A Letter to Chris Carter: The X-Files Movie Kinda Sucks

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SO, WHY A new "X-Files" movie?

In the end, I blame Hollywood's discovery of the many ways to cash in on nostalgia.

The last few years have brought to aging fans movies based on 1980s cartoons, movies that are sequels of sequels of sequels, and remakes of movies that should never, ever be remade.

Even Indiana Jones came back in "The Crystal Skull" older, wiser and still kicking ass for a shot at making another buck.

So it's no wonder Chris Carter wanted to try to squeeze a few more dollars from us former 13-year-old fangirls. (And a few is all he got: "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" took in a disappointing $10.2 million during its opening weekend.)

Also, we deserved it. You could say "I Want to Believe" is to "The X-Files" what "Serenity" was to "Firefly" — a vanity project just for the fans. Except that 1) "The X-Files," unlike "Firefly," ended too late instead of too soon, and 2) Six years is way too long to try to come back from the shark-jumpy last few seasons.

Why is Chris Carter so determined to cut off this dead horse's head, reattach it to an older, sadder horse, and then beat it?

Immediately after the series (mercifully) ended, there was talk of building "The X-Files" into a movie franchise, with our beloved agents chasing monsters-of-the-week again every year or two on the big screen. If that was ever the case, this movie would have been the perfect way to recover the lost grace of the pre-Doggett episodes, if it could find writers deft enough to fill in the lost time without too much awkwardness.

But instead, they threw away their greatest asset, which would have been, well, a STORY.

What about Amanda Peet? Why is she a big Mulder fan, and what authority did she have to call him in on this case? Why can't she be the new Monica Reyes, but less whiny and a little hotter? During the scene where Mulder (and his Jack-From-The-Fourth-Season-of-"Lost" beard) are reviewing the case with her, I almost got an "X-Files: The Next Generation" vibe, and that was exciting.

Even as former FBI agents, Mulder and Scully have plenty of potential as mentors to a new class of alien-hunters. But no, Amanda Peet, the potential hope of this movie franchise, has to go and die in a cringe-worthy and needless fashion while Xzibit plays "Se7en" with the organ cooler.

Here's the thing: This was not really an "X-Files" movie. It had two people who kinda looked like Mulder and Scully, and it made some vague references to an FBI case, and threw in an old psychic guy (vastly inferior to Clyde Bruckman, and even the Stupendous Yappi) to keep it "interesting."

But like this movie's victims of Frankenstein-like transplantation, it was all head and no heart.

Duchovny and Anderson put in great performances as Mulder and Scully (I especially enjoyed Scully's Dr. House-esque attitude toward her superiors), but with them finally "together," plus the unavoidable half-decade that's passed since they've played these characters, a lot of the tell-tale chemistry just wasn't there. Even as a die-hard shipper (I dressed up as Scully for Halloween. Twice.), I would have rather seen them playing their old games instead of jumping blindly into this forced new "couple" role (though Scully does get to say "He's not my husband!" for the hundredth time).

There were hints of the charm and adorable snark that permeated the good years. Anderson, especially, hasn't lost her spot-on eye-rolling abilities. But the plot and screenplay, while exhibiting flashes of an above-par episode, just don't seem like things Carter and his writers had very much passion for.

I get the snowy, Fargo-like landscape, the attempts at suspenseful editing, and overall, the desire to make the fans happy (Skinner hugging Mulder in the cold, anyone?). But "I Want to Believe" is just a run-through that runs aground, and the writers really should have known better.

So, a message to Chris Carter: if all you want is some fan fiction, please, please, just let the fans write the next movie, if there is one.

Oh, and bring back Krycek. I want to believe this isn't how it ends.

Written by Express contributor Afton Lorraine Woodward

Photos by Diyah Pera/20th Century Fox