For shame, new X-Files movie, for SHAME.
Now, I want to believe. I spent 6 seasons, 1 movie, and about 8.5 episodes believing in the power of The Mulder and The Scully. So it is with a dull heartache and a lengthy rant that I say that “I Want to Believe,” the new reunion X-Files film, trumping itself as “THRILLING” “SMART” and “SEXY,” manages to be none of the above. As a fellow X-Phile put it, “It was like seeing your high school sweetheart, who you thought you would always love more than life itself, and seeing that, well…you’d both grown and changed.” AND that s/he had developed a mysterious skin rash, comb-over, and the conversation ability of a small lizard.
THRILLING as an MYSTERIOUS SKIN RASH
Now, part of the X-Philes love of the show is the fact that two relatively flat, 2-dimensional FBI agents are sexually tense as they encounter the bizarre, macabre, and extraordinary. The questions that arise are deliciously suspenseful, and thus thrilling: Will they ever know THE TRUTH? Will the scary alien bounty hounter with the THSPPP-noise-making tool (P.S: that sound effect was Chris Carter saying “THSPP” and played backwards. True story.) ever crack a smile? Oh the unknown in all its shining glory.
Sadly, “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” (2008) reads like a rejected script from Seasons 2 and 8*, using formulaic plot points to half-heartedly rekindle fans’ interest without the clever twists, character presence, humor, and spooky WHATS? that made the show so gripping. (*yes, that’s right, Mulder and Scully so phoned in their performances that he may as well have not been there, and she was just as deflated and half-present as she was opposite Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish).
*SPOILERS abound from here on out* Are they still spoilers if there is so little suspense that you don’t end up caring? (Sigh).
The CASE THAT BRINGS MULDER AND SCULLY BACK (!!!) includes frankenstein doctors, organ theft, body parts in ice, and a pedophilic priest’s psychic visions. Mulder (alone, but yearning for his Scully yin) is set to help FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Whitney (Amanda Peet) figure out whether the former-pedophile Father Joe’s (Billy Connolly, who actually acted in the film, wheeeee!) visions of a missing FBI’s agent’s kidnapping are true. It takes real talent and/or a total lack of investment, and/or bad direction, and/or bad editing to make such a solidly mysterious plot NOT gripping.
(Sigh again). It’s like Chris Carter and the writers (WHY?! Chris Carter, WHYYYY?!!!!!) drew ideas out of a hat, mashed them together, remembered that people wanted some chase scenes and bad guys, and then had 4th graders string a storyboard together. Or they just started sipping too much yerba mate and just when the crash hit, started to type. Or they just wanted money and wanted to finish and got lazy. Exhibit A: A huge plot twist is given away about 45 minutes into the film through an extended…get this…ONLINE RESEARCH SEQUENCE. (DAH DAH DAHHHH!) PART of the fun of the show and even the first film, “Fight the Future,” is that Mulder and Scully spent more than the FBI annual budget going on wild-chupacabra chases in fields, barns, and suburban homes with catchy dialogue in their rented Fords. This time? The camera focuses mostly on snowy snowy snow-snow McSnow (=7,853 shots of snow) and an HP printer printing things. Yes, we waited six years to watch Scully send things to print well. AND neither Mulder nor Scully uses a flashlight throughout the entire film, sacrilegious to standard X-Files plot-thickening devices.
Even when the film’s action rises to matters of life-or-death stakes in high-action chase scenes, they are so badly shot (construction site here, construction site there, wait, I’m here, no I’m not, where’s the bad guy? NOT behind ME?! more construction site) that any suspense dies before its even conceived. And though snow plows ARE scary when you’re driving in a little car next to them (it’s true…I sometimes squeal…shut up….) being rammed by one just does not cut it when alien babies have ripped through viscera in the series so many-a-time before. The thrills are pale weaklings for the seasoned fan, and not memorable enough in 2008 cinema to make a lasting impression on any non-fans.
Some higher thrill-points, like when Mulder almost dies and Father Joe cries blood (NO it’s NOT black oil, as the adverts make it seem, and yes, that moment makes you want to kick something), and when a two-legged dog is killed (breaking the cardinal rule of movies: do not kill a dog, even one with two heads), are slightly fulfilling, but for all its creeper-monster shots there is not enough consistency in writing and twists to solidify the story and make the movie something worthy of resurrecting a Mulder and Scully.
The sad part is, who asked for a resurrection? ”The X-Files,” for all its innovation, has been exhaustive. After 9 seasons of monsters-of-the-week, alien conspiracies, and sexual tension, with even a six year break, the characters are tired, the writers are tired, the audience is tired. I mean, the love for reruns and DVDs is still there (X-Files being the first series to sell box sets, and they originally retailed for about $115 per season–yes, you heard me), but this love is rooted in the show’s slow devoluton and ending, as well. You buy the sets you want for nostalgia and most of us have moved on. It takes a lot of cajones for Carter and the gang to say “We’re coming back to do MORE!” So when instead of risking life and limb to save the world from alien invasions, we see Mulder and Scully plodding through a predictable serial-kidnapper/killer case, it’s more than a let-down, it’s a “Rilllllay??” It is like seeing your puppy love and finding out he/she grew up to be…well…kind of old and lame. Even worse, you start to wonder if they were always that lame; maybe you were just too infatuated to notice.
