X-Files: I Want to Believe (X-Files 2) - Preview

X-Files: I Want to Believe (X-Files 2) Movie Poster

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Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Release Date: 2008-07-25

Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly

Directed by Chris Carter

Produced by Chris Carter. Frank Spotnitz

Written by Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz

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Previewed by Josh Tyler : 2008-06-26 01:28:11

In grand "X-Files" manner, the film's storyline is being kept under wraps. This much can be revealed: It is a stand-alone story in the tradition of some of the show's most acclaimed and beloved episodes, and takes the complicated relationship between Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson) in unexpected directions. Mulder continues his unshakable quest for the truth, and Scully, the passionate, ferociously intelligent physician, remains inextricably tied to Mulder's pursuits.

The X-Files may have been legally dead for the past ten years, but the once popular franchise’s fans are still alive and kicking. All it took was the announcement of a new movie to get former X-Files fanatics out of their PTA meetings and onto the internet, scouring for information about future of a franchise they’d probably long ago written off as finished business.

Unfortunately those now somewhat older fans fired up their Dell Desktops and found not the loving embrace of a returning franchise reaching out to its re-energized fanbase. What they found instead was secrecy, paranoia, and worse, flat out disinformation rumored to have been released by the very people those fans were intent on supporting. The truth isn’t out there. It’s all part of Hollywood’s new policy of inviting franchise fans to quite simply drop dead.

X-Files 2 isn’t the first to do it, or even the only franchise doing it right now, it’s just the most blatant. Gone are the days when movies like Lord of the Rings used the power of internet to reach out to fans, to bring them along with the production. At the time, we thought sites like LOTR’s TheOneRing.net and Superman Returns’ BlueTights.net were starting a revolution in fan/filmmaker interaction. And even though those and other similar endeavors to bring fans right into the middle of major movie productions were a success, Hollywood seems to have chosen to scapegoat them for every hiccup the industry has had since. X-Files 2 is part of a new attitude in fan/franchise relations. An attitude which says “screw all of you, we’d rather have our tickets bought by bawdy, half-retarded teenagers who don’t give a shit”.

The door may be closed, leaving fans of big, genre franchises like X-Files on the outside looking in, but that doesn’t have to mean the movie won’t be any good. Even though there have been rumblings from the X-Files team which indicate that catering to fans isn’t exactly their first priority, it’s hard to imagine a movie which colors so far outside the lines that it’ll be anything less than instantly recognizable as the old familiar X-Files style. If creator Chris Carter and his crew are truly intent on bringing in new fans to replace the now over 30 and therefore less desirable ones they have, the worst you can expect is a Mulder/Scully dance number, or perhaps some sort of alien American Idol competition. I’m voting for Xenu, after all he trained John Travolta.

In the end, no one will care if they reached out to fans, if they lied to them, if they mislead them, or even if Chris Carter get sidetracked by a Scientology dance break, as long as the movie is good. At some point you’ll get a trailer, you’ll get a poster, you’ll see the movie, enjoy it, and five minutes later forget about it. Maybe it’s for the best.

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