‘I Want to Believe’ the New X-Files Movie Won’t Suck
So there it is. X-Files creator Chris Carter has told the Associated Press that The Untitled X-Files Film coming July 25th is now called The X-Files: I Want to Believe.
X-Files nerds will remember that phrase prominently featured on a UFO poster in Agent Fox Mulder’s office.
I was once one of those X-Nerds so you’d think I’d be pretty excited about this whole thing. I’m not. I’m vaguely curious, but I’m not excited. Are there any other fans of the show out there who have an opinion one way or the other?
Filed under: News, Upcoming
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Craig, you cannot believe how big of a fan I used to be of the TV show. Remember, I was approximately 10 years old when I got hooked, which was during the last episodes of Season 2. So, when you’re that age, and you get hooked on a TV show for the first time in your life, you get really hooked. I became obsessed with the show, couldn’t wait until Friday nights at 9:00 and couldn’t wait to “catch up” during that summer between the episode where Mulder appears to be burning up–one of the great TV cliffhangers, I think–and the beginning of Season 3.
I was as big an X-Phile or X-Nerd or whatever you wish to call ‘em. I would record the episodes on VHS on SP, meaning by taking out commercials I could get three episodes on a single tape. I would call the local channel 2 station–I didn’t have the Internets back then–to get the episode titles so I could properly label the tapes of mine. I’d cut out TV Guide ads and paste ‘em on the sides of my tapes for the corresponding episodes.
I went to a fan-fest type deal in Vallejo, CA.
Even when the show went to Sunday nights, which was a school night (and understandably my least favorite evening of the week) I’d watch the show.
Today, my tapes are sitting up in the attic getting dusty. I recently bought the first three seasons on DVD at a rental outlet that was closing shop for a ridiculously low price. I still occasionally watch an episode from those seasons.
After the first movie, the show pretty much went to shit in my opinion. It had been kind of slowly dipping in quality first with Season 4, which is still a strong year, and Season 5 where more needless characters were introduced. But it wasn’t until post-movie that the show really started to collapse. Seasons 6-9 are just about unwatchable for me even though at the time I tried to stick with it.
The X-Files is a classic example of a great show that went on for way too long and the quality consequently became diluted.
I Want To Believe that this film won’t suck. But some of the casting decisions, like Xzibit… I don’t know. I’m worried. I don’t want this to be just another disappointment from Chris Carter and yet I don’t see any reason to believe it will be anything else. I’m actually relieved that it’s apparently a “Monster of the Week” type deal, and not part of the overall “mythology” of the series because by the end the “mythology” was so tangled and confusing and messed up and depressingly bleak and uninteresting that I kind of am glad they’re jettisoning it.
I was a big fan too, but I was a bit older than you and didn’t have the same excuse.
The train wreck the show became has tarnished any enthusiasm I could feel for this movie, but like you I’m hopeful about the fact that it’s just a one-off instead of a part of the overall mythology.
The fact is, I still love Mulder and Scully…more than the mythology of the show, they were why I tuned in.
I hope it’s good and not just a cash grab.
I only watched one whole episode when I was living in Austin circa 1999 with X-geeks. It was clear I had to know every episode to keep up. Didn’t see the movie either. But I did watch the Charles Nelson Reilly clips and i loved that. So I guess I probably would be booted out of the XF club.
I agree, Mulder and Scully was the heart of the series. When Duchovny wanted out, Carter should have seen the writing on the wall more clearly. I know the stories of how FOX wanted the show to go on because it had become their flagship series, and had become a huge ratings extravaganza.
As it was, The X-Files “jumped the shark” so many times that to think back on it hurts a great deal. On one hand, I’ll always love the series but on the other hand every time it’s brought up I can’t help but think about how poorly handled it became.
Duchovny said in an interview a while back that he wished they had become a movie franchise beginning with the first one, way back in 1998. And I think that would have been the way to go. Those latter seasons where Duchovny and Anderson looks flatly bored are painful for me to even look at.
Like you, I hope Carter and co. are making something good here and not just cynically using the one big, lasting and great idea and experience of their past for a return to relevance, and the hope that they could sort of “reboot” all of their careers, probably with more movies to follow.
The show was a prime example of what happens when you don’t have an endgame in sight. The same thing happened to Alias (look, it’s Sydney’s mother’s dog’s cousin’s owner’s retarded half-sister who is really an alien pretending to be Scully’s brother’s mechanic!….wait, did I mix and match shows there? see, bad TV all runs together).
