Still out there

CHRIS Carter, the creator of The X-Files, has a message for anyone who, some time during the show’s nine-season run, threw up his hands trying to figure out exactly what was going on with the extraterrestrial abductions, the black-oil aliens, the metal sinus implants, the Syndicate, the Cigarette Smoking Man, Mulder’s sister, Scully’s baby, Mulder’s father, Scully’s cancer, the colonists, the Lone Gunmen, Deep Throat and all the rest of the show’s staggeringly complex and often murky mythology: You can come back now.

Of course there are those who never left, who have kept The X-Files alive since the series finale five years ago via online episode guides, concordances and no small amount of erotic fan fiction.

And Carter will be delighted if they show up at precisely 12.01am on July 25, the opening day of The X-Files: I Want To Believe in the US, his big-screen attempt to see whether there’s still an audience out there for the paranormal probings of the FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson).

But Carter, and 20th Century Fox, are especially interested in casual viewers who may stay away out of fear they have 202 hours of homework to do first.

There’s no need. The X-Files: I Want To Believe is, in X-Files argot, a stand-alone: a self-contained story reminiscent of several beloved early episodes in which Mulder and Scully were dispatched to a remote (but always vaguely Canadian looking) location to confront an undefined, menacing presence.

Carter promises not only scares but also a beginning, middle and end, none of them overly entangled in back story. Everyone is invited to jump aboard.

At least that’s the hope. The first X-Files film, released 10 summers ago, was so elaborately knitted into the show’s storylines that it had to open precisely between the end of Season Five and the start of Season Six. The film grossed US$84 million (RM268 million), impressing many who doubted that people would pay for a super-sized episode of a series they were used to seeing for nothing.

A decade later, in the wake of the big-screen successes of The Simpsons and Sex And The City, the TV-to-film genre has considerably more credibility. But the success of The X-Files: I Want To Believe is far from assured.

Five years out of sight is a long time even for a popular franchise.When Fox gave the go-ahead to Carter and his co-writer and co-producer, Frank Spotnitz, it came with a low budget of US$30 million.

The mere existence of a new X-Files film represents a triumph of patience and persistence. Said Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment: “The show is personal to the creative team, and the stars (just) had to line up.”

That was by no means a certainty when the series left the air. Duchovny had quit a year earlier, eager for more family time and other work. Anderson stayed until the end, but she said: “I wasn’t even sure when I would be interested in being on a film set again, period.”

Duchovny, 47, went on to make several films and now stars in the Showtime comedy series Californication. Anderson, 39, moved to London, where she established herself as an actress on stage, in British television (Bleak House) and in film (The Last King of Scotland). She is now the host of Masterpiece Classic on PBS.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe — which acknowledges that several years have elapsed — “is more about them (Mulder and Scully) and their relationship than anything we would have done in the series,” said Spotnitz.

Both actors were enthusiastic about the prospect of an instalment that did not rely on the series’ labyrinthine plotlines. “I never was able to follow the story,” Anderson said, laughing.

Duchovny said he welcomed the screenplay as a chance for “the characters to create themselves again.” “And the mythology still exists.”

The X-Files: I Want To Believe was shot in Vancouver, the series’ home for its first five years, and a place where Carter could stretch his budget.

The return to Canada was also a plot necessity.

The story, which includes roles for Amanda Peet and the rapper and actor Xzibit as FBI agents, and the Scottish comedian and actor Billy Connolly as a spooky maybe-psychic, required a location with a metropolitan area, a nearby forest and a vast amount of snow.

In April, when the two men took the stage at Comic Con in New York to unveil a brief trailer, a crowd of more than 2,000 greeted them like aging rock stars. It was clear many had been keeping the faith.

Carter and Spotnitz, both practiced in the art of revealing little, fielded questions gamely, including several inquiries about whether Scully and Mulder might ever become romantically involved. It is the Question That Will Not Die, and it perplexes Carter, who said: “I never wanted to make it simply about Mulder and Scully rather than about the quest they share.”

Audience members were still aching for plot details, and the earnest Spotnitz and the elliptical Carter were asked what they wanted cinema-goers to take away from The X-Files: I Want To Believe. “Hope,“ said Spotnitz.

All eyes turned to Carter. ”The trash under your seats,“ he said. — NYT