The X Files: Why You Should Believe

One of my favorite rituals is opening up my Entertainment Weekly and reading its movie reviews. Not that I always agree with the critics’ evaluations of films, but I find it fascinating to see what perspectives they draw their commentary from. Sometimes I’m left thinking, “Well, gosh. That’s not what I took away from this movie, but I do see where they are coming from a bit.” And oftentimes I agree with their reviews, which is why – when I’m really aching to get into the multiplex on a Friday night – I hold off on temptation and don’t read about a certain film until I have my own initial opinion to go on. Finally, there are those instances where I’m so in disagreement about a critic’s response that my irritation – and rebellion – stick with me, and I feel an urge to put my own thoughts out there in defense of a certain movie (or TV show, record, book, you name it). Alas, this brings me to The X Files: I Want to Believe. I’ve decided it’s my personal mission to make sure people realize what an amazing follow-up this is to the nine-season-running television show, as well as a worthwhile – and, let’s face it, far better – movie than the first X Files film, Fight the Future.

Time and distance have served creator Chris Carter and stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny well. The many years between the end of the show and I Want to Believe have left a nostalgic and strengthening curiosity in fans’ hearts: Are Mulder and Scully still together? What happened with their son? Are our beloved FBI agents still waiting for that famed alien takeover, or have they moved on to chapters in their lives that involve different desires and mysteries? Time has also proved a necessary challenge to Carter & Co.: Will non-diehards still care about this once-famous believer and skeptic duo? What storyline could possibly continue into the future of their lives, satisfy X-geeks that’ve waited for this moment to arrive, allow new fans (and generations) to feel welcomed into this world of conspiracies and miracles, and make 20th Century Fox, the movie studio, comfortable with lighter pockets? As it turns out, Carter presents us with a shrouded-with-secrecy sequel that answers the public’s questions while also allowing its producers to stay skimpy on the budget. His brilliant answer: Go simple. Focus on Mulder and Scully’s relationship (which got shortchanged during the show’s final two seasons due to Duchovny’s limited-appearance contract). Explore the root of the darkness that drew this yin-and-yang couple together in the first place.

Without spoiling too much (and I Want to Believe you’d do the same for me), X Files 2 reunites Scully and Mulder several years after their supposed happily-ever-after walk-off in the series finale. The reason for their estrangement isn’t offered to viewers right off the bat, and this is only one of many clues that Carter wants to make us work for our enjoyment, for our uncovered plot and thematic layers of X, Y, and Z. When our hero and heroine do reunite, you can almost feel the flames of chemistry crackle between them, and this fire of connection is strengthened by middle-age, far too many battle wounds, and a wearied melancholy that comes with searching but not always finding. (The 1990s behind-the-scenes tension between Duchovny and Anderson also lends itself to the frustrating paradigm of being drawn to someone but not always knowing why; both actors hit their marks with one another in a lovely mixture of trigger-tripping and hushed tones; their characters rediscover that it’s this very tension that makes them work harder, individually, to push their own potential and prove to the other why “I’m right.”)

The film, like its predecessor, opens with a bang, albeit a metaphorical one. An FBI agent goes missing in a scene of adrenaline-charged directing at its best. Soon another young woman is run off an isolated road in the middle of a storm by a mysterious man driving a snowplow. The only figure with any insight and witness wherewithal is Father Joe, a Catholic priest who claims to catch glimpses of these women and their whereabouts in psychic visions – and who just happens to be accused of more than 30 cases of pedophilia. Suddenly, Mulder is pulled out of his self-imposed hibernation by Scully to help locate the women and perpetrators, and it’s Mulder who later convinces Scully to stay involved – and to stay tapped into her own version of faith. Mulder’s beliefs are of the New Age variety while Scully’s fall under more traditional Christian belief systems. You might say Mulder’s “God” is the lovechild of science and the paranormal while Scully wants to fit her daily goings-on – the mundane, terrifying, and everything in-between – into a nice box of Catholic dogma. She’s even got the gold cross around her neck to prove it. Thus, in the end, the film’s title says it all, that even when fate feels stacked up against us, we want the forces of good to be on our side. We want to believe that, even if we don’t know for sure if we’re being invaded by aliens or conspired against by governmental agencies, the explained and the unexplained do hold meaning in the bigger (spiritual) picture.

If the television show and the first film are called The X Files, you might secretly think of this addition as The Why Files: Why are we ultimately here on this earth? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why would a criminal (i.e. pedophiliac priest) get to experience a level of spiritual mystery and rekindling of faith that so many of us long for? Set against the television show’s original Vancouver, B.C.’s haunting landscapes, filmed on a budget considered tiny by today’s standards, and distanced from expectations of cramming in nine year’s worth of mythology and recurring characters, creator Chris Carter grants viewers the perfect gift: he brings us back to basic questions about faith and our shadow selves that he explored in the show’s pilot and first few seasons. Some critics and fans – and not just in Entertainment Weekly – have stated disappointment that this second movie is like “any regular FBI show or movie” and that “the things in it could really happen.” I assume they were expecting more spaceships and alien abductions. For better or worse, the abductions in The X Files 2 are of the human variety – which makes it all the scarier in my opinion. And which makes the show’s previous – and understandably respected – supernatural bent feel like a fever dream that Mulder and Scully are always trying to wake up from. At one point they discuss capital D Darkness, how it seems to always find them no matter how hard they try to run away. But what Carter unveils, ultimately, is this: running from the Darkness is impossible because it’s inside us. We create it, birth it, and feed it, and it’s only our own faith that can save us not from monsters and boogeyman and space aliens, but from ourselves.