I guess sometimes doing your homework before watching a movie isn’t such a great idea. If I hadn’t, I think I would have enjoyed this movie more. According to an article I read in Entertainment Weekly back in May, X-Files: I Want To Believe was suppost to be a stand-alone story that didn’t deal whatsoever with the X-Files mythos, but where Mulder and Scully get on a case that makes Mulder question his beliefs. I assumed the idea was that the roles would be reversed and Mulder would find himself suddenly becoming skeptical of something that appeared supernatural, that he “wants to believe” but is finally having a hard time doing that. But that really isn’t what happened at all. 

It’s actually a pretty decent thriller, if it just didn’t have “X-Files” in the title. It’s extremely low-key, gritty drama, and really tries to surprise, frighten, and keep you guessing without glamourous special effects or extravagant sets. Much of the movie takes place in the arctic, and dark, snowy and icy landscapes are really quite eerie, especially when given the film’s subject matter, which is about human organ harvesting. The bad guys are doing some truly horrifying stuff with human body parts, which is effective in creeping me out, but it isn’t satisfying because I’m all too aware that this is more than likely the last time we’ll see Mulder and Scully on a case. 

The show has been off the air for several years now, and though I was never a die-hard fan I have seen the final episode, and I hoped this movie would give the series more closure than that convoluted and disappointing ending. But Chris Carter wanted to do a film you didn’t have to be a fan to see, and while I really do respect that, especially since the series usually had that stand-alone feel, I also wanted something a little bigger. And if not bigger, at least something to make my brain work a little harder.

I Want To Believe feels like a long episode, and not even one of the more interesting ones, at least in basic plot. It doesn’t have the twists and turns of some episodes I can recall that  made me say, “woah, I had no idea that’s where they were going.” Mulder and Scully are a delight to watch as a team, and I’m sure fans will enjoy their banter and some of Mulder’s very witty comments. But for a casual viewer or someone who just wants to watch a good thriller (and Carter definitely made this movie for those people) it never gains much momentum and is only sometimes visually surprising, and only then in gross-out factor. There’s some moral questioning, but that mostly comes from a subplot about a young boy with a rare disease that Scully is trying to save, and it has almost nothing to do with the rest of the story. The kid was never on screen long enough for me to really care about him, and I was much more interested in Mulder, who I thought would get a real character-shift by the end of the film, and he never did.

The movie is about people’s beliefs, not about what really is “out there” and certainly not about aliens. I knew there would be no aliens going into it, and I was fine with that. But the only supernatural thing about it was a creepy ex-priest and convicted pedophile named Father Joe who claims to have visions from God, and these visions are all the FBI have to go on to look for a missing agent. They call Scully who brings in Mulder, and though neither are agents any longer, they both reluctantly get involved. As throughout the entire series, Mulder always believes this man really is psychic and Scully is always skeptical. I was sold that he was a real psychic from the very beginning, when one of his visions helped the FBI find a severed human arm in the ice. It didn’t matter that, at the time, it seemed this was unrelated to the missing agent. I knew it couldn’t be coincidence that he managed to find that, and if I had any doubt at all after that, I was certainly sold when he suddenly started crying blood. While the FBI starts thinking they should stop following this man’s rantings, Mulder keeps believing in him. His faith really doesn’t seem to waver, and I thought it would have been really neat if it did.

What if Father Joe started to lose us? What if we, the audience, are led to believe early on that this guy really isn’t psychic at all and Mulder is grasping at straws because he “wants to believe?” As is, the visions are so obviously real that it’s hard to understand why Scully is skeptical at all, and that makes it feel like an episode from the first season. Sure, this is a stand-alone, but the characters still have a nine-season progression that shouldn’t be ignored; they should move forward, not be stagnant. I really wanted Mulder to be led on what seemed like a wild goose chase, and then perhaps toward the end, it turns out Father Joe was right all along. Or maybe he wasn’t at all, and we could have an X-Files movie about a complete hoax, where nothing at all is supernatural. I don’t know. I don’t want to re-write this movie, but I just don’t think it has anything new to say.

It’s impressive what is done with very little, but I was bored, especially since this was the X-Files’ last hurrah. There’s really nothing theatrical about this; it could have been a TV movie. I don’t want to say that’s bad, because I think it’s what Carter was going for. The first X-Files movie tried to be a big budget version but the story was so convoluted it lost people. So this one tries to capture the essence of the series, and it does that visually, but the script was weak. It did what I was really afraid of; by the end, it looks like just one more episode of a show that we never thought we’d hear from again.

Beware Minor Spoilers 

As silly a concept as it looked, I was hopeful for Hancock because, as a comic film buff, I was delighted to see someone producing an original superhero film not based on any comics. There have been, of course, some other lame attempts at this– anybody remember Blank Man?– and some kid movies like Sharkboy and Lava Girl. Although Hancock looked like it might be going in a spoof direction, I thought there might be potential for taking it seriously, on the grounds that it was attempting to make Superman interesting. Instead of taking someone with incredible powers who can’t be killed and making him the most morally-driven man on the planet, wouldn’t it be more interesting to give that power to someone who didn’t know what to do with it, who might even abuse it, and then bring that person to a level of responsibility and maturity within the film?

