Fandom or Psychosis? A Review of the New X-Files Movie

What follows is more of a catharsis than a movie review. Forgive the length and verbal hand-wringing.

Full disclosure. I am a die-hard X-Files fan. My DVD collection of all nine seasons is well-worn. I own action figures (still in the box!) from the first movie. I own a Scully and Mulder version of Barbie and Ken, autographed scripts, trading cards, and the quintessential “I Want to Believe” poster. In short, I am a huge but unapologetic nerd.

So when I heard that Fox had finally green-lighted a new X-Files movie, six long years after the show ended with a whimper, I was ecstatic. I put the opening date into my Outlook calendar. I started following the news in the X-Files chat rooms but vowed to stay spoiler-free. I thought of the X-Files movie like a Christmas present, and I wanted to be completely surprised when I opened it.

Despite the anticipation, I was positive I wouldn’t be let down. After all, Chris Carter (the creator) had six years to come up with a plot that was true to the X-Files while allowing us to see inside the relationship of Mulder and Scully, two of the best-developed, most-loved characters in TV history. I was just happy to be able to re-visit these characters again and indulge my need for what the experts call "parasocial interaction," so I was determined to like the new film no matter what.

Enough foreshadowing?

After the movie ended and the lights came up, I overheard a woman say, “Seriously, my childhood is fucking crushed right now.” Chris Carter had missed the mark and missed it badly. I, too, was upset and disappointed. Lump-in-the-throat, kicked-in-the-gut disappointed. That may sound dramatic and a little sad, but it is the truth.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from seeing X-Files: I Want to Believe in the theater three times. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it was so mediocre. I admit I liked it better the 2^nd and 3^rd time around, so I will start with what I grew to appreciate in the film after multiple viewings:

(1) Gillian Anderson. I worship at the temple of Gillian. She is an extremely talented, nuanced actress who can say more with her face than most actresses can say with an entire page of dialogue. If you don’t believe me, check out House of Mirth and the BBC mini-series Bleak House. She is the emotional core of the new X-Files movie and carries it on her shoulders.

(2) Mulder and Scully. Over nine years of the series, X-Files fans got to know Mulder and Scully better than we know most relatives. For the new movie, Chris Carter and co-writer Frank Spotnitz had to answer the question of what these beloved characters have been doing for the last six years. They get it right. Scully is a doctor at a Catholic hospital, but she still hasn’t recovered from giving up her (alien?) son for adoption. Mulder, on the run from the FBI, has become a recluse, a man who no longer has a purpose. All they have is each other. A solid premise for the movie and a foundation for conflict, as the FBI re-enters their lives and asks them in many ways to re-live the tragedy and grief their work on the X-Files caused.

(3) Big Ideas. The X-Files series was about faith: Scully’s often conflicting faith in God and science, Mulder’s faith that he can save his abducted sister if he only looks hard enough for The Truth. The new X-Files movie re-visits this heavy theme when most summer blockbusters are relying on CGI and simpler themes of good and evil. At its core, the movie is about redemption. Can Father Joe redeem himself through his psychic visions? Can Mulder redeem his failure to save his sister by finding the missing FBI agent? Can Scully redeem her decision to give up her son by not giving up on her young patient with a terminal illness?

The movie had some tremendous performances, iconic characters, and a lot of promise. Unfortunately, it hurt to recognize this promise, to understand what Chris Carter set out to accomplish, to see Mulder and Scully on the big screen, and to watch it all fall so flat.

The “X-File” at the center of the movie, the case that brought Mulder and Scully out of hiding, started out as standard crime procedural fare but quickly unraveled to “what the fuck?” It is a poorly-scripted, distractingly-bad B-movie plot that even Gillian Anderson could not save. The villain turns out to be a gay Russian organ transporter who wants to save his husband’s life by putting his head on a woman’s body. Huge eyeroll. The psychic helping the FBI turns out to be a pedophilic priest who molested the dying husband and shares a psychic and physical connection with him. It took me multiple viewings of the movie to piece this much together, and I’m still not sure I have it right. (I will allow others to opine on the homophobic overtones of the plot.)

My dissatisfaction with the movie’s plot isn’t about me wanting more action sequences or explosions or CGI in a summer movie. I am OK with a standard thriller plot akin to Silence of the Lambs. And, this isn’t about suspending disbelief about the science; I did just that many times over the years on the series, when Mulder and Scully faced giant flukeworms, liver-eating mutants, shape-shifting aliens, and the like. In those cases, unlike this one, a compelling script made it easy to believe in the incredible.

