Okay, I just got back not too long ago from watching the new X-Files movie. Subtitled “I Want To Believe”, it turned out fairly well, but nowhere near as well as it could have.  What separated this movie from greatness, you ask?  Simple.

They forgot their canon.

The first, and best so far, X-Files movie, subtitled “Fight the Future”, watched like a huge, extra-special episode with everybody from the Cigarette Smoking Man to The Lone Gunmen cropping up for a special two-hour romp with Mulder and Scully.  It FELT like a normal episode, even down to the inevitable snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory that was standard for an X-Files episode, and was so solidly executed that it was on par with Japanese anime that often features sudden reversal of fortune as a plot device.

The X-Files could have schooled Cowboy Bebop, that’s how good it was.

But the second one, I Want To Believe, felt much worse going in.  Only Mulder and Scully (and in a brief cameo, Director Skinner) made appearances.  Of course, Carter et al were already stretching the limits of their audience anyway by bringing out this sequel fully TEN YEARS after the original, but what made it worse was how badly unrelated to The X-Files it actually was.  If it weren’t for Mulder and Scully (and in a brief cameo Director Skinner), I couldn’t tell you I was watching an X-Files property at all.  Without that handful of recognizable character, this would have been a totally different–and actually, possibly better–science fiction movie.  If they’d named it, say, “Headslicers” or “The Brain Pan Swap” or even something cute yet stupid like “Heads Up”, it wouldn’t have had that onus on it to BE AN X-FILES MOVIE.

“I Want To Believe” needed to obey its own canon and start up right at the end of “Fight The Future”.  It needed to be going back after the Cigarette Smoking Man and wrapping up that convoluted alien plot, not embarking on Something Completely Different (Monty Python fans recognize the irony right off) for no clear reason other than to loot audiences’ wallets one last time by dredging up a past license.

I don’t know why Carter et al didn’t bother to carry on with their own established canon and instead do something out of the blue.  All I know is that it was not the best of moves, and if in another ten years we get The X-Files: Rest Home Alone, I doubt I’ll be in line.

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