Eighteen years ago (!), in the middle of the summer, a little winter-set thriller was released against the latest Christopher Nolan pompous blockbuster. Incredibly, the story repeated again this year — instead of waiting for a more fitting time like winter, the new cut of IWTB was released in the middle of the summer. When in 2008 the release date was dictated by a writers’ strike that left little else for Fox to release that summer, what can be the motivation for this release?
A few (belated) words on the Director’s Cut of “The X-Files: I Want To Believe”, “Vrach Frankenshteyn” (what a mouthful!).
Carter has tried to promote it extensively — I covered here no less than 30 interviews with him — but all in all there is little to say. The changes are, paradoxically, few and many at the same time. Overall, they do little to change my rather lukewarm appreciation of the film.
Eighteen years of fan analysis and time passing have been kind to the movie. There are a number of things that can be said in the movie’s favour that might not have been obvious at first viewing. The movie’s script is dense with interconnections between its various storylines: the “don’t give up” motto echoes through Scully and the boy she wants to save, through Mulder and pursuing the case, through the “evil” lovers wanting to save one another just as Scully holds on to Mulder even as darkness have a way of finding them. The viewer is challenged upon to think of the concept of Christian forgiveness when faced with a pedophile priest, who is used as a conduit to stop further crimes. There are plenty of narrative coincidences — like Scully finding out about the two-headed dog experiments by searching for an unrelated procedure, or Scully finding the compound via the numbers of the scripture Father Joe quoted — become examples of meaningful synchronicity when viewed from a mystic or religious angle. The first half of the movie is a remake of “Beyond the Sea” with religious elements while the second half is the Frankenstein part with more horror. It is first a questioning of whether morals mean something taking place in a frigid climate, before a figurative descent to Hell full of dirt and blood, and an optimistic ending that takes place in a sunlit spring day with snow melting. The story is about alien abductions performing experiments on women, but of a different sort than the show’s mythology. Some who are more attuned to this movie than me have been quite perceptive about all this.
It must be said, the quality of the photography in undeniable: this was shot on film and you can tell. The cold blue colours in the snow scenes, the warm oranges of the domestic scenes, the grain in the horror scenes. Revisiting this after being saturated with the badly lit digital scenes of most of current productions is a bowl of fresh air.
And then there are all the issues — a slow and unengaging beginning and an anti-climactic ending, unmemorable villains, forced character decisions, some odd choices a bit all over. Despite the above, my feelings haven’t changed much.
So what does the new Director’s Cut do to enhance the experience?
Overall, it is the same movie. There is no new dialogue whatsoever. We learn nothing new about the “bad guys” of the film, who remain unnamed (!) (apart from fleeting glimpses at some paperwork). There is no new scene and much of what is “new” was actually already there in the original Extended Cut/Director’s Cut from the DVD/BluRay release. How could it be any different? The script didn’t have any extra material, and the shooting was holden to the script; even the novelization, based on the script, had nothing extra. Any changes are due to editing — and to what was cut.
Some tighter editing, especially during the first third, helps the movie get along. This is welcome, although despite these efforts the first half is still a slog to this viewer! Some attempts at making the pacing faster make no narrative sense, like the cross-cutting between Scully talking with Christian’s parents and the police questioning the bad guy.
In filmmaking, the editing of image and soundtrack are conceived as parts of a whole: as a result of the changes in the editing, in several places Mark Snow’s music has been changed for a better fit. The orchestral/electronic mix has been substituted with music from the revival series, with its fast rhythmic percussions and tense moments. It does the job of creating an atmosphere typical of a thriller, although I quite liked Snow’s score.
Some superfluous and fancy bits are cut (the dated George W Bush joke, Agent Drummer flirting with Mulder; but I will miss that shot of Mulder digging in a pile of sunflower seeds). Some baggage from the series is cut out, making this more stand-alone and approachable for new fans (exposition to Father Joe about who Mulder is, references to William and Samantha), although in the process we lose the parallels to our agents’ past lives that inform their emotional state. In particular, the references to William are gone, but the line to Scully “If you were a mother you’d understand” is kept, which is like going half-way there in doing the removing, oddly. A mixed bag.
