So, Carter, Duchovny and Anderson all "Want to Believe". That's nice. That's good. Belief is important to people, you might even argue that it's a basic human imperative, we're all wired up to believe. The question, of course, is what exactly the
X Files trio want to believe in ...
Let me tell you a story. For several years when I was freshly out of college I had a standing date every Sunday night. Whatever else may have gone on during the week past or whatever was looming in the week coming, I was part of a trio that would gather every Sunday night to catch the new episode of
The X Files. Sure, the first season or two were a bit rough, and the effects were never great but at it's peak
The X Files was brilliant television. The balance of stand alone episodes and ongoing arc was novel, the slowly unfolding master plan teased, the characters were memorable and - more than I think anybody fully realized at the time - the show tapped into issues and fears that were just beginning to percolate on the public consciousness. Hell, at it's peak the show had enough cache to recruit legendary cyber-punk author
William Gibson to pen an original episode, one of the only pieces of screen writing Gibson has ever done.
And then it all went to shit.
Done in by greed and stupidity the end of
The X Files began in the aftermath of the hugely - and surprisingly - successful first feature film. First, Fox went and sold the syndication rights to their own television network at a dramatically undervalued rate - a move that stood to make the network money but led to immediate lawsuits from Duchovny and Anderson, both of whom had a financial stake in the residuals and had just lost millions. To say they were unhappy about this move is an understatement and, emboldened by the success of the feature both spouted a lot of talk about the hugely successful film careers that lay in their future. The end was near and everybody knew it.
If clearer heads had prevailed this would have been the time to wrap things up properly, the time to pull the mythology together into a rousing conclusion that would send the show off into history as one of the most loved scifi series ever made. But that didn't happen. Duchovny wouldn't give a clear answer as to whether he would come back and - if so - for how long and Fox simply froze, unwilling to pull the chute if they could extend the life of the show. And so we got those bastardized last few seasons.
No offense to Robert Patrick and Mimi Rogers, both of whom were fine, but the show should never have been allowed to continue without Duchovny. Key characters were killed, the brewing alien war simply abandoned, everything that drove the show was simply swept under the rug as quickly as could be regardless of whether doing so made any sense at all. The end result? A once brilliant show sold out its own past so incredibly thoroughly that I can't even watch the early seasons any more, knowing that it all ends in nothing, essentially.
Which brings us to the movie. Why now? The first feature was a full decade ago, the last decent series of the show a year after that. What's left for them to do? The Syndicate is dead. Chain Smoking man is gone. Well Manicured Man is gone. Krycek, dead. Mulder's father and sister angst resolved. Hell, they even resolved the sexual tension between Mulder and Scully. There's
nothing left. So why do the movie? Well ... take a look at the
IMDB for your answer. Duchovny and Anderson's much talked about film careers? Complete and total busts. Series creator Chris Carter? He's done two shows since, neither of which lasted even half a season before being cancelled. What do they want to believe? How about that they can bring back the glory days?
But here's the thing about belief: unless based in some sort of reality belief is nothing but delusion. Face the facts, kids. The glory days are over, killed by your own hands. You had it and you fucked it up. Please, now that it's dead, just let it go. Leave it alone. Because this just feels like sad, sad desperation.