I Want to Believe THE X-FILES 3 Will Be Good

If you've seen Chris Carter's THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE (and your name's not Josh), then you know how disappointing it was. Nine years of quality television (sure, to varying degrees at times) all flushed down the toilet by an irrelevant monster-of-the-week piece of bullshit.

I hated I WANT TO BELIEVE much more than I should have because of the damage it did to the overall series. I don't know what it is about Chris Carter, but he hates continuity. He hates having what happened last week matter next week. Of course, the big joke is that his show is notorious for having one of the most complex mythologies in television history. I've seen every episode of the show, and I still don't know exactly what was going on. You really need a flowchart or something.

Over the course of the series, Carter painted himself into a corner by asking too many questions and providing too few answers. In the series finale, he provided one big ominous answer, but no resolution. Many people, including myself, saw this as a decent ending, and a promise of big things to come, should a second movie ever be made.

So here we are, six years later, with a standalone movie which not only sucks, but essentially erases what we have been hanging on to for those six years. And for what?

Carter needs to realize that "surprise" does not equal "good." I WANT TO BELIEVE had been covered in a thick layer of secrecy. Fake pictures were leaked on the internet to throw would-be spoilers off the trail. Members of the press visiting the set were sworn to secrecy regarding the nature of David Duchovny's facial hair. Carter gave interviews where reporters asked questions like, "Will Frank Black be in this movie?" His responses were along the lines of "That would be interesting, wouldn't it...?" Yes! That would be interesting! Why didn't you do that instead of dicking around with psychics and Frankenstein monsters?!

Through it all, I had hoped that I WANT TO BELIEVE would do off-the-charts business. I wanted it to knock THE DARK KNIGHT out of the number one spot at the box office, and go on to become the highest-grossing film of all-time. Why? Because that would ensure the existence of THE X-FILES 3.

Logic would suggest that no one should care about THE X-FILES 3 after the shittiness of I WANT TO BELIEVE. But Carter has essentially promised that the third film will be what the second one should have been. Anyone who is familiar with the show will know that the year 2012 holds a certain amount of significance to X-Files mythology, and could even bring long overdue closure to the franchise. I want to see that happen in a big bad way.

When I WANT TO BELIEVE very predictably tanked, my thoughts went to FUTURAMA. Here's a show which was canceled, but maintained a solid fanbase. Years after its cancellation, it's getting 4 direct-to-video movies. Why couldn't Fox use that same model for THE X-FILES? Surely, a DTV movie is better than no movie at all. But deep down, I knew it would never happen.

So imagine my surprise this morning when I read a story on joblo.com about a planned DTV X-FILES movie currently being discussed by the fine folks at Fox! Please let this happen. Don't let Mulder and Scully go out like that. Give 'em just one more shot, for the fans' sake. Please!