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| The X-Files: I Want to Believe movie poster |
The X-Files: I Want to Believe
After pretty much everyone had moved on, The X-Files came up with an encore performance that reminded us why we wanted to believe in the series.
There comes a point in almost every TV series, where the show peaks after which comes a decline and eventual cancellation. Time and time again we've seen that, with rare exception, it's almost always a downhill slide, often with an embarrassing made-for-TV "movie" pilot for a relaunch.
And so it has been for the X-Files. What started as a Kolchak: The Night Stalker type paranormal investigator show - where FBI agent, and true believer Fox Mulder, and skeptical partner Dana Scully investigated a new "X-File" each week - soon devolved into a tedious slog through an overarching alien conspiracy story with endless loose plot threads.
So it's not surprising that even many fans of the show gave up on it after it was canceled and revived to the silver screen in the film The X-Files: Fight the Future, which centered again on the alien conspiracy story yet still failed to resolve anything.
A decade after that film, a second X-Files film made it to the screen, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Judging by the box office numbers, even most fans chose to pass on this one. It did only about 10% of the ticket sales of Fight the Future.
That's a shame, because The X-Files: I Want to Believe is actually a far superior film. Almost completely ignoring the alien conspiracy angle it focuses on what the show did best - the standalone supernatural thriller.
The plot involves a now retired Mulder and Scully, who are drawn back in to help the FBI when an agent disappears and the only clue to her whereabouts are discovered by a priest with psychic visions. The case soon puts Mulder, Scully and the FBI on the trail of an organ harvesting ring. In doing so, Mulder and Scully must face some of their biggest personal demons, Mulder's obsession with his sister's abduction and Scully's Catholic faith, as well as their inability to commit to each other. But all this character development is handled deftly, without taking away from the driving plot, and one would need no prior knowledge of the series to understand the central premise: both characters want to believe in something.
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have rarely looked or acted this well on any screen, large or small, and while it's not as good as the best episodes of the series itself, this "forgotten" X-Files film was at least as good, if not better than most Hollywood's other "supernatural thrillers" that were all the rage (thanks at least in part to the success of The X-Files on television) in the first decade of the 2000s.
It would take nearly another decade before the series would return to TV, bumbling along with predictably middling reviews, but The X-Files: I Want to Believe stands as a glimpse at the promise the series once had.
And so it has been for the X-Files. What started as a Kolchak: The Night Stalker type paranormal investigator show - where FBI agent, and true believer Fox Mulder, and skeptical partner Dana Scully investigated a new "X-File" each week - soon devolved into a tedious slog through an overarching alien conspiracy story with endless loose plot threads.
So it's not surprising that even many fans of the show gave up on it after it was canceled and revived to the silver screen in the film The X-Files: Fight the Future, which centered again on the alien conspiracy story yet still failed to resolve anything.
A decade after that film, a second X-Files film made it to the screen, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Judging by the box office numbers, even most fans chose to pass on this one. It did only about 10% of the ticket sales of Fight the Future.
That's a shame, because The X-Files: I Want to Believe is actually a far superior film. Almost completely ignoring the alien conspiracy angle it focuses on what the show did best - the standalone supernatural thriller.
The plot involves a now retired Mulder and Scully, who are drawn back in to help the FBI when an agent disappears and the only clue to her whereabouts are discovered by a priest with psychic visions. The case soon puts Mulder, Scully and the FBI on the trail of an organ harvesting ring. In doing so, Mulder and Scully must face some of their biggest personal demons, Mulder's obsession with his sister's abduction and Scully's Catholic faith, as well as their inability to commit to each other. But all this character development is handled deftly, without taking away from the driving plot, and one would need no prior knowledge of the series to understand the central premise: both characters want to believe in something.
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson have rarely looked or acted this well on any screen, large or small, and while it's not as good as the best episodes of the series itself, this "forgotten" X-Files film was at least as good, if not better than most Hollywood's other "supernatural thrillers" that were all the rage (thanks at least in part to the success of The X-Files on television) in the first decade of the 2000s.
It would take nearly another decade before the series would return to TV, bumbling along with predictably middling reviews, but The X-Files: I Want to Believe stands as a glimpse at the promise the series once had.
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