Some scenes are moved around in an effort to make some of the narrative connections I mentioned earlier. The scene of Scully performing the surgery on Christian is now bookended by scenes of the abducted woman witnessing the horrific surgery performed by the Frankenstein-like doctor. We understand the parallel of using science for good or of using science to inflict pain, with both stemming from wanting our loved ones to survive. Unfortunately, Carter has substituted one of Mark Snow’s best tracks, “The Surgery”, with Clannad’s theme for “Harry’s Game”, which is a beautiful song in of itself but I don’t see what it is doing there. The only way I can justify this decision is that Snow’s track was too ethereal, warm and hopeful; the new edit juxtaposes both surgeries and the horrific elements make Snow’s track out of place — but the new track is not a much better fit.
The main selling point for this new cut has been to make it the scary film that was always intended. Compared to the original theatrical cut, the whole climax of the film on the “Frankenstein” compound runs longer, allowing us to see more of what is being done. But as far as I can tell, it differs little or not at all from the original director’s cut. See this comparison.
The main difference in runtime is actually what has been cut from the scenes where Mulder and Scully are together. The new cut makes away with the romance entirely, even mentions to a “home” are removed, to the point where one might think they are not living together and indeed are not together whatsoever (things were rather unclear back then, even reviews of the original cut thought that Scully just visited Mulder’s home; imagine now!). As a person who is attracted to this show for its stories and how these characters relate to them, rather than the romance, I am a bit conflicted. I do welcome the removal of some lines that are completely uncharacteristic of The X-Files (like the scratchy beard tease) and I can even live without the final kiss, although I don’t quite see why it should be removed. However, several scenes no longer work because the Mulder-Scully bits have been trimmed. There are some hard cuts from one scene to the next that don’t feel natural, like when Scully is thinking in bed. The whole Mulder-Scully argument about getting involved in the case feels even more rushed and forced and at the same time not quite there because it is not the focus of the film. In my review of the original, I had conceded that I had so many issues with the “monster of the week” plot that the best part of the movie was how it explored the Mulder-Scully relationship, how the plot was more a background. The new cut wants to return to an early seasons dynamic where the focus is back on the investigation. But what is lost is the emotional connection to these characters. All the scenes in this movie were conceived and shot in a certain way: the original intent still half-remains in what is left and the attempt to remove the relationship is only half-achieved. They would have to have done extensive reshootings to make this fit. The movie is less strong because of it.
Most of the work that went into this new cut, in terms of time spent to do it, is actually nearly unnoticeable of you are not intimately familiar with the original. Carter and his editors have gone back to the original footage and re-examined it in-depth. Many scenes are the same but some shots are different: a different take of the same shot, the same shot but from a different point of view, a reaction shot instead of the shot of who is doing the talking… For Carter, who complained that post-production was done under a big time pressure, this was done to make the best edit out of the material available. It took a lot of dedication; but for these changes I can’t tell what is best. Some more dedicated fans have already done a detailed comparison.
All in all, one is left to wonder: who is this for? It’s far from deserving some of the vitriol it’s getting. With fewer connections to the show’s larger storylines, tighter editing, less romance and more violence (but no more than the original director’s cut!), Carter is marketing this is a film for old fans to revisit or, especially, for new fans to discover. However, even with these changes, I cannot imagine that anyone that would want their friends to discover The X-Files would recommend this over so many other options. What’s more, who would know about this if not the fans? In the USA, it is on Hulu under a separate entry; but in the rest of the world it is on Disney+ under the extras to the original cut, making it extremely unlikely for anyone but hardcore fans to see; and unless you are a fan of physical media the original director’s cut, which is arguably the superior of the three cuts, is nowhere to be seen. So why release it now? This cut feels more of a pet project of Carter’s, asserting the intellectual ownership of the brand just as the huge corporation actually owning it is about to give it away to newer hands. If it could eventually lead to more X-Files being made by him, all the good for him!
Now I wonder if there is out there the possibility for an even heavier cut. I imagine a cut that tries to keep it as close as possible to the length of a double episode of the series, complete with opening titles and a cliffhanger in the middle. Or, why not go all the way with this surgery? Away with the sick boy and psychic priest storyline and those silly end credits: if you are going to put Frankenstein in the title, focus on that. Mulder and Scully come to investigate disappearances and the findings of body parts, even tighter pacing, some plot relevant dialogue repurposed as voice-overs over phone calls, most of it takes place in the still-unnamed-bad-guys’ compound, Mulder and Scully wonder about the darkness in the world, end. It would lack all the depth of the original, but it might be an entertaining 45 minutes.
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