My review of "The X-Files: I Want to Believe"
I'm a long-time viewer of the series, and was depressed at seeing the show decline quite a lot after the 1998 film, especially the mythology. The stand-alones never held my interest, except the psychic ones, because I never cared for being scared. The mythology episodes had more to them: there was a depth of complicated, yet sometimes mysterious, relationships between Scully and Mulder and the human conspirators.
So, the mythology basically ended brilliantly with Season 6's "Two Fathers"/"One Son" and Season 7's "Sein Und Zeit"/"Closure", but the series generally lacked the quality of Seasons 3 and 4, and what really became obvious was that Mulder and Scully's dynamics were stale from Season 6 on; they tried to throw in comedy to give them something new, and there were a few good episodes, which surpassed the over-rated Season 1. However, Season 7 was a total failure, except the afore-mentioned episodes. Though Season 8 added some new dynamics with the introduction of Doggett and a few of the new mythology stories were fun, it wasn't consistent enough, and Doggett often played a more stubborn, working-class Scully. As I wrote in a Season 9 review, "the characters moved through the dramatic motions in so formulaic a manner, lacking clear motivations, while the stories lacked real plot; scenes and dialogue felt stretched out on purpose. The mythology had become a caricature of itself, employing mystifying dialogue and pointless confrontation to put nothing substantial across, but to serve as ends in themselves."
So, anything that avoided the formula of Scully and Mulder's dynamics would have been a bonus. How many times would Scully contemplate whether Mulder's quest was hers? How often would Mulder feel guilty about that fact and go off on his own? How often would they suspect Skinner? How often would some physical trauma happen to Scully causing her to feel victimized? How often would the X-Files be closed or Mulder and Scully kicked out of the FBI? More importantly, how often could the themes of faith, trust, and paranoia be used with any freshness?
The first film was a failure as a mythology story because it tried to work as a standalone but without all the aspects that made the mythology so effective -- the built-up fascinating characters and their loaded histories with Scully and Mulder and the various theories of what the main characters had seen so far. After the series' best mythology episodes in Season 5's "Redux II", "Patient X" and "The Red and the Black", viewers were greeted with a fairly shallow story. The X-Files was never as much about revelations as about the dramatic interaction of the main characters with the recurring ones like CSM and Krychek, but they were either absent or stripped of any meaningful dialogue. There was also such a self-conscious attempt to dumb things down for excitement purposes: the explosions, the silly bees, the spaceship at the end -- the last of which was never really explained.
Granted this film had a pretty lame suspense quotient and misused Callum Keith Rennie, who is magnificent in Battlestar Galactica, and just wasn't very exciting here. Part of this also stemmed from the low key nature of the story. I have to admire how Carter abandoned all the shock and awe of the previous film and shallow copycats like J.J. Abrams, who is just an awful, superficial producer. Mulder and Scully were on the run from the FBI at the end of the series, so to just have them back in with guns and resources would have been pat. The story was trying something new in having them on their own and they had to rely on basic resources like no guns and Google.com. Carter has also often said that real fright comes from the everyday. So, a collision in daylight with a snow-shovelling truck becomes a terrifying abduction. At least that was the idea. I could admire his restraint the same way I did Bryan Singer's attempts to tone down a super hero story in "Superman Returns", even though they both failed in some ways.
However, for all the lack of thriller action, the movie was really about the relationship between Scully and Mulder, and I was surprised at how fresh the dialogue was and how new the turns in their relationship were, showing how it had grown. Mulder no longer spoke in cheesy stock phrases about how "the truth is out there" (something ardent early seasons' fans forget he did a lot in Seasons 1 and 2, when the dialogue was often poor). There was a subtlety to the ever-present themes that rejuvenated them, and my fear they had been tired out was put to rest. Also, Scully was given a dignity she hadn't known in a professional sense before in that she actually kept her job in the end. In addition, there was an attempt at moral complexity in Billy Connelly's character. Finally, the tender moments and the excellent dialogue between Mulder and Scully were wonderful to see, and was really the most important aspect of any X-Files movie I was going to watch.
Truthfully, their drama felt more real than the relationship between the two leads in "Atonement", although admittedly what made that film great was the outsider sister. Yet, if this had been a film by Anthony Minghella and not The X-Files with lots of superficial critics' stock expectations, it would have gotten better reviews.
I'm not saying it's an 'A' film, but what Chris Carter has attempted and succeeded at in the intimate drama and dialogue is quite an accomplishment, especially for a sci fi franchise that built its audience on spooks and scares, and is now not simply using drama as a breather between action scenes like most of Hollywood.
7.5 out of 10