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By the end of that lunch, Mike had asked me to do an episode guide for the first season (The first of eight—Fango decided not to cover the last season), thus starting the relationship I have had with the magazine to this very day. And now, six years after Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny walked away from the FBI and the mess of monsters, paranormal powers and conspiracies the series had become, I find myself sitting in front of the television again while Mark Snow’s atonal score squeezes through the speakers. Every time I try to leave, series creator Chris Carter and co. find some way to drag me back in…

The reason for all this reflection is Fox’s three-disc release (including a digital copy, coming December 2) of THE X FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE, the long-promised second theatrical film based on the series. The movie has literally been years in the making, as talk of doing a sequel to 1998’s first X FILES feature has been going on since the series wrapped in 2002. Now, granted, that film was mired in the series’ mythology, to the point where it seamlessly fits between seasons five and six. I WANT TO BELIEVE was designed to be more accessible to the non-fans, a self-contained tale that would not require an encyclopedic knowledge of the series—but it’s not entirely successful in that sense.

The story begins with the abduction of and search for an FBI agent, headed by Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet). When a pedophile ex-priest, Father John Crissman (Billy Connolly), comes to Whitney with information he claims he received in a series of visions, Whitney and her assistant Drummy (the rapper Xzibit) reach out to the retired X-Team, hoping Mulder (a mountain-man-bearded Duchovny) can determine if Father John is a legitimate psychic or not. The case will lead to a crisis in Mulder’s relationship with Scully (a long-haired Anderson), some assistance from former director Skinner (an unchanged Mitch Pileggi) and a wacked-out resolution that involves former Soviet surgical experiments that recalls certain bad ’70s exploitation movies.

The good news is that, as promised, Carter and co. have presented us with a movie that’s akin to a stand-alone episode. The bad news is…well, that Carter and co. have presented us with a movie that’s akin to a stand-alone episode. This is the kind of story that would fit well within the last half of the series’ run—at the episodes’ 48-minute length. After watching such a scenario stretched out to an hour and 44 minutes, the viewer is struck by how many of the show’s deficiencies were masterfully hidden by the hour-long format. The script seems padded out to an amazing degree, especially with a threatened break-up between Mulder and Scully that comes off as forced and unnatural. There are plot threads that are introduced and then dropped, particularly involving Connelly’s Father Crissman; apparently, there was a deleted scene (different from the one presented amongst the DVD’s special features) with Scully confronting Crissman that gave him a better resolution. Here, it seems like he’s around just so Scully can rail at him for being a pedophile and to help along the aforementioned forced romantic crisis before disappearing entirely about two-thirds of the way in, and given a final fate that’s mentioned but not dramatized. When the reason for the abductions is revealed, it comes off as an overcomplicated plan for what it’s supposed to accomplish. And on the wide screen, Vancouver cannot pass for Washington, D.C., West Virginia or its environs.

And that so-called accessibility? It isn’t there. The film behaves as if it’s the next segment of the series, assuming a familiarity with the protagonists and their backstory that interferes with non-fans connecting. There are references to past cases (I have to admit, I was particularly pleased with the namechecking of Clyde Bruckman, indicating that Carter hasn’t abandoned everything about the Morgan and Wong years), visual cues that are shamelessly designed to cause fans to applaud and a scene in bed where Mulder and Scully discuss their absent son William. (Incidentally, what’s up with the film showing that the two are obviously living together, yet they’re still calling each other by their last names?). Hell, the major motivation for Mulder to become involved rests on yet another dredging up of his sister’s abduction—a plotline that was resolved twice in the series proper.

The acting is fine throughout, although Xzibit is apparently intent on keeping his street cred by being surly and antagonistic toward, well, everyone. Unfortunately, most of these characters are ciphers—I was unaware that Peet’s Agent Whitney had a crush on Mulder until it was mentioned in the 90-minute making-of documentary that makes up the second disc—and it’s hard to care for any of them. Given what little the cast has to work with, a padded plot and a rather silly resolution, what we have is a movie that will, I’m sure, satisfy hardcore fans—especially the “shippers” who caused the show to crash and burn into soap opera in its last two seasons—but will leave more casual fans and new viewers as cold as the obviously CGI’d snowstorms leave I WANT TO BELIEVE’s cast.

The special features include the aforementioned feature-length docu, which gives a light once-over to much of the behind-the-scenes stuff we expect in favor of an intense discussion of the lengths to which Carter went to avoid the film’s plot being leaked before its release. A lot of that information is duplicated in a commentary track with Carter and co-writer Spotnitz, although more of it is spent identifying the many, many people on screen who had some involvement with previous Ten Thirteen series. Overall, it’s a load of back-patting, with occasional interesting little nuggets scattered throughout (like how the row of mailboxes in a key scene are all labeled with the names of the original writing staff).

Rounding out the package are the atmospheric domestic and international trailers; a fascinating tour of the special FX shop; a strange six-minute rant by Carter about “green production” where he lists all the things this film did to cut down on waste; a gag reel; an anti-smoking public service announcement that has nothing to do with the movie; and a so-called “music video” of an Xzibit song that doesn’t appear in the film, and is nothing more than still pictures (not film clips) from the movie cut to the beat. Oddly enough, the one tune you would expect to have an accompanying clip—UNKLE’s reworking of Snow’s theme—is not here.

Oh, and for those of you curious about the “extended cut” on this release—fully half of the additional four minutes is taken up by an extended closing-credits sequence which adds photos of every single person who worked on the film. And the other half is just more scenes of Scully crying and angsting over a subplot involving one of her patients.

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