x-files: i want to believe

Way after the fact, yet again, but man. What a rough movie. Literally rough, like even after six years it couldn't get finished right. 

I really love the X-Files. I watched it from it's second episode (I was away for the premier) to it's last, and I was really excited about finally getting the closure we all wanted... and it wasn't there. No wonder no one liked it. I came into this knowing that no one liked it and knowing that it was basically a character study and had nothing to do with the series' main points, but still-- it came across as cold, heartless, isolated. Maybe that's what he was going for, our Chris Carter who hates us, but still-- if so, he undid himself, because there was none of the sparkle and the tingle that we love between these two characters, despite the fact that DD and GA knew what they were doing and were fully in character and were trying really hard to make it work. All that snow just sort of repressed the emotional contact that a character study needs, and without it, there's little for us to care about. And it was full of weird darknesses that were not syched with the rest: a pedophile priest? I love Billy Connolly, but even he couldn't really make it work with the scraps of muguffinness he was given. Russian frankenstiens? Why? Because that dude was in love with another dude? Then why did they keep steaking female body parts to rebuild him with? Mulder and Scully breaking up? He didn't fight for her and she gave up on him too easily, adn then they were just back together and all was forgiven? And that poor sick kid, waht was his purpose? Scully kept on with his treatments, which, given the deal she made, would seem like she wasn't giving up and she wasn't running away any more, and then... she does?

I don't know. It's unfocused. It's lacking the humor that kept the show light enough to bear and the humanity that kept us invovled in their lives. I could have handled Mulder and Scully having problems, being as how this is, like, almost a decade after he went into hiding and they aren't married and she's in an opressive job and he's kinda going stir-crazy. I can handle that he'd want to get back in the field and do something, and that she might not. I can even handle the lack of mythology in favor of a new idea. But I can't handle that they'd ever be so blase about eachother's emotional involvements, and this thing that should have brought them back togther, back to where they started so they could find eachother and themselves again, it just pushed them further apart, and that fact was never dealt with, just... pushed aside. And I can't handle the tiny scraps being thown at us-- remember the other psychics you worked with? remember that kid we had? now that that's out of the way, let's never mention them again-- or the poor writing that dealt with the entanglements we were left with by not dealing with them at all-- al mean, seriously, you've been in hiding all this time close enough that a helicopter can bring you back and now you're totally forgiven on this basically small-scale case that doesn't even affect the FBI much at all? Come on.

It feels like Chris Carter doesn't like us. Or that he's grown bitter and jaded to the detiment of this idea that was so great when it started. I can see where this could have been great, but the parts aren't tied together well enough and the characters are manhandled through this loose and messy plot, and it basically just left me not caring. It's like a third season meh-episode blown up into something that can't support it's own length. And there were only three deleted scenes, so I'm not convinced that it's a failure of the editing. If it turns out that people are upset enough to want another one to make up for it, and the next one is good, I'll be greatful for it, but I don't particularly like it. Don't hate it, but I'm sad it wasn't good.