I really wanted to believe.

There's a very distinct feeling that goes along with seeing, by chance, an old friend you haven't seen in years. There's that familiarity you can't quite place, the slight confusion and disorientation given that your life--your reality--doesn't really include them anymore, and you hit a mental reset button to compensate. After pleasantries and perhaps a few awkward moments, the nostalgia comes rushing in: the inside jokes, shared experiences, such great memories! It is so easy to slip back into this, you think. Like a worn-in baseball glove, it feels comfortable and lacking in pretension and everything you ever hoped it would be. You want the moment to last.

Just then, the train arrives or the hostess has found you a table or whatever usually happens next in such situations. "Let's meet up again," you say. "We'll catch up."

Most people don't actually make that next date, but the ones who do know where this is going. More often than not, in catching up you realize that you no longer know anything about the other person. It's the feeling kids who study abroad get when they return home to a life that hasn't stopped in their absence, but on a much grander scale. While this is occasionally refreshing (if, say, the friend you once knew and were sort of ambivalent about has become more amiable over time), the point of view shift can be truly jarring. The shiny, happy sense of nostalgia wears off and you realize you're now stuck with this new flawed person you don't know at all. Once in a very sad while, the person you used to know is not only very different, but a little bit disappointing, especially if you expected great things way back when.

So, when I first heard about the new X-Files movie about a year ago, I was stoked. A little confused, but stoked. I wondered, why now? What's so special about six years from the series' end? The word PAYCHECK flashed before my eyes, but I ignored it. Repeatedly. X-Files was such an important part of my childhood, and as a military kid who moved around a lot, Mulder and Scully were consistent, true friends. I wrote my first fanfiction in the X-Files fandom (though at the time I didn't know the meaning of "fanfiction" or "fandom"--I just knew I liked the show, and I wanted to write my own stories). I remembered carefully sticking labels onto VHS tapes and, in my neatest handwriting, documenting every episode and special I recorded. I remembered giggling at Mulder's one-liners, the Lone Gumen's antics, and the episode that revolved almost entirely around Scully's bitterness over not having a desk. The more I thought about it, the more ready I was to have my beloved characters back. I was even willing to overlook the presence of the host from Pimp My Ride (who, in all fairness, wasn't terrible and didn't have that big of a role anyway).

Last Saturday, the big day finally came, and I waited eagerly in line at the movies with two of my most wonderfully nerdy friends. We were practically jumping up and down with excitement. And I must say, the first thirty minutes or so of I Want to Believe were great. The opening tease was straight from the show's old playbook, and Chris Carter used Mulder's first scene to throw the fans in-jokes at a dizzying speed.

Unfortunately, all those jokes served as a not-so-subtle attempt to draw attention from the fact that Mulder and Scully have become everything but what you hoped they'd become. Mulder has turned into a hermit, looking more like Grizzly Adams than a former FBI agent with an Oxford degree. Mulder was always a little eccentric, but at the end of the day he was a decently normal guy: he played a lot of basketball, was up on pop culture, and managed to care for his fish despite being out of town all the time. In the movie, his biggest hobby appeared to be clipping articles on paranormal activity and tacking them all over his home office, which might have been slightly passable given his history and mildly obsessive personality, but only if he had any kind of job to keep him busy, which didn't appear to be the case. Mulder was a parody of himself for at least the first half of the film, and it was terribly uncomfortable to watch.

Scully, however, took the boring and predictable route: after leaving the FBI, she went back to medicine. This was fine, but again, boring. Losing her kid made Scully all kinds of messed up in the head, and Chris Carter emphasized that with a big ol' anvil of symbolism via some kid with a terminal brain disease. Yawn. Add a little Catholic dogma to the mix and bam! Scully's back story for the last six years, revealed.

The big problem, however, was that no one bothered to tell the audience (or apparently, the actors) what the fuck was going on between Mulder and Scully. Duchovny played it like the two hadn't been living together, Anderson did, and the actual circumstances were never made explicit. It was a very weird dynamic. Who paid for that house in the middle of effing nowhere? The whole shaving-of-the-beard ritual works so much more beautifully in context if they haven't been fucking for the last six years, you know? But, we never know for sure and Chris Carter never tells, which is a huge "fuck you" to the audience, not just from a 'shipper standpoint, but from a storytelling standpoint. It was clear that Mulder and Scully were together throughout the movie, but was it a romance rekindled or merely brought out to the light?

The picture I Want to Believe painted of the future for Mulder and Scully was a bleak one, indeed: two people who, once upon a time, fought the forces of darkness and never fully recovered. At the end of the film, despite the psychic's plea to not give up, Mulder and Scully quite literally make their escape from, well, everything. It was sad and uncomfortable and I left the theatre unsatisfied that the adventure we all dragged them out of retirement for was over, and they hated every minute of it. Their lives appeared to have sputtered along to a place where the viewer is left knowing full well that they were capable of so much more, and that fact disappoints way more than the shaky plot (aside: if our doctors are basing experimental treatment plans from "research" they find on Google, we are all in so, so much trouble). It disappoints more than Chris Carter making the villains gay lovers (though I'm fairly certain pissing off the gays is one of the big issues that kept those opening weekend numbers so low--hope you learned your lesson there, Mr. Carter).

Not going to lie, though: I cheered when Skinner showed up and saved the day. That was awesome.