Josh Reviews the Director’s Cut of The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Sigh, The X-Files!
I started watching The X-Files towards the end of its first season, back in early 1994. I fell in love with the show immediately, and for a number of years I thought it was the best show on television, getting better and better every year as the show’s mythology deepened. My fandom reached its peak with the lead-up to the first movie, released in June, 1998. That this amazing show was exploding onto the big screen WHILE THE SERIES CONTINUED TO RUN was mind-blowing to me. (Star Trek: The Next Generation had expanded onto the big screen only a few years earlier, in 1994, but that was only after the show ended.) While I have great affection for that first X-Files movie, at the time I was disappointed that it didn’t answer all the questions I’d hoped for, nor did it dramatically change the status quo of the show. I kept watching and loving the show after that, but the bloom was somewhat off the rose. The last two seasons were a little wobbly, after David Duchovny stepped away, though even then there were still lots of great episodes. But things petered out with a series finale that I remember finding boring, which shocked and disappointed me at the time.
That The X-Files never had a proper, satisfying ending to its story remains one of the great heartbreaks of modern pop-culture for me. The show seemed to be building up to a full-fledged alien invasion story. (“The date is set” we were told: December 21, 2012.) But that never happened. And while some of this can be blamed on things outside of creator Chris Carter’s control, this isn’t a case of a network unexpectedly pulling the rug out from under a creator. Mr. Carter and his team had several opportunities over the years to wrap up the show, and yet mystifyingly they always failed to do so. They had nine seasons of the original show, two movies, and then two seasons (16 episodes total) of the show’s revival from 2016-2018. That’s plenty of time!! (I’m especially stunned that Mr. Carter & co. didn’t better use the episodes of the revival seasons to bring the show’s many, many dangling story threads to a more satisfying conclusion.)
One of those many missed opportunities was the second X-Files movie, I Want to Believe, released in 2008. The film was a low-budget affair that eschewed any of the show’s complicated alien-related mythology, instead telling a stand-along “monster of the week” style adventure. I thought it was a perfectly OK story, but a disappointment for someone hoping for a more exciting, more momentous return to these characters and this world. (Click here for my original review.) I’ve revisited the film a few times over the year, and my feelings never really changed. It’s a perfectly enjoyable X-Files double-episode, but not at all what I wanted from an X-Files movie. (Particularly one that, for a long time, looked like the final X-Files installment.)
In a development that I never saw coming, Chris Carter has created and released a new director’s cut of the movie, and it’s been released on Disney+! (Watching The X-Files on a Disney streaming service still feels strange to me, by the way!) The new version is subtitled Vrach Frankenshteyn. (That’s apparently Russian for “Doctor Frankenstein”, which connects to the bad guys and their mad-scientist project involving stitching together human bodies.) It’s a strange choice to give the new cut such an unwieldy and not easily-understood title.
In a rarity for director’s cuts, this new version is shorter than the original. Most of the changes are not the reincorporation of material originally left on the cutting room floor. Rather, the film has been trimmed down in many ways, making this a tighter, tauter mystery story. The few small additions mostly involve some additional violence and gore (but not so much that I felt this director’s cut was significantly gorier or grosser than the original).
Cutting to the chase, I enjoyed watching this new cut of I Want to Believe. However, the experience of watching it felt very, very similar to me to that of watching the original cut. Anyone expecting a dramatically different experience will be disappointed. For all the talk in the press of how Mr. Carter’s new R-rated cut was bringing the film more into line with his original vision of a scary horror film, I didn’t find the film much scarier or more violent/horrific than it had been. The new additions (of a little more violence and blood) were barely noticeable to me. (I’m actually surprised this new version is even rated R.)
What I did notice, in a positive way, was that Mr. Carter & his team had made a lot of little cuts and trims here and there that worked collectively to pick up the pace of the film. In a good way, these changes aren’t immediately noticeable, but together they do improve the experience of watching the film. We get a tighter, more propulsive experience that is to the story’s benefit. (I’m pretty sure they’ve also retroactively cross-cut several scenes, which helps build a little tension and momentum at key points.)
What’s lost in these cuts is some of the Mulder-Scully romantic dynamic. There is almost no sense left in the film that these two are in a romantic relationship, other than a brief moment in which they’re seen talking in bed. This is a real mixed bag for me. On the one hand, we no longer have the most egregious moments of that scene of Mulder and Scully in bed together, which I found off-putting and actually specifically noted in my original review. On the other hand, there are a few moments between the two that I miss, such as their kiss late in the film. After nine seasons of a TV show in which the two were mostly platonic, those moments were big developments in this movie that otherwise ignored any of the show’s other storylines, so as a fan of this overall franchise it’s a shame to lose those scenes. On the other hand, the film does probably work better without them. (The movie always was weird in treating Mulder and Scully’s being together as something of a throwaway detail. Because the two acted for 98% of the movie in the cordial, collegial way they always did on the show, the handful of moments in which they were suddenly kissing or in bed stuck out and felt strange. So cutting most of those moments does make the movie flow better now, even though I’m bummed to lose that small but important piece of forward momentum for their characters.)
Scully’s side of the story in general is the most hit by these cuts, which slightly imbalances the movie now to her detriment. We’ve lost several scenes and moments from her storyline as a surgeon trying to save a little boy. As a fan of Scully’s character, I think this is a shame, though again I think for the film itself it’s probably an improvement to lose those moments and keep the main storyline barreling along.
Other notes:
- One change I noticed and enjoyed was the new choral piece added to the soundtrack in a mid-movie scene in which Scully is operating on that young boy she is trying to save. That was effective.
- There used to be a lame joke early in the movie, in which the X-Files theme plays over a shot of a photo of George W. Bush; in this version, that has been excised. I’m not exactly a fan of Mr. Bush, and I bristle slightly at any attempts to water over criticism of his administration (in light of the much worse things happening today), though I admit that joke was something of a groaner even twenty years ago, so the film is probably stronger without it.
- In the original version, there was a little bit of flirtation between Mulder and Agent Whitney, Amanda Peet’s character. That’s all gone here. I thought Amanda Peet’s character was potentially great and sadly underserved by the movie, so losing anything from what little we got of her is a bummer, but as I’ve felt about most of these changes, the film is stronger without those moments. They never went anywhere and were eye-rollingly cliche in trying to foment some sort of tension between the two female agents, Scully and Whitney.
- On the other hand, I do miss the few quick mentions of Mulder’s sister that have been excised. I liked those small connections to that major piece of Mulder’s backstory from the show.
- Sadly, several key members of the movie’s (and the show’s) creative team have passed away in the years since I Want to Believe’s release, so I appreciated that the dedication card at the end of the film has been adjusted to include them.
I had fun rewatching this film; I still love this franchise and these characters. In the end, I agree that this new director’s cut is an improvement over the original version, though only very slightly. This is not a dramatic reinvention, and the film’s inherent flaws remain. If you’re an X-Files fan, this is worth your time, but mostly as a point of curiosity and nostalgia. This new version isn’t going to change anyone’s mind.
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