X-Files: I Want To Beleive… Meh…
Last night I saw the new X-Files Movie, I Want To Believe, and as a fan of the original series and movie, I had great expectations for this movie. In the normal series and the first movie, Mulder and Scully were assigned by the FBI to investigate the X-Files, or cases that couldn’t be explained by normal science. Which usually involved humans with special abilities, government cover-ups of paranormal activity, and extra-terrestrials. However this movie didn’t have anything do do with any of that, and the script seemed more politically driven, than to actually answer questions from the fans of the original series, it didn’t even seem to be a continuation of the original series.
Plus I think most of the critics just phone this one in with a score of 3.3/5.0, it deserved a 1.0/5.0 and that was probably being generous.
Lets just say I went to see X-Files: I Want To Believe, and I really wanted to believe that the produces would do the original series justice, but the movie left me wanting to leave.
Warning Spoiler Alert If You Continue Reading
What I found most disappointing about this movie was the fact that the writers of the script seemed to start with a political motive of bashing the Catholic Church and started writing a movie around that premise. It only seemed like a forced after thought to make this in to an X-Files movie. Let me run though the facts so you can make your own mind about the movie:
- There is a pedophile psychic priest who is receiving visions of kidnappings.
- Scully is treating a dieing kid in a Catholic hospital with stem cells.
- The one priest who runs the hospital comes off as a heartless guy who cares more about money than helping the dieing kid who has a terminal brain illness.
- The movie has sort of a weak relation to this video that “mysteriously” and suddenly appeared on the internet 3 months ago. (May be too graphic for some of you)
- The bad guy is kidnapping people with AB negative blood.
- To try and find a body for another guy, who’s head they are keeping alive similar to the video above.
- Oh yeah and the kidnapper and the guy with no body are gay lovers.
- And the guy who has no body was a victim of the pedophile priest, even though they both look to be of the same age.
- Oh yeah the priest and maybe the guy with no body had cancer, I am really unclear about this.
There was an obvious ax to grind with the Catholic Church in the script, and a plot with holes big enough to drive two MAC trucks and a Boeing 747 through. It was strung together in such a way that to actually think about and make sense of the plot would make your head explode.
The movie also had some really forced and humor, one that I remember seemed to be aimed at the far left conspiracy theorists, where they showed a picture of George W. and did a spooky whistle sound and then panned over to a picture of Herbert Hoover. No idea what they were trying to get across with that, it just went right over my head, but a slight laugh came out none-the-less. By the way that scene the high point of the movie, which was about 10 minutes in.
So if you are interested in seeing a cancer-Russians-gay marriage-stem cells-clergy sex abuse-X-Files episode this movie is for you. But honestly the movie seemed so forced in to the X-Files brand that my uneducated guess is that they couldn’t sell the script, about so many topics with “arbitrary plot from yesterdays news” as Wesley Morris from the Boston Globe put it, that they had to try and apply something that would put people in seats at the movie theater.
My recommendation is that you save your 10.00 for the movie ticket and rent the original series on DVD.
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July 26th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Strangely, I have almost the opposite reaction to almost every one of your points. I thought all sides had pros and cons and were not weighted one way or the other. Scully’s connection to and struggle with her Catholic faith made sense as a movie continuation. The stem cell treatments were horrifyingly used by the bad guys but also were the only option open to that kid and his family. The bad guys are gay, but it’s also clear that they love each other very much and is willing to do anything for one another–yes, to a sickening degree. The priest is a pedophile but the suggestions that God can still work through a sinner and that sinners may be? forgiven are very spiritually positive ones.
July 27th, 2008 at 9:32 am
I don’t think they ever mentioned stem cells for the bad guys, in fact they referenced an experiment did by Russia before stem cells were ever thought of. So I don’t believe there was a balance there.
Why did that bad guy get in the state he was where they needed to keep cutting off his head and putting it on a new body.
He had a slash on his face supposedly from the opening when they were trying to kidnap the agent, but why were they after the agent in the first place. The bad guy supposedly had a perfectly working body, so why go after her, and then why chop her head off to put the other guys head on. It seemed pretty lucky that she was also AB negative blood.
My statement still stands that it seems like they took a script and just slapped X-Files on top of it. I mean the only thing that bound this movie to the original series was the fact that Mulder and Scully were in it. If you replaced it by two other characters you would have had no clue that this was in any way related to the original series.
Plus the whole plot was confusing at best, there were too many story lines to follow, and I really think most of them got left on the floor, thus giving a complete disorganized movie. The best movies have one story line, not the 5 that I counted in this movie.
Honestly this movie was worse than the whole last season search for Mulder thing. It is really sad to see a great series corrupted this way. They should have left it a lone.
July 28th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I may be remembering this incorrectly, but I thought Scully came across the experiment with the two-headed dogs in connection with her stem cell research. That’s why I thought the two medical procedures were connected. Mulder says it really quickly at the end, but that guy had lung cancer, just like Father Joe. Since the procedure only keeps a person alive for a week or two, they had to keep getting new bodies. They targeted the agent at the swimming pool. Since she had the medical alert bracelet, they knew she was blood type AB negative. The same thing applies to the other swimmer they kidnapped. To make the transplant work, their blood types have to match.
I absolutely agree that the movie didn’t feel like the XF world. It’s one of the reasons I liked it. Mulder and Scully are no longer in that world. This was a real-world case, and they got called in on it. They are six years removed and this is where they are now. It was a plus for me.
This is another difference in opinion. I liked that there were multiple threads to follow. For me, it was exciting when what seemed separate at the beginning started to come together to bring about the reveal.
July 28th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Well it is not a sign of a good movie when the major themes of the movie tha are suppose to tie everything together is lossed on the viewers. All of that totally went over my head. Plus why did the dog head thing come up, durring a search on stem cells? It was from the early 20th centure before people knew anything about DNA, much less stem cells. I think it takes a major stretch of the imagination to put anything of thes together.
The thing I liked about the X-Files was that the episodes did have a stretch but it was a believable stretch.