Review for The X-Files - I Want To Believe

Introduction

It’s taken me a little over a year, on and off, to re-watch the X Files, the first five seasons on DVD again, upgrading Fight the Future to Blu-ray, and then the final four seasons on DVD for the first time since they were originally broadcast, finding that some of those episodes were better than I remembered, but some were worse. The X Files really did circle the drain there around the end, and when after six years off the air, they got back together to make this movie, the results were contentious. You can guess, since this is the first time I am watching this film since I reviewed the rental disc for this site, that it didn’t impress me the first time around. It’s been another six years since I saw I Want To Believe, and this time I take a look at the retail Blu-ray, complete with extra features. It’s also got an extended director’s cut on the disc, in which after all this time, I could see no difference to the theatrical release.


The first thing I noticed when I opened the case to get the disc, was a handwritten note to myself, placed in the case 7 months ago. I Want to Believe, just like the Fight the Future Blu-ray, is partially incompatible with my Panasonic SA BT230 Home Cinema. If I try navigating my way around the Director’s Cut while it’s playing, it will crash the disc, the same if I try to access any of the in-movie extras. The only thing I can do with the director’s cut is press play and watch it all the way through, resisting the temptation to press pause, just in case that too will crash the disc. The Theatrical version is fine though. What I learned this time after the film had ended and the copyright warnings displayed, is that this disc was authored by Panasonic. A Panasonic disc, incompatible with a Panasonic Blu-ray player; that’s a little mental note that’s going to inform my technology purchases going forward!


Anyway, a little cut and paste ensues, as my opinion of the film hasn’t changed since the DVD...

How times have changed. Dana Scully now works as a doctor at a Catholic hospital, while Fox Mulder remains a fugitive from the FBI following the events of the final episode. He’s not much of a fugitive though; as long as he no longer pursues his theories, the FBI don’t put much effort into searching, and he’s living in discreet isolation with Scully in a quiet secluded home. That’s until an FBI agent is abducted in West Virginia. When a psychic paedophile priest leads the FBI investigative team to the severed arm of one of the abductors, agent in charge Dakota Whitney realises that she needs specialist help to work the case. Soon, the FBI is offering Mulder amnesty in exchange for his assistance, and he wants Scully to come back with him. But Scully has a crisis of faith to deal with, when a patient that she is treating at the hospital suffers from a terminal brain disease. And the case keeps getting weirder.

Picture

The image is presented in 2.40:1 widescreen at 1080p resolution, and in comparison to the Fight the Future Blu-ray, is pristine. It has excellent clarity, a stunning level of detail, and colours come across as vibrant and rich, while contrast levels are excellent, blacks are solid, while whites are never blown out. And that is impressive in a film that’s set during the winter time, with a lot of dark-suited FBI agents against blizzard condition. The cinematography is excellent; production values are high, with detailed sets, while the locations allow for some bleak and rugged snowy landscapes.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English, DTS 5.1 Russian, German, and an English Audio Descriptive track, with subtitles in those languages, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish. The movie gets a nice effective surround track that places you right in the middle of the windswept, frozen action. There’s a decent level of LFE to enhance the more ominous moments, the action comes across well, the dialogue is clear, and Mark Snow’s iconic theme and the score that he comes up with for the movie is fresh and effective in a way that was missing from the last few seasons of the television show.

Extras

On inserting the disc, you get the choice between the director’s cut and theatrical cut, although you can change from the main menu as well. The disc presents its content with an animated menu.

As mentioned, I couldn’t make use of the In-Movie Extras, the Picture in Picture Commentary, the Behind the Scenes Making of Clips, and the Storyboards and Concept art, as they are on the director’s cut only. It’s not such a loss for the commentary, as that is available in audio only form for people lacking Bonusview on their player, and that is available on the theatrical cut as well.


The 5.1 isolated score, obviously removes the dialogue from the film, leaving the music and the foley, but that is only available on the theatrical version.

All the other extras are available on both versions of the film.

The audio commentary comes from director Chris Carter and producer Frank Spotnitz. It’s the usual X Files commentary from them both, dry but informative.

There are three deleted scenes on the disc, running to 6 minutes in total and in HD.

Trust No One: Can The X Files Remain A Secret? is the Making of Documentary, split into 3 parts, but with a Play All option that will let you watch all 86 minutes in one go. It’s the usual behind the scenes look, with interviews with cast and crew, but it’s in a framework of how much security went into keeping the second X Files movie secret from the fans, with limited scripts and internet disinformation. This is presented in SD, and as Billy Connolly is interviewed, occasionally funny.


Chris Carter: Statements on Green Production, is a 6 minute self-congratulatory pat on the back for not destroying the planet quite as much as the usual Hollywood production.

Body Parts: Special Make-up Effects lasts 8 minutes and is in SD, and overwhelms you with latex and silicone.

There is a 10 minute HD Gag Reel, which after a few opening minutes of falling over in snow, gets to the funny stuff.

Dying 2 Live by Xzibit is a 4 minute rap set to slideshow stills from the movie. There are 4 Stills Galleries for the film, and 2 theatrical trailers.

Agent Dakota Whitney’s Files offer ‘textual’ reports about this case, and three other psychic cases investigated on the X Files, including Luther Boggs and Clyde Bruckman.


The unexpected gem on this disc is The X Files Complete Timeline, which offers a chronology for the show, from 250,000 BC (The Fight the Future Movie) all the way to this one, and it also divides up the information in production order by Season. It gives you information on each X File case, as well as articles on characters, jargon, the various conspiracies, with detailed text, enhanced with stills, and on occasion something like an hour worth of footage divided into appropriate clips. It’s a veritable X Files encyclopaedia. The only snag is that you’ll probably find it all online in a more accessible wiki, and personally, I’m old fashioned, I like this kind of stuff in books, made of trees. But it is still a substantial extra feature.

