Reviews

An open letter to Chris Carter

Dear Mr. Carter,

As a loyal fan and viewer of your earlier work, I ventured out today to see your latest offering, “The X-Files: I Want to Believe”. My expectations weren’t high, but I figured I’d at least get a good hour and a half of smart writing and a somewhat thought-provoking plot, with a bit of nostalgia thrown in.

I wanted to believe, Chris, I really did, but I’m sorry; waving nods to the show and bizarre attempts at cued humor (none of which made any sense) could not camouflage the steaming pile of plotless crap that was this film. Did you really think you could distract us with some nostalgia and we wouldn’t realize that the movie MADE NO SENSE?! And what the hell was up with the whole Scully-as-a-pathetic-Lifetime-movie-heroine bullshit?! And what kind of doctor does medical research on GOOGLE?! Srsly!

This story might have made for a decent X-Files episode, but you stretched it past its limits and took the focus off of the weirdness and put it onto Mulder and Scully, who felt like strangers. They were written (and acted) poorly, and the story was so cut up that it was impossible to follow. This whole thing would have been vastly improved with a little bit of camp thrown in, but it was soooo serious…

I remember reading a few months back that there wasn’t going to be anything paranormal in the film, which I didn’t really care about one way or the other, as I tend to view that as something defined within the reality of the story, and not necessarily saying anything about the real world. But there is totally paranormal stuff in the movie, it’s just been repackaged as religion. A dude with psychic visions is a dude with psychic visions, whether he’s a priest or not.

You know, I thought the idea of an ongoing X-Files film series could’ve been cool, but sadly, I think you’ve blown it for good this time.

I’m going to watch some old episodes of the show and try to forget the past 3 hours of my life (I should have just given in to T3P0 and gone to Batman again).

I want my $5.50 back.

Sincerely,
Carr2d2

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39 Comments

  1. Thank you for saving me money. I was going to go to relive the worst days of my mid twenties with a bit of nnostalgia but it looks like you can never go back.

    Scully-as-a-pathetic-Lifetime-movie-heroine reminds me of the only complaint I have about The Princess Bride. Buttercup is a wimp. Scully was a skeptical hero of mine and I always pictured her pulling out her gun and killing the R.O.U.Ses and dissecting one to confirm that they weren’t supernatural. Scully should never be written as pathetic. Never.

  2. yeah…if you want the nostalgia, you’d be much better served to dust off a classic ep or two.

    and, yeah, buttercup is totally a wimp, but that movie is all camp, and it’s sort of snarkily mocking the form.

    scully as pathetic? totally unforgivable.

  3. Sadly, I agree.

    I had the same reaction when I saw Scully use Google for medical research. WTF? And the only reason she did that is because she could later sift through the papers idly and realize “Hey, that two headed dog in my Google printout is directly related to this serial kidnapping case!”

    Still, I loves me some Amanda Peet eyes. She could look into the camera for 90 minutes and it would be better than the X-Files movie.

  4. they totally wasted amanda peet. she was basically hollow slutty kill bait.
    one almost has to think that making the movie this terrible actually took effort.

  5. that’s about right…after watching that crap it’s hard to believe it’s coming from the same people that gave us humbug and clyde bruckman and eugene victor tooms. maybe they’ve all been replaced by pod people or something.

  6. Whoa, did I see the X-Files or a “god made everything because Cathavangelism is awesome” rally? Chris Carter needs to be bitch-smacked by The Flying Spaghetti Monster. The ONLY positive in the movie is that he didn’t cast Jake Lloyd as their son William (then again, at least SOMEONE would have played their son in it).
    As an Atheist who believes there is no after-life, I want that 90 minutes of my life back. ~

  7. $5.50? Really? I don’t go to movies anymore unless I’m pretty sure it’s going to be worth my $10.25. So I guess I won’t be seeing this one.

  8. It seems to me that anything with the title “I want to believe” should set skeptical alarm bells off :-p

  9. Way to crush all of my dreams! I’ll still see it, I’ll just wait to Netflix it.

  10. it was a matinee…our regular shows are between 8 and 13 dollars.
    does it make anyone else feel like a geezer when you catch yourself saying “i remember when you could see a movie for 2 dollars! (get off my lawn!)”

  11. does it make anyone else feel like a geezer when you catch yourself saying “i remember when you could see a movie for 2 dollars! (get off my lawn!)”