Pitching the show as a standalone and not part of the mythology is a smart, smart idea and the main thing this has going for it. But still, it’s X-Files. Who greenlit this? Is there even a market anymore?
Abandon all hope, Craig and Alexander. There is little chance this will redeem the sins of 4-5 seasons (as well as the previous movie) which is basically what its being asked to do.
Christian, sounds like you saw a “mythology” episode from ‘99. Let’s see, depending on what time of year that was, it was either Season 6 or Season 7… I do remember for February sweeps in Season 6 they did a “All Will Be Revealed” two-parter. Gosh, I hope that wasn’t one of the episodes you saw because you really would have to know the show inside-out to know what was going on.
Those kinds of episodes usually became the most disappointing, though, because Carter was just running the show in circles and the mythology had fewer and fewer interesting routes to take.
I actually jumped ship after Doggett came aboard, and missed some of the very final episodes until the final two-parter where just about every character Carter had killed off miraculously returns. When the show ended back in May of 2002, they clearly left the door open for more X-File adventures. It was a nice touch for it to conclude in the same place as the very first episode started the whole thing.
I agree, Evan, with your realistic pessimism. I’d like to believe otherwise but you’re ultimately right: even if this movie is good, it can’t redeem the lows the show went to.
I could probably write a book about all of the ways in which The X-Files blew it. The first four seasons, one or two comedy episodes per year. After that, Carter started having every other episode be a comedy episode. Bad idea. Very bad idea. Then the mythology became so horrendously, pointlessly dire with just about every person who ever knew Mulder and Scully being killed off in such wanton fashion… Ugh.
And you’re certainly correct, Evan, about the lack of an endgame. I actually was a fan of Alias for its first season. I watched the second season and by the end of it I couldn’t watch the show anymore. The time jump to Hong Kong was the final straw, but making every character a family member of Sydney’s was a huge mistake. Ooh, Sydney’s mother killed her boyfriend’s father and there’s a body double who’s masquerading as… God, what a waste.
I wonder how X-Files would play now to someone discovering it out of its ‘moment’. Iike many shows, it was a little sketchy in Season 1, but it really started to find its footing in 2. The mythology episodes were what kept people excited for more, but many of the stand-alone episodes were pretty great…Charles Nelson Reilly for example.
I don’t think a movie can make up for bad X-Files, but the powers of selective memory come in handy. I pretty much stopped watching it after Mulder left so I wasn’t completely traumatized.
The biggest TV show fizzle-out for me was Twin Peaks, for which I don’t David Lynch. That show had no business becoming a pop-culture success and I think that’s what helped kill it. I also think it should’ve been conceived of as a 2 or 3 year series from the start with an endgame in mind.
Craig, I agree that the pop-culture success of Twin Peaks is what hurt it the most. A little bit like The X-Files in some ways… They were originally conceived as (and I think best appreciated) cult hits.
You’re right about Season 1 vs. Season 2. I think there is only one sub-par episode in all of Season 2, for instance (”Blood”). Otherwise, it’s kind of a perfect season of television. Season 3 just about reproduced that for me. The Charles Nelson Reilly episode–”Jose Chung’s From Outer Space”–is perhaps the absolute best funny/bizarre episode of The X-Files ever.
And who can forget “The Host” (a.k.a. The Flukeman episode)?
The X-Files, for its first three season especially, created two of the best recurring TV villains ever, in the Cigarette-Smoking Man and Alex “Rat Boy” Krycek.
Endgames are very important in TV shows. That is why I’m glad The Wire ended when it did and I’m glad The Shield’s next season is its last.
After that, I think I’ll be free of all TV series… Unless something pops up. I’d heard Breaking Bad (created by one of The X-Files’ strongest writers, Vince Gilligan) on AMC was good.
I had this big long post…but then Firefox took a poo on my comments.
I pretty much agree 100% with everything you said. I think the movie is going to do minor box office but the studio is probably expected that. For those that care, great, have a good time. Unless it gets amazing reviews I probably won’t bother. I was an X-files nerd somewhere between Craig and Alexander in geekishness, but the show let me down so massively after seasons 4 and 5 that I don’t even like to watch the reruns of my favorite episodes.
