'The X-Files' Creator Chris Carter Still Wants To Continue Mulder and Scully's Story

Around a year ago, The X-Files creator Chris Carter announced — on a podcast hosted by David Duchovny, no less — that he'd been given the go-ahead to make a director's cut of the series' second theatrical film. I Want to Believe arguably sits in a very specific place within the legacy of the sci-fi series; it leans away from The X-Files' long-running mythology arc in favor of embracing the show's monster-of-the-week format. Despite being more of a standalone installment, I Want to Believe still offers a continuation of Mulder (Duchovny) and Scully's (Gillian Anderson) story arcs, with both now long removed from the FBI and suddenly finding themselves pulled back into another investigation involving the kidnapping of an agent, stolen body parts, and a defrocked priest (Billy Connolly) who claims to be having psychic visions of the whole thing. 18 years after the film first premiered in theaters, Carter's director's cut of I Want to Believe, subtitled Vrach Frankenshteyn, drops on Hulu today. Ahead of its release, the creator of The X-Files spoke with Collider about why he wanted to restore the movie to his original R-rated vision, what he added back in (and cut out) in the wake of two revival seasons, and how going back to the well has inspired him to continue Mulder and Scully's story someday — as long as it doesn't conflict with Ryan Coogler's reboot. COLLIDER: How long have you been thinking about releasing a director's cut for I Want to Believe? Take me back to when this all started as an idea. CHRIS CARTER: I have two answers to that question. I never got to release the movie that we, Frank Spotnitz and I, originally imagined. That was back in 2008. But I got the idea to do a director's cut only last year, and it came as kind of an aside. I was talking to the head of the movie division at 20th Century, Steven Asbell, and I said to him, “Have you ever considered doing an X-Files director's cut?” And he said, “No, but let's explore it.” It was as simple as that. I can go back to 2008, which is probably a good place to start. When I showed this movie originally to the studio, it was a longer movie, and when I showed it to the executives for a screening, they were kind of outraged. “This is torture porn,” they called it. As if I had made a Saw movie or something. They said, “This is not the PG-13 movie that you promised us.” So, they made me cut it back to what they imagined was a PG-13 movie. I showed it to them; they said, "Okay," and then I had to show it to the movie censors, the people who give the movies their ratings, and they said, “This isn't a PG-13 movie.” I had to cut it back even further. The irony is, I could have done a scarier X-Files episode on television. They were more permissive on television than they were for the big screen. So, I always felt the idea was so good that it never got to be fully fleshed out way back when. Do you feel there's an inherent advantage to releasing this on streaming, which is much less restrictive in that sense? CARTER: Anything's permissible, I guess, up to, you know, you can't make a snuff movie. But I wanted to make a good, scary X-Files, and this is an opportunity for me to do it without being subject to the rating system. It's a shorter movie, so I also, as much as I put back in the movie, I cut out, and that's because between 2008 and now, we've had two reboots, and I felt like the hardcore fans, which you always have first and foremost in your mind, had had their fill of the Mulder and Scully romance story. So, I sort of downplayed that in place of the good, scary X-Files. Chris Carter Explains the Meaning of 'I Want To Believe's New 'Vrach Frankenshteyn' Subtitle "I don't think it was ever truly appreciated as the Frankenstein movie that it was and is." There's already been speculation about the subtitle of Vrach Frankenshteyn attached to this cut. What was the reasoning for including it, other than obviously differentiating it from the original version? CARTER: I don't think it was ever truly appreciated as the Frankenstein movie that it was and is. There's a nod to it at the very end of the movie; Mulder’s putting up a newspaper cutting of a story that refers to it as Frankenstein. But I felt like if you know it's a Frankenstein story going in, when they find that arm in the ice and snow, it's going to make more sense to you. It's going to draw you more into the movie, rather than it being an ambiguous clue. The original idea came out of something that I had read: a doctor in Cleveland, Ohio, had transplanted the head of a monkey onto another monkey, and I thought, “That's an X-File.” I actually went out to visit him and talked to him. Very nice man. Told me how he did it — successfully, by the way. The monkey ended up dying, but it was a successful head transplant. That really was where the whole idea came out of. Were there any scenes that were originally trimmed back that you knew, in approaching this cut, were immediately being put back in, or versions of scenes that were cut away from that are now made much more explicit? CARTER: Yeah. The scary stuff in the laboratory, I always felt, was horrifying, terrifying — and was, for me, the heart of the movie. The head transplant, and this woman's fear that she is going to be subject to whatever is happening to that man that she sees lying on the table, that's a scary thing. Being stalked by someone is a very scary thing. Those elements, for me, were the heart of the scare. Are there any edits you made that most viewers may not necessarily pick up on, but you wanted to make for yourself? CARTER: I really felt that the studio didn't know The X-Files when we were developing it, and so their script notes, which you always have to incorporate, wanted to play up what I would call the Mulder-Scully story, which was apart from the good X-Files story. And even though we always explored, especially in the mythology episodes, Mulder and Scully’s relationship, I felt that this leaned too heavily on the relationship and not heavily enough on the X-Files story. Even just in terms of little cutaways that may have been made — there's one character who dies much more graphically onscreen. CARTER: Yeah, stuff like that. Little things that you might not notice. I was really just trying to give people a good, scary X-Files story and to do it the best we could. I always loved the movie. I loved the concept. I loved making it. The production values are fantastic, due to our production design, our cinematographer, and also that we shot it in the most forbidding environment. When you see Mulder and Scully at the end of the picture in that boat, somewhere in the tropics, that's where I imagine myself after having my feet in 50 days of crushing cold. I went through nine pairs of boots, because I couldn't find anything that kept my feet warm. For me, the location, the production values are fantastic, and they are big-screen value, which is what we set out to do. Chris Carter Still Has More 'X-Files' Ideas, but Isn't Planning on Competing With Ryan Coogler "I have complete respect for him and his vision." Image via 20th Century After revisiting this movie, have you been turning over any ideas for new X-Files stories? CARTER: I am. When we did those two reboots in the last few years, there were four episodes. They’re the beginning and end of each reboot, and they were called “My Struggle.” They were setting up a big story that I want to tell, and whether that is as another series of episodes or a movie, I have that story already in mind. I don't want that idea to get in the way of what Ryan Coogler is working on. I really want to see what he's doing, and I don't want to take away from it in any way. I have complete respect for him and his vision. So, if the time comes, I definitely have another big idea. The X-Files: I Want to Believe Vrach Frankenshteyn is now available to stream on Hulu.