    And it only cost 89 cents a gallon to drive there.

  12. lol, lbb!

    actually, i saw 85 cent gas once, in, oh, 1999, something like that. have you seen my teeth?

  13. I just received the complete DVD set from Amazon: guess I’ll stick with that…

  14. Hey goodguyeatspie: have you seen “Whipped”? IMO it’s a so bad it’s good movie. Chock full’o Peet.

  15. I, for one, was incredibly creeped out by the plot enough to enjoy the movie very much! Mulder eventually got it together and became interesting near the end… minus the bumbling in with a wrench part. Who does that?!

    And as a long time shipper, it was freaking cute seeing Mulder and Scully together.

  16. nicole: i’m glad somebody liked it…so, i never did quite figure out if they were supposed to be living together or what was going on…it seemed like they were, but the way they were acting like strangers…i don’t know, it was just weird to me.

    watched clyde bruckman last night and pmp today…still brilliant after all these years.

  17. yeah…i’m kind of on an x-files kick now…after watching the movie, i had this thought that maybe the show really wasn’t that good, and it was one of those things that i liked at the time, and it wouldn’t hold up.
    but no…it was brilliant stuff, and it’s still brilliant stuff. even a lot of carter’s writing was genius. i don’t know what happened.
    oh, well, we’ll always have the good old stuff.

  18. Ummm….. Maybe my experience isn’t a good indication of the norm here, but I used to work at a hospital and Google was definitely used on a fairly regular basis. Maybe they were just shitty Dr’s and nurses?

  19. i’m no expert…clearly…i just assumed you’d use medical journal searches. as a student of anthropology, i have access to a bunch of cool journal searches that work way better than google to find stuff that i need…

    guess i was wrong.

  20. Detroitus: google does have a function but it doesn’t limit it to medical journals. It covers a lot of stuff. Check out Google Schoolar for more info.

  21. $2 Bah ha ha. When I was a kid I would go the Saturday matinee for 25 cents and get a snack to boot. I was watching Dr Who when most of you were still in diapers.

  22. Wait, you paid $5.50 to see a movie?!

    In the UK, you’re looking at 3-4 times that amount!

  23. Google Scholar is pretty useful. It tries to group together all copies of each journal article it retrieves, which often lets you find PDFs which authors have saved on their own university websites and other suchlike free copies, thereby bypassing the journal paywalls. Plus, you can find articles related to or citing the one you’re looking up — major geek fuel.

  24. i know…as i said above, it was a matinee.

    we’re actually heading to the uk a week from tomorrow, and i’m half tempted to take my husband to see the dark knight again before we go because i don’t know if he’s going to make it a week without seeing it otherwise :p

  25. blake:
    that sounds great!
    i must remember that for future use.

    for the record, in the movie, scully pulls up plain old google and types in “stem cell research” and somehow finds instructions for performing experimental stem cell brain surgery. i don’t know…seems a bit of a stretch to me.

  26. Carrie- Matinees at the AMC theaters are $5, and I believe the Wynnsong theater in Moundsview is $4 for the last matinee of the day (around 5). Also, Tuesdays are 50-cent popcorn night if you bring your own bucket (up to 3 gallons). I’m a big movie guy, and I’d be broke if I didn’t take advantage of the bargains. There’s a decent 2nd-run theater in Maple Grove, too, for $2.

    Anyway, I saw the X-files movie too, and damn you for shocking me out of my denial. I was pretty heavily disappointed too, but was of similar mind to Nicole. It’ll be a lot of work to get back there.

  27. chillzero: i was more thinking along the lines that if we see it again here before we go, then we won’t have to pay out the ass to see it over there. we’ll see how that works out.

    dread polack: i’m sorry to have burst your bubble :( or maybe i’m not…i think as a skepchick, that might be part of my job description. do what i did and use this as an excuse to go back and watch some old classic x-files. it’ll make you feel better, i promise.

    and nobody said that we all had to agree…i think no less of nicole or anyone else that liked it, it just didn’t do it for me.

  28. You’re right- it’s your job. :)

    The DVDs are in the Netflix Queue…

  29. So, in a way, I find it slightly amusing that the Cathavangelist propaganda will probably encourage it’s brainwashed….err…followers to see it, which will increase it’s box-office-revenue, which will lead Chris Carter in making the third movie starring “CSM” and coming back from the dead as Jesus lighting up a cigarette while turning the black oil into wine. ~

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