Chris Carter Wants To Believe

Although it comes at it from a decidedly skeptical perspective, faith — whether it be in UFOs, government conspiracies, or the Catholic Church — has always been a core element of The X-Files. Series creator Chris Carter describes himself as an observer, someone who’s “curious” about life’s greatest mysteries and the human response to them: “I'm actually fascinated by faith, and the intersection of science and faith in particular,” he tells Inverse. So perhaps it’s appropriate that Carter finished out his original run with a movie called I Want to Believe.

Released in 2008, The X-Files: I Want to Believe moves away from the mythology arc of the first X-Files movie into what’s essentially a supersized “monster of the week” episode, about a missing FBI agent and a cluster of Russian scientists performing unspeakable experiments in rural West Virginia. These are combined with subplots where Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) — now retired from the FBI and working as a doctor at a Catholic hospital — fights for a critically ill patient and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) tries to locate the missing agent with the help of a psychic named Father Joe (Billy Connolly), a Catholic priest and convicted pedophile.

At the time, the film’s blending of horror with thorny questions about faith failed to connect with critics and audiences, and I Want to Believe was the last X-Files movie or TV episode until the revival in 2015. Now, with two more seasons behind him and a reboot in the works from director Ryan Coogler, Carter has returned to The X-Files: I Want to Believe to make it the horror movie he always intended it to be. With the full title of The X-Files: I Want to Believe 'Vrach Frankenshteyn,' the new cut restores horror elements that were cut from the original movie, tightening the story along the way.

Inverse spoke with Carter in the buildup to Vrach Frankenshteyn’s debut on Disney+ on August 14. He was animated and excited to talk, both about his new work and the original series.

Vrach Frankenshteyn is a reimagining of your 2008 movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe. What are the core elements that went into the film?

I'll just go back to the original inspiration for the movie. I heard about a scientist, a doctor, who had transplanted the head of a monkey onto another monkey. And I thought, “That is a perfect X-File. That's right in our zone where science and science fiction meet.” And so I actually went to Cleveland, Ohio, to search for this doctor. I found him, and he was kind enough to sit with me and tell me what he did and how he did it. I thought, “This is perfect.”

Around that same time. I went to see a religious scholar, a really amazing man named Houston Smith, who's since passed on. He spoke for about an hour and a half about world religion, and we get to the end, and somebody says, “All of your experience, all of your learning, all of your wisdom. How would you sum it up in a sentence?” I cringe. I'm thinking, “This person is asking for the bumper sticker.” And this intelligent, wonderful man is unfazed. He thinks about it, looks up in space a little bit, and he says, “Don't give up.” And I thought,” Wow, that's it.” It sounds cliché, but it's what it's all about.

It informs every aspect of the movie. Scully doesn't give up on her patient. Mulder doesn't give up on the missing FBI agent. Scully doesn't give up on Mulder, and Skinner doesn't give up on Mulder and Scully. Father Joe, the depraved priest, doesn't give up on his visions. He could have ignored them and done nothing, but he pursues them, and it helps to save a life.

I wanted to ask a follow-up on that. Scully's Catholic faith is important to her. And I believe that you are a person of faith as well; is that true?

I am a person of challenged faith.

I was wondering about that, because you really complicate faith, and Catholicism specifically, in this movie with the character of Father Joe. Could you tell me a little bit about that?

I grew up in a religious environment. I have two uncles who are Protestant ministers. Catholicism is of interest to me — I had never been to Mass, and I live near a Catholic church, so I went to Mass the other day, and I found it fascinating. I dressed up, and it was so funny because everyone was in their hoodies. It was not the way I imagined it.

So I'm curious. I'm actually fascinated by faith, and the intersection of science and faith in particular. I'm interested in that through Scully, who wears a cross around her neck but is a scientist. This may be a sore subject with people, but I really think of science as the search for God. We are looking for the answers that we haven't yet found, and maybe those answers will lead us closer to what was there before the Big Bang.

