Today's exhibit: 2008's The X-Files: I Want To Believe.
Released on this day back then, the film was a vastly lower-budgeted affair than was its predecessor (1998's The X-Files aka The X-Files: Fight The Future) with a vastly less mythology-driven caper that brought former FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully back into the government circle for a very specific and grisly abduction. According to a Google.com search, the project grossed under $70 million from the global box office -- on a budget reportedly of $30 million -- but it mostly failed in its mission to re-ignite the franchise by whetting the appetite of fans to demand more X.
Here's the plot summary as provided by IMDB.com:
"Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) worked at the F.B.I. as partners, a bond between them that led to them becoming lovers. But now they're out of the F.B.I. and have begun new careers. Scully works as a staff physician at a Catholic hospital. Her focus these days is on a young boy with an incurable brain disease. Administration wants to give up on him. Scully, who feels a special bond with the boy, does not. Meanwhile, Mulder's focus is on clipping newspaper articles, throwing pencils into his ceiling and writing about the paranormal. Scully and Mulder are brought together as partners again when a special case requires Mulder's expertise, and Scully is prevailed upon to convince him to help. The case involves a pedophile priest who claims he is having psychic visions regarding the whereabouts of a missing F.B.I. Agent."
After all, they were never going to prove we weren't alone ... were they?
That's why I'll always defend 2008's I Want To Believe. It turned left when audiences and fans probably expected it to turn right, showing us the eventual strain on our beloved duo's relationship might eventually produce the resulting fracture. As much as some always wanted the pair to 'get together' (and they did), the 2008 feature showed that true love within their unique circumstances might not be enough to lead to any 'happily ever after' construct. While they may've reached a personal and professional compromise, threads were forever destined to pull them in other directions.
Also, I think Believe really set the stage for what could've, would've, and should've been a soft reboot for the franchise.
Instead of doing what the agents had done before on screens big and small, the X franchise was really at a crossroads. Their relationship had kinda/sorta run its course -- both as a couple and as government employees -- so spinning them off into new waters gave them a measure of independence they hadn't quite known before. Gone was the Higher Authority that either cooperated with them or secretly placed obstacles in their path; and in its place there was this almost macho sense of 'you came to us for us so stay out of our way' attitude. It kinda/sorta cast them in the mold of experts -- independent contractors, if you will, available as contract-for-hire to those with enough cash -- and that's what I think was an inspiration for an all-new direction.
This newfound relationship might have even occasionally put them at odds with the Federal government in ways the show handled mostly with kid gloves. As an example, suppose a UFO crashed in South America, and foreign powers came to Mulder asking for him to assist in its recovery. He could've gone on his own -- leaving Scully behind -- and then, perhaps, something goes horribly awry in the other nation. After being warning by the U.S. government not to intervene, Scully then goes rogue (or a sort), hopping the next plane to the foreign land to find her lost partner. All of this inevitably could bring the reunited pair in conflict once again with the U.S. on foreign soil; and that, too, could've pushed the door open for some other curious event.
My point is -- ahem -- not to suggest that I should be penning these stories. (I do write, I have written, but that is far from the point.) Rather, it's that I think Believe introduced a great springboard from which X could've truly re-invented itself for the cineplexes; and I'm sad that never quite happened.
X did return to the small screen a few years later; and that, too, was occasionally good but sparingly in my estimation. Putting the wheels back for a weekly go-round -- even though these were vastly shorter seasons -- made the experience feel a bit like a cash grab more than it was an authentic attempt to spin new yarns in the conspiratorial network. A once tentpole genre franchise is now mostly dark, and that's sad ... especially given the modest promise Believe offered when it had a slim chance.
-- EZ