Add to that the reality that virtually everyone involved has gone to do little or nothing of interest to me doesn’t help. Rob Bowman is one of the worst directors in Hollywood today and Glen Morgan and James Wong have written some amazingly inept scripts. Chris Carter seems to have been a one-trick dog and pony show, to mix my metaphors.
I want to believe it will be good, but the truth is out there and it looks like a Spike TV rainy Saturday afternoon movie to me.
I agree, Joel, about Carter being a one-trick dog and pony show. Millennium had a lot of promise, and I liked it for a while, but it ran aground fairly quickly. And what you say about Rob Bowman and Glen Morgan and James Wong, all of whom seemed to have loads of talent during the run of The X-Files, is achingly accurate. The descent of Wong and Morgan is particularly disturbing to me. Final Destination?!
I won’t lie, though–even if this thing gets a 2% on Rotten Tomatoes, I’ll still see it. Maybe with a brown lunch bag in case things get too overwhelmingly sickening, though.
TWIN PEAKS really went off the rails and oddly, it was Duchovony who was one of the reasons! I noted that Lara Boyle’s character totally changed into a femme fatale type which Sherilyn Finn already owned. Plus, I hated when Miguel Ferrer’s Albert was revealed to be a Buddhist.
But judge fer yourself:
His first appearance:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=XKtFdRcQwa8&feature=related
His jump the shark moment:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ww-88rwt4ms
And I knew I loved loved loved this show at Cooper’s tweak of Truman’s nose. Loved.
One of my all time favorite television shows - Twin Peaks that is - dna I neve dekil eht gnidne!
The 2nd season of Peaks had numerous misteps but whenever Lynch would come back it would get awesome again. And the series premiere of season 2 was one of the creepiest/best episodes of television ever.
The whole subplot with James was boring, but then James was always a boring character. And yeah, Duchovny didn’t help matters too much.
As a casual X Files fan who found the mythology boring but loved the monster of the week episodes, I find it encouraging that this new film is rumored to be exactly that. That’s still the scoop right? Monster of the week? I’ll never forget some mutant tape worm thing that got in the sewers.
The X-Files ‘mythology’ was always, it seemed, just a lot of hokum designed to keep people hooked even though there was never an end in sight, just a constant series of distractions and smoke-blowing.
But as far as ‘monster of the week’ episodes go, it’s hard to build up a lot of enthusiasm for another one after so many years.
I agree, Chuck, that the monster of the week episodes were sometimes really good, even when they were so painfully obvious “borrowing” entire plot lines from well-known monster movies. Anyone remember the one that blatantly knocks off both versions of The Thing?
But I concur with Jeff MCM that I can’t get enthused about a monster of the week X-files movie. A TV movie maybe, but paying $9 for it feels like I’m getting ripped off.
Man, it’s amazing how sour I am on a show I loved so much.
It’s funny you say that, Joel, about being so soured on the show because six years after the TV show ended was just barely enough time for the rotten taste of where the show found itself to finally leave my mouth. Which is my main theory for why Carter has taken so long getting this project off the ground–hoping that long-ago diehard fans instinctually say, “Yeah!” when hearing about an X-Files movie now rather than several years back, since at this point the force of Nostalgia (remember how great the show used to be?) is more powerful for many than the force of Reason (remember how much it really sucked and pissed you off?).
Jeff, I agree. I do think that, leading up to the first movie you could actually write up a fairly cogent and understandable “web” of sorts that would make the so-called mythology sensible, but after the movie Carter seemed to be flailing and had nowhere to go and created a kind of Star Wars universe with alien colonizers vs. alien rebels or some such hokum, abandoning the significantly more character-based twists in the overall storyline of the first few seasons.
I say this all as someone who wishes they had never given Scully cancer way back in Season 4. The mythology slowly took on the form of a soap.
Joel, I believe the episode you’re writing of is “Ice,” one of the very first episodes (I believe it’s like the fifth or something). At least Carter is honest enough to admit that the whole thing is essentially one big riff on The Thing (both the old and new versions) and it’s a pretty cool (no pun intended) episode. Carter liberally borrowed from many disparate sources, ranging from Val Lewton, favorite Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and everything in-between.
In the end, this is a movie I wasn’t asking for, yet I’m hoping for the best. If it doesn’t deliver, I will simply quickly forget about it.
I think I didn’t feel quite as burned by the show since I bailed before it ended.
Yeah, I give him credit for acknowledging his sources, and in later seasons they did less and less of that.