The X-Files I Want To Believe – Not?

Even though it dealt with the “lesser-known” / “less popular” aspects of the iconic TV series, does the second 2008 The X-Files feature film begs the question, “when is an X-Files movie not an X-Files movie? 

By: Ringo Bones 

It did receive mixed reviews by most of the fans and critics alike when the series creator Chris Carter decides to make a feature film about the more esoteric subject matter of the iconic TV series The X-Files. As the film premiered back in July 23, 2008 when it was already more than five years since the final episode of the TV series aired, most – if not all – The X-Files fans had been left wondering after seeing it if it was actually an X-Files movie at all as opposed to some J.J. Abrams style reboot. 

Even though The X-Files TV series is more famously known for its theme of the U.S. government denial / lack of full disclosure of the U.F.O. crash at Roswell, New Mexico back in July 20, 1947, Chris Carter’s The X-Files is also known for tackling other topical uncomfortable subject matters like “Christian Terrorism” during the wake of Timothy McVeigh’s terror attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City back in April 19, 1995 – not to mention Special Agent Fox Mulder’s “inexplicable” knowledge of Christian hagiography and Christian historicism supposedly reserved only for ordained priest and higher-echelon members of the clergy. 

There’s maybe a dearth of C.I.A. recovered alien technology cover-up in the movie The X-Files I Want To Believe, but other “B-List” The X-Files subjects are tackled with a scrutiny akin to that of the series’ mid 1990s heyday. Like the largely unknown to the general public but quite successful science of xeno-transplantation done by both the United States and the then Soviet Union during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Not to mention clairvoyance / telepathy / remote viewing in which the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency spent millions in scientific research and evaluation of the phenomena during the first half of the 1970s on what is now known to the general public as “Project Stargate”. All in all, The X-Files I Want To Believe probably only appeals to the smarter / nerdy echelons of The X-Files fanbase still fascinated with F.B.I. agents Mulder and Scully’s quite esoteric but thinly-veiled critique of Organized Christianity.