 Well… that’s sort of what happened with Hancock.

 The film’s first mistake is that it begins to tell the story of a character (let’s even forget for a minute that he’s supposed to be a superhero) who isn’t just lazy, practically homeless, rude, and irresponsible… but always extremely drunk. Hancock is drunk for the first half of the movie. This isn’t interesting at all, and it only serves to bog down the story. He isn’t sober until after he meets Ray, who he reluctantly hires as his public relations manager, and decides to turn himself over to the authorities for all the public damage he’s caused in his “heroic” efforts. Before that happens, it’s impossible to get a good handle on the character because he’s incoherant and inhibited– no one can be “himself” while he’s drunk, so we don’t get to actually meet Hancock until he goes to jail. And saying, “well, Hancock’s always drunk, so that’s just who he is” would be an excuse to film a lot of scenes of Hancock breaking things, swearing, showing people swearing at him, and seeing how many times characters can say the word @$$hole in a half hour. Which is ultimately what the first part of the movie amounts to.

That first half is very disjointed and has nothing that resembles pacing. It can’t decide if it’s a parody of a superhero movie or if it’s a real one. In the opening scene, when Hancock flies like an out-of-control drunk driver to the scene of the crime with a bottle in his hand, it certainly feels like parody… and it’s almost funny. But then we’re supposed to feel simpathetic for Hancock along with Ray, who thinks that even though he’s reckless and inconsiderate, he still saves people and ultimately, the city needs him (an idea mostly based on the fact that Hancock just saved him from an oncoming train). That was difficult for me, because I couldn’t decide what kind of a movie I was watching. Both the comic beats and the drama beats were way off.

Then comes the second half. As soon as Hancock is called back from prison because the crime rate has gone way up and there’s a hostage situation the police can’t handle alone, Hancock instantly transforms into a good movie. He still doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but he’s sobered up and he’s trying. Now he’s a lot more coherant, and actually a lot wordier, when he hardly said anything before. This may be a bit inconsistant, but at this point, he starts looking more like Will Smith than Hancock, and while I suppose I should have resisted, I like Will Smith more than I like Hancock. 

After Hancock actually does save the day, without hurting any innocent people or destroying public property, the city changes its mind about him, and we can get on with the story. The rest of the movie deals with Hancock’s background. I was worried until this point that we would never learn why he has powers or why he became a superhero, considering he doesn’t seem to really care about anyone but himself. I’ll admit, Hancock’s origin is a little contrived, but it’s also very comic book. I won’t give it away here because I would have to reveal the film’s really great twist in the middle (which also makes the second part better than the first), a twist that helps the film go from crude to clever in an instant. What I will say is this: just when it looks like it’s about to do the same contrived thing these movies always do, it goes in a completely different direction and I never would have called it in a thousand years.

Hancock’s best achievement is that it manages to effectively give us a great deal of background and mythology without a single flashback. Flashbacks very often bog down stories, and though this movie was a master at botching its own pace in the first half, the second barrelled straight through, transforming into a piece that was fast paced, hardly dull, and slightly more original than I expected from the trailers. I do think parts of the mythology are inconsistant (again, don’t want to spoil it here) but I was just impressed it was there at all.

The other thing the movie did well was comment on the whole concept of superheroes, from Hancock originally refusing to wear a costume and Ray’s explanation of why a costume is neccessary, to Ray’s encouraging Hancock to tell the police at whatever crime scene he’s at that they’ve done a good job. Hancock responds by saying, “If they’ve done a good job, what do they need me for?” Ray doesn’t have an answer, and I think that’s a great commentary on comics in general. I didn’t want the movie to go as far into parody as it sometimes did, but I was also happy it didn’t take itself so seriously that it coudn’t make fun of its own genre, as even the most serious superhero films historically have (Cyclops’ line to Wolverine in X-Men: “What were you expecting, yellow spandex?”)

Hancock really was a pretty good movie… for a first draft. I really think someone should have told the writers they weren’t finished yet. In fact, the two halves of the film sound like they were written by two different writers, and almost look like they were directed by two different directors. That disjointed feel in the first half is compounded by a sometimes reality-TV filming style that is missing from the second half. The last part has traditional film plot points, decisions for the characters to make, goals for them to achieve… regular story stuff that any writer should know about, but still seems to missing from the first part. The movie is only 90 minutes long, yet it feels like a bad movie followed by a better sequel.

It has the exact opposite problem I’ve had with a lot of films over the last few years. Usually you get a good first act or two, and then the writers couldn’t figure out how to end it so the last act feels like a different movie. This was exactly the problem with Will Smith’s last movie, I Am Legend. Never have I encountered a movie that knew exactly how to end but couldn’t figure out what it was doing at the beginning. Too bad they’re too late for a second draft– that’s all this movie really needs.

 LLAP

-Cap’n Logan