4. The X Files: I Want to Believe
The Politics: The long awaited X Files sequel reunited Mulder and Scully for a new case involving a pedophile priest, missing women and…stem cell research? Original X Files creator Chris Carter was the writer and director of the new X Files movie and he seemed to let his left wing politics push their way into the film.
In The X Files: I Want to Believe, Scully is fighting religious powers that be in order to perform stem cell research on a dying patient of hers. There is also a not too hidden scene where Mulder and Scully return to the FBI building and see pictures of J. Edgar Hoover and George W. Bush on either side of a door. The theme to the show starts playing and they each give each other curious and amused looks. Not to mention the pedophile priest representing a bullying position the movie took on religion at times.
Is It Any Good? Despite the film barely making a dent in the box office and making most fanboys lash out in anger, I Want to Believe was a great film that broke the franchise down to its skin and bones. It was purely about the relationship between Mulder and Scully and the struggle of faith vs. no faith. This is what the show was always truly about and I Want to Believe honored that.
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11 Comments
I have never even heard of Tiny Furniture… the title alone makes me wonder how I could have never even heard of it.
Skip it. Trust me.
Props for defending Dances With Wolves. Of all the “feel good” Best Picture winners over the last twenty years or so, it’s the least deserving of a film snob backlash.
I wouldn’t call X-Files: I Want To Believe a great movie, it’s too slow and plodding, with little suspense – but I’ll give credit to any mainstream summer film that takes on such philosophical debates with sincerity. It truly has some to say – and that more anything makes it worth watching.
Dances with Wolves is a great film, plain and simple. And I know I’m in the minority on X Files. Trust me
Dances With Wolves wouldn’t have caused controversy any other year except when it just happened to be up against Goodfellas which, in my opinion, in the best film of the last 25 years
True. I just think Dances with Wolves gets a bad rap for being such a great film. Goodfellas is a masterpiece though so I understand the point
Shall we expect a corresponding article about films with conservative/right wing values then?
I don’t see ‘…I Want To Believe’ as an anti-religious movie, and neither does writer/director Chris Carter, who stated it was about both the search for and yearning for belief in the power of faith not opposition to it. That being said, I thought it was a refreshingly atmospheric, intelligent, and thoughtful little movie that should have been released either before ‘The Dark Knight’ (not the weekend after, what were FOX thinking?) or later that year, but it wasn’t what either the audience or the hardcore X-Philes wanted to see, and suffered accordingly, a pity because it was a nice coda to the Mulder and Scully saga…
Is ‘The X Files: I Want To Believe’ really so anti-faith, let’s ask the film’s writer and director, Chris Carter about his vision for the film, to quote;
“I think that this movie is in some ways informed by those ideas: (of) science and faith.”
Where does Chris Carter stand in that debate?
“I would call myself a spiritual person. I used to call myself a non-religious person looking for a religious experience. I’d say that sort of defines me, though in these five years, I’ve come closer to faith than I’ve ever been.”
So clearly he’s not anti-faith/religion and neither is his film… subject over, case closed.
Good point. I wasn’t really trying to say it was anti religion. It may have had a few things to say about organized religion, but the X Files series has always been about faith so I never questioned the spiritual nature of the series of Carter
I wouldn’t say that the characters in Tiny Furniture represent left-wing sensibilities at all. They’re too self-centred to grasp any connection to the rest of the world at large in any way. Where does Hedonism fall on the political scale? Also, it’s an awful, awful (did I mention awful?) film.
Agreed. The less we talk about it, the better.