A "review" of The X-Files: I Want to Believe

So. Many. M&Ms.

Monk dragged us out to see the new X-Files movie, and almost from the get-go I was reminded of one very simple fact that nagged at me throughout the film: I don't exactly miss these characters in my normal, everyday life.

I watched the TV series. I joined the fan club. I drank the Kool-Aid. The X-Files was a great show up until it got so contrived and convoluted that I couldn't even keep up with who'd cloned whom, or something about Scully's alien baby being the key to unlocking supersoliders or...something.

At least this time around, they've smartly decided to keep the continuity down to three characters and a throwaway reference to Clyde Bruckman. Kudos to them. The movie itself quickly falls into the standard mixed-signal, flip-flopping formula that was so popular on most of the primetime lineup of the Fox Network in the mid to late 1990s:

Scully: Mulder, I want you to go back to being a conspiracy nut.
Mulder: No.
Scully: Pretty please?
Mulder: OK. Let's interrogate the prime suspect for five minutes and make some snap decisions about the veracity of his claims. I really think that this man has powers that conventional science can't explain.
Scully: That's poppycock. You're getting too involved and I want you to quit this case.
Mulder: What the hell? Not until I've marched through the dark, spooky woods of someplace that's most assuredly not Vancouver.
Scully: Are we going to get separated only to have one of us be nearly killed by the monster?
Mulder: I guarantee it.

The big problem with the first X-Files film was that it fell into the garbage pile of the "mythology" continuity that made no fucking sense whatsoever. You see, aliens from ten thousand years ago were going to invade, but that was to protect us from some even worse aliens, and there was some viscous black tar that was sentient and acted as a mind-controlling messenger or...something. I don't rightly recall. They've banished the cigarette-smoking conspiracies this time and focused on the good-old "something lurchin' in the woods" formula that made the show so much fun to watch in tightly self-contained episodes back in the day.

It's also comforting to know that our heroes can't get their guns knocked out of their hands in the first ten seconds of any kind of attack scene if they don't carry pistols in the first place.

That being said, the film itself was aimless, convoluted, and uncompelling. Events happened for no reason, clues and connections were presented magically with no explanation, wrecked cars are perfectly functional in the next scene, and what's probably most indicative of the flaw in the format, the first missing person isn't even important to the conclusion of the case. Without explaining anything, y'know, useful, the film just leaves you hanging when it comes to logical justification for anyone's actions. It's a total whatthefuckism that just leaves you scratching your head, shrugging your shoulders, and desperately trying to hang on as the plot folds in on itself like a dying neutron star.

All told, I've consumed more peanut M&Ms today than in a very long time, so at least some good did come of watching this movie. The red ones are my favorite because now that they're back, eating them feels like I'm doing something wrong.