SMART as a COMB-OVER
Part of the infatuation, if that’s all it was (sniffle, I hope not), was for the characters in and of themselves. The movie picks up what seems to be six years after Mulder and Scully’s days as X-Files investigators are over. Now Mulder is a shut-in with no job, a room full of newspaper clippings, and a lumberjack look going on while Scully is a pediatrician at a Catholic children’s hospital. Bad editing later hints that perhaps Mulder is writing some sort of tell-all conspiracy book, but that is never confirmed (this and other sloppy edits reveal that perhaps the movie was attempting to haphazardly save itself after poor test audience runs).
Nothing wrong with Mulder and Scully as fallen or average-Joe heroes, living out boring, “normal” lives after all that alien nonsense. But as far as I knew…Mulder and Scully were smart. THE thing that made the show such a Sunday Happy Place was that it was SMART. The characters used big words, most things were left unsaid, and while some stand-alones fed into X-Phile yearnings for Mulder-Scully-sex, for the most part, the show was an exploration of the dynamic between faith and skepticism, truth and naivete, love and friendship, scientific inquiry and the need for something more. While the movie’s big case is sad and dull to begin with, the character’s disappoint even further because they struggle so damn much with it.
Scully’s decline (early onset-Alzheimer’s?) hurts worst of all. As the show’s logical yin to Mulder’s obsessive and spiritual yang, she proved that women in science…well, ROCK. (Let’s all thank our lucky stars that another famous Anderson, who was first considered for the role, was never cast). Yet this amazing (albeit sometimes whiny) woman, who is a top doctor at a children’s hospital, is shown sitting at her computer and google searching “Stem Cell Research.” She has also decreased her emotional IQ: before her even-keel calm and expert witness questioning are even resuscitated, she yells at Father Joe like an overbearing, slightly tipsy aunt. At one point a shouting match between the two all but begs for Steve Carrell to wander in and start shouting “LOUDNOISESLOUDNOISES.”
And Mulder, who started his FBI career as an exceptional criminal profiler before he became “Spooky,” acts confused by the riddle of finding a body that Father Joe says is “hidden by dirty glass”…while Mulder stands on a FROZEN LAKE. And when he discovers that (WHAT?!) “dirty glass” could be the “ice” he is standing on, oh, he just about wets himself. Good job, Mulder: here’s a biscuit.
The excuses fly–”I haven’t done this in a while,” “this is who I am!”–but they fall flat because the writing isn’t clever enough to explain how two intelligent, seasoned pros are suddenly in crime investigation 101, when they may as well have earned their honorary doctorates from Paranormal U. Their lack of skills and obvious rustiness with an X-File makes their attempts to rekindle the show’s immortal struggle–science v. belief, the nature of TRUTH–in random bits of dialogue (Mulder questing once again after the “dark side,” Scully searching for a “normal life” alternative) also sad, a ghost of the struggles they dealt with on much deeper levels throughout the series.
There is a sense that the film was hoping to show a realistic progression for its characters–what they would be like without the X-Files, where they would want to go next–but it’s a downright shame to see how humorlessly, blindly, and haphazardly this great idea is thrown in with little or no grounding and emphatic drama-building plot points, while you’re also watching the characters you know and love act unrecognizably. The Mulder and Scully I know would not be confused by things like “why would a human body have animal tranquilizer in it?” (gee, I dunno…it’s a TRANQUILIZER. Oh wait, let’s make that a way to show that animal research is part of the mystery…yeah…that’s it…). (Sigh).
SEXY as a SMALL LIZARD WITH NO CONVERSATIONAL ABILITY
Okay fine, people lose their touch, they get confused, they get a lil’ rusty without practice. I still want to believe that my love was not a lie, that Mulder and Scully and their X-Files were worthy of my fascination, were worthy of another visit via this film. But though I want to believe, I just can’t because…well…Mulder and Scully are just so darn boring now. These same people, who held EPIC and CONTROVERSIAL FBI careers investigating and discovering truths and lies that no one wanted to TOUCH, now have tiffs over job stress and talk about returning cell phone calls. Perhaps they were always boring (he’s an emotionally stunted 13-year-old with an alien fetish and she’s a frigid ice-queen with no imagination) but they were, at least, put in interesting situations that tested their boring selves to their fullest emotional core.
Seeing these amazing characters in the “real world” is not only too harsh, it leaves you wondering–well, if you weren’t going to bring them back on a HUGE case, and you weren’t going to bring them back as their awesome ass-kicking selves, then why did you also leave out the passion behind their relationship? Seriously, what was the point? This movie not only removes the characters from their actual stage of professional and spiritual development (9 seasons…and they were BOTH abducted by aliens!), but also takes away their heart and soul: sexual tension. And oh how horrible and cruel that is to see.
