‘The X-Files: I Want To Believe’ Is The Movie Sequel That Never Should Have Been Made

It’s hard to believe it’s been a decade since X-Philes around the world headed to theatres to catch up with our old pals and ultimate OTP Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) in The X-Files: I Want To Believe, the second motion picture in the Fox series’ franchise. By then, the FBI’s most unwanted had aged a bit and had spent the time since the 2002 finale largely either on the run and then sequestered in an isolated house not all that far from the government headquarters they’d previously been ousted from (on multiple occasions, in fact). It was the best of times, it was the worst of times—and it made for a really terrible movie.

Granted, IWTB had a lot to live up to—the first movie, The X-Files: Fight The Future, was everything a television show’s leap to the big screen should have been. Released in 1998 between the series’ fifth and sixth season, it was not only a commercial success—it grossed nearly $190 million at box offices worldwide—but it was also a damn good film. It held true to the mythos of the series, featured some classic flirty Mulder and Scully moments, and accomplished a lot in its two hour running time. ITWB performed modestly well with $68 million in international ticket sales, especially given the fact that the show had ended nearly two decades prior. That’s where the good news ends.

It pains any longtime X-Files fan, myself included, to admit that we may have let our excitement at being reunited with Anderson and Duchovny in what will arguably remain the most defining and memorable roles of their careers (particularly for Duchovny, whose pinnacle was reached on the show) get the better of us. The ‘shippers wanted to see if Mulder and Scully had been living in wedded bliss since the finale and the hardcore mytharc lovers were curious about, I don’t know, whether any more aliens were hanging around or something? Whatever a viewer’s reason for purchasing a ticket—and I purchased multiple, venturing to the theater solo for three separate viewings—it’s clear that nostalgia was at the heart of it. Unfortunately, apart from the familiar faces of its stars, there wasn’t much of the old, lovable X-Files to be seen.

Of course, people change, and Mulder and Scully certainly didn’t have an array of options at their fingertips when the TV series ended. However, seeing Mulder gone Unabomber, complete with shaggy beard and paranoid newspaper clippings all around his office, did take the shine off things a bit. Same goes for Scully working in a hospital that more resembled a haunted mental institution from the early 1900s. It was good to see her continuing to use her medical degree in some sense, but talk about depressing.

Still, that wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg when it came to all the things wrong with this movie. Between the inexplicable casting—Amanda Peet, Xzibit, and Billy Connolly all starred along Anderson and Duchovny—and the dull, nearly nonsensical, no-stakes plot of a disgraced priest with supernatural visions, the odds were stacked against it from the beginning. Duchovny and Anderson had moved onto other projects and seemed to struggle to get into the characters they’d lived and breathed for so long, which was another awkward element. Add in the fact that someone (show creator Chris Carter, King of Terrible Decisions, seems a likely culprit here) thought it’d be a good idea to make it a standalone “horror” rather than incorporate any of the original series’ mythology and you have a recipe for an underwhelming and at times downright terrible movie. You only have to look at the Rotten Tomatoes rating of a paltry 31% to see how widespread that opinion is.

Of course, any movie that puts Dana Scully in a bikini on a rowboat off the coast of a tropical island as the ending credits roll has no right to even call itself part of The X-Files franchise. It was odd writing choices like this—though that was certainly the most egregious—that were frequent throughout the film and really dulled the shine of what made The X-Files so magical in its heyday. What fans wanted was to see our favorite characters again, but what we got was a marginally recognizable version of Mulder and Scully at their absolute worst, thrown into a case no one cared about (not even the characters, it often seemed).

No one knew it then, but IWTB served as an unfortunate predecessor of Fox’s revival of the series for a tenth and eleventh season. While the characterization somewhat improved once The X-Files was back in its original medium, I think even the most ardent fan breathed a sigh of relief when Anderson—the biggest asset the show has ever been lucky enough to have—gracefully bowed out of the possibility of any further seasons. No matter how much we love Mulder and Scully, it’s probably better at this point to let them go. Hopefully this way, we can remember the good times and forget everything that came since I Want To Believe (and, well, Season 9 of the original show, but that’s a whole other article).

Jennifer Still is a writer and editor from New York who cares too way much about fictional characters and spends her time writing about them.

Where to stream The X-Files: I Want To Believe