Chris Carter made matters worse by relying heavily on plot contrivances to move the already hackneyed story forward. In one scene, Scully decided that intra-thecal stem cell therapy was the cure for her patient’s illness. So what does she do? Fly in experts? Refer the kid to a specialist? No, she GOOGLES “stem cell therapy,” prints out a bunch of information, and performs the procedure herself the NEXT DAY. This is just lazy writing, folks. Moreover, in her Googling, she just happens to run across research where Russian scientists have transplanted the head of one dog onto the body of another. But oh no, printer jam! When she finally sees these missing pieces of research later in the movie, she quickly puts two and two together and gets… huh? The two-headed dogs are evidence that the missing FBI agent, although beheaded, is alive! The movie ends before confirming this utterly befuddling revelation, by the way.

I can go on about the one-dimensional supporting cast, the unnecessary Bush joke, and Chris Carter’s indefensible directorial decision to film the last Mulder and Scully kiss in the movie from the back of their heads. But I am done. My soul hurts a little writing all of this down.

I guess the most important question is…how did this happen? I’m sure the writers’ strike affected the script quality. Fox called Chris Carter and said “now or never” and he had to pump it out. That said, the series’ writers managed to put out high-quality scripts week after week for the TV show with only a few true misses. Beyond that excuse, I have a couple of theories.

For one, Chris Carter insisted on total plot secrecy. The actors signed on to do the movie before they even saw a script. Gillian said she had read it once before filming started. The crew was informed about plot points on a need-to-know basis. As a result, I think Chris and Frank made this movie in a bubble, an echo chamber, where they only heard themselves discuss the story. They had no perspective. You know, like when politicians in DC gather in a room for two days over catered lunches and decide it would be a really good idea to build a bunch of widgets without ever talking to regular people to see if they want widgets? Like that.

In addition, the movie felt sloppy and rushed because it was. Chris said in a nerdy industry article that he showed a cut to the studio after only three weeks of editing in order to make the release date. They cut the movie from a 2:39 running time to just 1:45. Frank said they “locked picture by the end of May, which is just unheard of in the movie business, to go that fast.” They cut an HOUR out of the movie in record time. Reminds me of a Woody Allen quote: “I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.” At the end of this movie, with important bits likely left on the cutting room floor, I was left with, “OK, so the bad guys are Russian... and gay. Wha?”

I know many former X-Philes who are lukewarm about even seeing this movie. My theory on this, which goes to the movie's weak opening weekend, is based on nothing but a general sense I have that the X-Files was a product of the 1990s. The show ran during the relative stability of the Clinton administration, ending just months after September 11 and one year into the Bush administration. Since the end of the series, as a country we have witnessed George W. Bush lie to the American people over and over and do some royally fucked up shit. The moral bankruptcy of this administration and where our country is as a result serves to cast the show’s underlying premise—that the government is hiding proof of the paranormal—as a little superfluous. Chris Carter acknowledged this in a campy way in the movie, when he showed a picture of Bush on the wall at the FBI and played a few notes of the X-Files theme. Nothing is more paranormal than the last 8 years.

On a final note, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Chris Carter’s “Easter Egg” at the end of the credits, when the camera pans over a large expanse of ocean and shows a bare-chested Mulder and a bikini-clad Scully rowing toward paradise. As a helicopter (i.e. the camera) flies over them, they look up and WAVE. One reviewer called this scene “mind-bendingly, stunningly, fanbase-killingly awful.” Another reviewer said, “I don't know what the demographic is that needs to see Mulder and Scully row off into the sunny world... but fuck you, demographic.”

I have mixed feelings. If the movie was like a Christmas present I couldn’t wait to open, this scene was like a Christmas present from my grandma, who thoughtfully gift-wrapped a hand-crocheted shawl instead of giving me a gift card to Ann Taylor Loft. So I grimace, say thank you, say I like it because she meant well but know I will never, ever wear it. On the one hand, this final scene belies the fundamental character motivation of Mulder and Scully and the theme of the whole damn movie for that matter: never give up, keep fighting. Instead, Mulder and Scully are running off to a tropical paradise to drink margaritas while the aliens plot their invasion in 2012. On the other hand, I kinda like the idea of these characters finally finding some fucking happiness after 15 years of losing family members, getting shot, contracting deadly diseases, and otherwise facing torture, death and despair on a weekly basis.

So, it’s a choice. Do I want to be bitter about the (likely) final shot of my all-time favorite characters? No. So, I think I am going to wrap myself in that warm, hand-crocheted shawl and sigh.