The film features a scene every X-Phile (relation)’shipper has been waiting for: Mulder and Scully having pillow talk. Scully even makes a penis joke (*gurggle!*). Then she starts to whine about work for the next ten minutes and awkwardly tells Mulder his mountain-man-face is scratchy. They give each other a sloppy, half-awake, completely passionless kiss. Then they’re out of bed. Yes, that’s right, let’s wait 15 years to see…Mulder and Scully not have a sex life.
Considering they aren’t getting any (and as such, their hallmark sexual tension is MIA), it is no surprise that Mulder and Scully’s emotions raise to a fever pitch over their new BIG CASE (which, for the record, can’t last longer than than the film’s Virginia snowstorm of Snow-Shot-every-three-minutes fame and near-to illegible time markers and pacing). Of course this trivial return to X-Filing and a small snippet of time spent out of their hermit and pediatric routine would drive them to their breaking point: because their life is so obviously BORING they can’t take it anymore (and neither can the audience). So of course, when they break up in the middle of the film after a five minute pause-ridden dialogue. What could have been an intense, dark moment in their relationship arc ends up making them both look like exasperated, restless middle-agers who need couples therapy.
Okay, fine, let’s take away the gaping hole made in the film when this drama is not matched to any real pressures or situational stressors that make the audience believe it could be happening. Let’s just assume that we’re looking at Mulder and Scully purely as two people together. The movie does ask the huge, though somewhat obvious questions that would arise for the two characters as a couple: if Scully loves Mulder for being this man-on-a-quest, how can she ask him to no longer search the unknown? How can Mulder ask Scully to keep looking for monsters when she wants a somewhat normal life? How can the two actually stay together? Okay, maybe THEN I get that the movie should include a break up, or at least some discussion. The problem is that even as these questions are thrown in, the audience was never made to really care (all going back to no passion and no sexual tension WANTING you to have them see things through), so the truths to the questions, while inspiring, barely register. For die-hard X-Philes, the film leaves you feeling almost somewhat abused by this plot point and confused by why you’re watching this sloppy hack-job of the beautiful Mulder/Scully love dynamic.
GOOD-BYE, SWEET X-FILES
The X-Files series, and even the first film, was Mulder and Scully v. the World. ”I Want to Believe” features a whiny, lost, aged Mulder and Scully having a love-spat v. Low-Level (for the X-Files) Creepers. Perhaps that’s why the “Mulder and Scully-Together Again!” kiss, the FOURTH TOTAL KISS of the entire franchise (I count Season 6 “Triangle”–Mulder felt Scully’s slap) better resembles an awkward tongueing between two people “trying to make it work” than the music-swelling-”the world didn’t end”-power of previous liplocks. I mean, those liplocks could make a pubscent girl cry for hours (not that I know) and rewind the scenes over and over again (not that a certain friend I have knows). Let’s face it, it didn’t even take a liplock, the pair could just dance to Cher’s version of “Walkin’ in Memphis” and the tape rewinding/crying/fantasizing would begin. Something about those two and the world they were placed against, the TRUTH they were always looking for, made us not only watch, but learn, and obsess, and salivate for more.
So fine, bring the whole concept back for another go-round, finish the whole thing off–but by choosing to have a realistic boring couple facing relationship issues during a pretty routine, but challenging case for people sick and tired of X-Filing (apparently) and I can almost guarantee that you, Mr. “I Want to Believe” movie, have lost all the sexiness, smartness, thrills, and scope of a show that made X-Philes outta us. There is only one moment in the entire film, actually, that truly recalled the show’s self-reflexivity, character, and humor in a committed way–watch the movie’s full credits and see a slight homage to the black oil “Fight the Future” background turn into water, and finally turn into a shot of Scully and Mulder in bathing suits on a rowboat. They are far, far away, and as the camera pulls out even further, they look up and wave good-bye. Perhaps I didn’t want to see the film (after I saw it…sigh…too late) but that one moment made me think–perhaps my love was not misplaced? Perhaps the wit and smarts and silliness and darkness and truth the show and the characters held have lived on in this lil’ fan tribute way? I sighed as I left the theater anyway: too little, too late.
I hope that rewatching my Season 6 box set will rekindle some warm and fuzzies and block the pain and embarrassment of this film out; watching “The Dark Knight” right afterwards helped, and I recommend that. Perhaps I really do trust no one, or at least, not Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz, Gillian Anderson, and even (ow, this hurts to type) David Duchovny, to ever bring the magic back enough for me to want to believe again. That was a different time in television, in movies, in my life. This movie is like seeing an ex after enough time has gone by; you understand that you’ve both moved on, and you sorta feel better for not having them as they are now–combed over, tedious, and rash-covered–in your life anymore.
