The second X-Files film opened in the United States on July 25, 2008, one week after The Dark Knight. It finished fourth in its opening weekend with about $10.2 million and went on to gross roughly $68 million worldwide on a reported $30 million budget. By the standards of summer releases it was a disappointment, and the critical response was largely cool.
It's worth looking at again, because most of the things held against it at the time were deliberate.
Not a mythology film
Directed by Chris Carter and co-written with Frank Spotnitz, I Want to Believe is a standalone story. There are no aliens, no Syndicate, no black oil. Mulder and Scully, now out of the FBI, are drawn into the search for a missing agent, with help from a disgraced priest, Father Joseph Crissman, played by Billy Connolly, who claims psychic visions of the case. Amanda Peet and Xzibit play the FBI agents who bring them in.
For audiences expecting the conspiracy to continue, that was frustrating. But the choice makes sense. The original series had largely resolved its mythology, and a film that tried to restart it would have needed to explain years of continuity to newcomers. Carter instead made something closer to the show's standalone episodes: a contained case with a moral question at its center.
Snow, not darkness
The film was photographed by Bill Roe, who had shot the later seasons of the series. Its most striking visual choice is to replace the show's signature darkness with snow. Much of the film takes place in bright, white, wintry landscapes, where nothing can hide in shadow and figures stand out against the ground.
That's a reversal of the show's visual logic, and it suits the story. I Want to Believe isn't really about discovering a hidden truth. It's about whether two people can keep faith, in each other and in something larger, when the answers are not hidden but simply unavailable. A white landscape is the right image for that kind of uncertainty: nothing is concealed, and you still can't see far.
Faith as the subject
The title is the key. The film is less interested in the case than in what each character is willing to believe. Scully, now working as a doctor at a Catholic hospital, is fighting for a young patient against the wishes of the institution. Mulder is drawn back to the work that nearly destroyed him. Father Joe, a man guilty of terrible crimes, may or may not be receiving genuine visions.
The film doesn't resolve those questions neatly, and that refusal is part of why it frustrated audiences. But it's also faithful to the show at its best, which was always more interested in the act of searching than in the answers.
Wrong place, wrong time
Some of the film's reception came down to timing. A quiet, wintry, adult drama about faith arrived in the middle of a summer dominated by one of the biggest superhero films ever made. It was marketed as an event and turned out to be an intimate character piece. Expectations and reality didn't match.
Seen today, without that context, it plays more like an epilogue to the original series: a small, sincere film about two people who have survived what the show put them through and still haven't stopped looking.