Taki Magazine

If you believe The Truth is Out There, then I highly recommend that you avoid the latest “X-Files” movie , stay in, and read Tom Piatak’s fantastic article on the conservative impulses in the original series. Even a perusal through “The X-Files”’s rather fascinating and discursive Wikipedia entry would be more rewarding than a viewing of I Want to Believe.

In the new film, “paranormal activity” is nowhere to be found. The only gesture towards The Unknown is a boy-buggering priest who may or may not be receiving a psychic messages—less spooky than creepy and silly, if you ask me. All anti-government angst and suspicions have been banned. There’s no sinister figure in the corner of the room wearing a dark suite and ominously http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Jsq8QzpSw&feature=related >smoking cigarettes, who might just be in league with some nefarious aliens bent on colonizing the planet, for instance. In his stead are the kinds of smarty-pants, tech-savvy crime solvers you’d expect to meet in an episode of CSI. The topic of religion is broached in a subplot regarding stem-cell therapy, but again, it’s all more “hot-button” than theological.

In the original series, Chris Carter & Co. were far more willing to take chances. 

I actually wasn’t into “The X-Files” during its heyday, and, in fact, it was only a few months ago that Tom Piatak told me how much I’d been missing, and how much Sam Francis loved the series. Since then, I’ve been on a “X-Files” Netflix binge.

In the original pilot, while Scully and Mulder are ivestigating a series of mysterious disappearances, Mulder reveals to his new partner that he believes his sister was abducted by aliens and that he’s forever searching for her. “The X-Files” is, of course, famous for its big “mythology” running through the whole series, and immediately after watching episode #1, I came up with the ultimate transcendent, shock ending: Mulder would discover that his long-lost sister is in fact—Scully! (Perhaps a bit Wagnerian, but it would have been cool.)

Sadly, no such rapturous, bring-everything-together climax of this sort was even attempted. But then perhaps the “mythology” was always a bit of a myth. Along with “tune in next week” cliff-hangers, “The X-Files” always included periodic entrances of unknown strangers giving dire but exceedingly vague warnings of … well.. something. As this kept up, I’m sure a number of fans began to have a sneaking suspicion that it all wasn’t actually leading anywhere and that Chris Carter might just be making it up as he went along. I Want to Believe only adds to one’s worry that, in truth, perhaps there wasn’t a lot of there out there.