: the romantic subplot.

This movie killed The X-Files! I’m serious: the movie fucked everything up to such an extent that it’s doubtful that any of the other planned movies will ever be completed. That alien invasion plot? It’ll never be wrapped up. I guess humanity’s just screwed. But Christ, if we can’t make a decent movie out of one of the best science fiction shows of all time, then I for one welcome our new intergalactic overlords. So until our inevitable enslavement in the Tungsten mines of Anovia 4, I’m Karl, and I’m battling tedium one radical Catholic stem cell treatment at a time.

The X-Files and The X-Files: I Want to Believe are properties of Ten Thirteen Productions, 20^th Century Fox, and Chris Carter. Images used from The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder, The Office, Frasier, and Clerks for entertainment purposes only.