“I am a person of challenged faith.”

Mulder has a lot of faith, too, in his own way.

I think Mulder appreciates Scully's faith. I think he sees that as a beautiful thing about her: that she's an engaged person as a scientist, but she is also a person of deep faith that she struggles with.

So this is a chance to investigate that. Scully is working at a Catholic hospital, and they're telling her to let this boy go, and she won't let the boy go. So she follows her faith in science, and she follows her faith in God to save this young boy's life. And she goes back to Father Joe. She wants to know about his faith, and how he can have this faith when he has betrayed it. For me, there are wonderful layers in this movie, and I think some of them went unappreciated when it came out in 2008.

These themes of trust and distrust and faith and belief run throughout the whole series — it’s there with the skepticism of authority and conspiracy theories as well.

You've just described the Mulder-Scully relationship, which is mutually respectful, mutually passionate, mutually antagonistic. It's all of those things. For me, when I wrote these characters, it was the ideal relationship between a man and a woman.

How so?

It’s respectful. Agreeing to disagree. Passionate. Troubling. Just beautiful in all those ways. To be a human being is to share that with another human being. It’s my idea of a good time.

“When I wrote these characters, it was the ideal relationship between a man and a woman.”

What other changes are made in this director's cut? Because I noticed that this one clocks in at 98 minutes, whereas the original theatrical version is 104.

Everyone says that director's cuts are kitchen sink cuts. They throw everything back in that got cut out. For me, I don't think [I Want to Believe] was appreciated as it might have been, as a horror movie. So I added the title Vrach Frankenshteyn, because I wanted people to think of it as a Frankenstein movie, which is what it is.

I wanted them to think of it less as a Mulder-Scully relationship movie, even though it is very much that. But a little of that went a long way. It really has a lot to do with the fact that we had two reboots relatively recently, and we got a lot of Mueller and Scully [in those]. We got a lot of that relationship, [especially] in that final episode. So I wanted to go heavier on the horror aspect [for this new version].

It's extended to feature length, but in some ways, it's a monster of the week.

It is a monster-of-the-week story. And some people have said to me, “This could be an episode of Millennium.” And I thought, “Yeah, you know, it could be an episode of Millennium.”

Do you miss doing 24-episode seasons of television?

I just had a conversation with the Duffer Brothers [about this]. Over 10 years, they did 42 episodes of Stranger Things.

That's less than two seasons of The X-Files.

I said, “I did 73 episodes in the first three years!”

Do I miss it? You know, to make a show like The X-Files at the pace that we made it, and to make it as good as it could be, was the chance of a lifetime. But I really gave up nine years of my life to do it. I'm a lifelong surfer, and I did not surf for basically nine years of my life, and it was hard. I'm a skier, and we were working in Vancouver right next to some of the best skiing in the world, and I never skied. So I had to give up some things.

But then, I have to say that when the show was over in 2002, I went and I climbed mountains, and I skied, and I heli-skiied, and I went surfing on big surf trips. At the end of something, you have a certain satisfaction, but it also gives you a zest for life beyond that [thing].

Because you didn't give up, perhaps?

Because I didn't give up, exactly.

Another thing that the original X-Files is famous for is its guest stars, many of whom were on the show before they were famous. Were there any guest stars who you saw and thought, “this person's going to be big?”

I think back to the first episode after the pilot, and Seth Green. I thought, “this kid is going to be famous.” Jack Black wasn't quite big yet, but I knew he had something. Giovanni Ribisi had something. Ryan Reynolds had something — he had such a small part in the "Syzygy" episode. Great guy, by the way — I've been able to sit and talk with him since then.

This segues into something that is happening as we speak, actually. My wife and I made an independent movie. It’s a horror fable, and we hope to have it in the theaters in the next couple months.It's called Queens for a Day. The lead actress — she is a star. You heard it here first. Her name is Erin Boyes, and I think she's the next big thing.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe, 'Vrach Frankenshteyn’ is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.