Chris Carter is really extraordinary. He has displayed exceptional talent at various times in his career, as director, writer and producer. It is, of course, the curse of the showrunner that every show, eventually, runs its course. Naturally showrunners make mistakes too. And inevitably they burn out.
What makes Chris Carter really amazing is not a lack of talent, a burnout or even too many mistakes. Chris Carter built an absolute gem in "The X-Files", but at every possible opportunity he presses the self-destruct button. He doesn't make too many mistakes, he makes just one and then runs with it until the show is nearly in the ground, yet keeps enough quality around him to drive the viewer wild. The final couple series of "The X-Files" made people run mad not because they were shit, but because the potential for it to be good was palpable. The awful mytharc was infuriating because it could have been so much better. The cringingly bad "freak of the week" stories were so cringeworthy because they were up against episodes that were quite literally the best things on television. In effect, Chris Carter puts together the bad and the good in such close proximity that one feels like a teacher observing a student flunk their exams despite having aced their coursework.
I could not have approached "I Want to Believe" with more good-will, even though every review tried to discourage me from this. Mulder and Scully are old friends of mine that I haven't seen for a while (except on my copious DVDs). And actually, it is not a bad film. It is just not an especially good one. It is, in truth, an average thriller. There is very little of the paranormal in it, and while I massively appreciate the non-mytharc nature of it (I truly believe I would have run screaming from the cinema if I had heard the word "colonisation"), a little more of it being an actual X-File as opposed to a somewhat grisly earthbound, albeit odd, crime. Anyway, the whole thing takes place in a desolate Frozen North which is allegedly West Virginia, but is of course Canada. Mulder and Scully, like the audience, are older, wiser and sadder. The humour has pretty much evaporated, as of course has the steamy sexual tension, replaced with "My God, I love you but you drive me CRAZY!" tension familiar from every adult relationship (or is that just me?) It's not as charming as the TV show at its best, but then this isn't Clinton-era America, this is post-9/11 when paranoiacs don't need to be looking to the sky to feed their obsessions. Happily, there is a throwback to happier days as the villains include Russians, the traditional scurge of Mulder and Scully.
But the cinema was empty, almost literally. We had booked in advance, and there was most seriously no need. Everyone went to see The Dark Knight instead, which is a superb film, but I haven't the warmth of feeling for it that I have for The X-Files. Where's the loyalty?! As we sat there, Monkey pointed out that the kids of today probably don't even remember the X-Files, and the film certainly seems to accept that the people watching it will be of a certain age doing so from nostalgia for happier days. The X-Files has gone from being the crazy kid to the dignified veteran.
This must be rectified at once. Fresh viewing blood is needed!
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