Mulder and Scully are about to return to the big screen with
this summer’s highly anticipated new movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe, and
quite frankly it is about damn time. Films based on TV shows have been coming
thick and fast this past few years, but if ever there was a property that
needed another shot at the big screen, it is Chris Carter’s plot heavy
paranormal investigations show. The X-Files was a huge part of my adolescence,
and I remember a world stuffed to breaking point with all manner of X Files merchandise.
The thing is, it wasn’t just a huge fanbase that the show garnered, or awards.
It brought to the fore an interest in paranormal activity, aliens and more like
the general public had never seen before.
Now we have things like Most Haunted, The Ghost Whisperer, Torchwood, and all manner of other programmes both fictional factual that owe their very existence to the X-Files. Those early years of the X-Files are some of the most entertaining and fascinating genre TV ever made, and when the movie came along in 1997 the world got a taste of what the show could look like with a proper budget. While that first film has its detractors and its faults, it was a great ride and a near-perfect transition for the characters and the situations that the show covered.
Something has seriously been missing from popular culture since Mulder and Scully stopped wandering around dark warehouses, dressed in trenchcoats and waving torches around, and that is a genuine sense of mystery. Many shows that have started since the X-Files ended have tried desperately to weld mysteries onto their core plotlines, be it LOST, Heroes or whatever, they have noticeably attempted to shove some depth into their otherwise paper thin stories in a rather clumsy manner. Backstory and depth feels tacked on.
Then there was the X-Files, which had depth to spare, and pretty much always struck the right balance of mystery and revelation. One problem many fans have is the amount of truth that was revealed at the climax of the show’s run. The truth should have stayed, at least partially, hidden. That said, the new movie doesn’t really feature the conspiracy storylines that much, although they are mentioned. The story this time around is a straight ahead X-Files paranormal tale, which is something the show did incredibly, and to this day really has no peers in that field. The world needs Mulder and Scully. It needs the X-Files. Why? Because if there are more answers than questions being asked, entertainment isn’t really all that entertaining.
Comments