X Marks Chris Carter’s Spot
November 9, 2008

X-Files: I Want to Believe isn’t filmmaker Chris Carter’s first go-round translating his small-screen cult favorite to the big screen. While 1998’s X-Files: Fight the Future was a mid-series continuation of the TV show’s “mythology,” however, I Want to Believe (due on DVD from Fox on Dec. 2) is an old-fashioned, monster-of-the-week standalone—one that doesn’t require encyclopedic knowledge of the original series to be appreciated.

“It’s a scary movie,” Carter told VB in a recent interview. “The series mythology was a way to explore the relationship between Mulder and Scully--the movie is a continuation of that character arc.”

After five years away (the series wrapped in 2002), was it difficult for Carter to recapture the characters of Mulder and Scully—with their almost impossibly perfect balance of pure, cerebral intelligence and raw, visceral passion? 

“I did have to think about what they would say to one another and where they would be in their lives [five years after the series concluded],” Carter said. “I wanted to be right about that; a lot of care went into finding that balance.”

The future of the X-Files as a film franchise is still undetermined. But Carter has a clear roadmap in his mind of where he’d like his characters to end up.

“Everything going forward owes to everything looking back,” Carter notes. “I hope that, when we conclude, viewers will see that everything looking back was of a piece and not just meandering down dead-end streets.”

Where, when, and how the saga of Scully and Mulder will end up is still anybody’s guess. The only one who knows for sure is Carter, and he ain’t telling. When asked if he has any hints to offer hungry fans, Carter responds with a caginess worthy of the nefarious Cigarette Smoking Man himself: “There will be surprises.”

In the meantime, the rest of us will have to hunt for clues in the DVD extras. The truth is out there!--Gwen Cooper

Posted by Laurence Lerman on November 9, 2008 | Comments (0)