Conclusion

I had the ever so slightest of reservations when I heard that the second X Files feature would be a standalone, which would have nothing to do with the alien conspiracy, until I realised that the standalone episodes are the most memorable aspects of the television series. I’m sure that everyone remembers the conspiracy and the aliens, the shapeshifters and the cigarette smoking man, but remembering which episode goes where, and which ones are the most striking is a different prospect. But the standalone episodes are different, everyone has their favourites, whether it’s the innate creepiness of Eugene Tooms, the green bugs released from ancient trees to devour victims, the giant mutant worm in the New York sewers, the witch teaching in high school, or rapidly aging in the North Atlantic, and the one with Jesse Ventura, there are countless episodes that spring to mind as typifying the X Files, all without requiring excessive continuity or depending on the ongoing conspiracy. So I was rubbing my hands with glee at the thought of Mulder and Scully investigating another monster of the week, vampiric mutant, paranormal phenomenon, psychic freak or technology gone mad in I Want To Believe. That isn’t what I got.


The second X Files feature just never picks up steam, it never really grabbed me the way the series did, it never once enthused me, excited me, or at all felt like the major event that the first film was, or that many of the series episodes felt like. This felt like one of the lesser episodes, bloated with filler to hit a two-hour runtime, and hampered by a lack of scope, depth, and even budget. It felt small, under-thought, and unfinished. Yet for all that, it did manage to hold my attention for its runtime, managed to entertain, and at times, did rekindle the old spark of what made the X Files such a major draw.


It all boils down to what I cared about. I certainly didn’t care about the story; the missing FBI agent, and the investigation into her disappearance just didn’t provoke any response in me. It’s perhaps because we are thrown in at the deep end, with the investigation in progress, and a couple of poorly developed characters at the head of the search, agents Whitney and (checks IMDB for name) Drummy, the would be believer and the ultra sceptic. There’s no hook to these characters, no reason to feel sympathetic to them, they’re just ciphers to move the story along, and for our heroes to be motivated by.


The weird stuff in the film just isn’t weird enough for the X Files in my opinion, it’s barely one step up from a bog standard thriller, with abductions and random body parts showing up, you could change the name of the movie and change the two leads, and you’d have no problem selling it as a movie in its own right. I certainly didn’t care about the psychic paedophile priest, although I’ve rarely been able to buy Billy Connolly as anyone other than Billy Connolly. I could buy him as priest, as a buggerer of altar boys, maybe, but as a psychic, even with the tears of blood, not so much. He’s just too nondescript and ephemeral. The thing is that the X Files has done psychics before and better. Agent Whitney cites Luther Boggs and Clyde Bruckman as examples, and they were two of the finest episodes of the series, both of which put this film to shame. You’d remember Clyde Bruckman; you probably can’t get Luther Boggs out of your mind if you tried, but Joseph Crissman is as disposable a maguffin as they come.


The same goes for the villains of the piece, the abductors. They are complete non-impacts on the film, they certainly don’t resonate after the film finishes, and you won’t be holding them up as bogeymen to recalcitrant children in years to come. Their weirdness takes far too long in revealing itself. At first they just seem like random kidnappers, then as the story unfolds their motives get stranger and stranger, but it’s only in the final act that their crimes venture into genuine X File territory, and by then it’s too late. The X Files needs the freaky and paranormal early on, not a last minute shocker.


Where the film works is in the main characters, and I loved the fact that they had moved on and developed in the past six years, and you could see the growth in them as people. The film gives good Mulder, and when we first encounter him, it’s like briefly walking back in time to one of the original episodes. The I Want To Believe poster is on the wall, there are pencils stuck in the ceiling, and there are sunflower seeds at his side. It’s only the thick beard that indicates that all is not well. This is a Mulder who has been sidelined, and has been in hiding for the last six years, so the offer of an amnesty from the very same FBI that ostracised and rejected him is something of a double edged sword. But it quickly becomes clear how much he needs the weird of the X Files in his life, worryingly so, as getting back to what he does best is surprisingly easy.


Not so for Scully, who has put that life behind her, and has returned to her original profession of Doctor. She sees this sudden enlivening of Mulder as a darkness that she has forsaken, and it proves to be something of a rift between the two. She has her own priorities at the hospital now trying to preserve life, and doesn’t appreciate having to deal with death once more. Yet she has her own crisis of faith to deal with, the paedophile priest offending her sensibilities as a Catholic, as well as with contemplating a course of action that her employers at the hospital would frown upon.


Unfortunately, the film doesn’t give good Mulder & Scully. The X Files needs the two of them together, working as a team, but in this film they are pulling in opposite directions, and to be honest, while I did enjoy seeing Scully again, I did feel that the child with the degenerative brain disease provoking yet another crisis of faith for Scully was contrived and bloated filler that, while it may have worked for the character, certainly didn’t work for the film. They even subvert the old mobile phone gag, with both of them getting each other’s answering service when they try calling one another. But that lack of communication hampers the film, as I wanted to see Mulder & Scully, not Mulder, and then Scully, and then back again, as they try to avoid their relationship issues by focussing on their own particular professional problems.


It feels unfinished and underdeveloped, bloated by an irrelevant subplot, but it just about cuts the mustard as a bleak and icy thriller. You can certainly pass the time with the film, and there are little spots of the old magic that remind you why you watched the show in the first place. I’ve certainly missed that dry sardonic humour over the years, and for that alone I can recommend this film. It doesn’t have any flashlights in dark corridors though. I Want To Believe isn’t much of an X Files movie, but it will do until the real thing comes along, and as technically impressive and loaded with extras this Blu-ray is, it can’t disguise that.