X-Files Creator Chris Carter Details Changes in New Director’s Cut

In 2002, The X-Files concluded its television run. While the final two seasons featured significant cast changes following the departure of David Duchovny as Agent Fox Mulder, Duchovny returned for the series finale. In that episode, Mulder is put on trial for the death of a government super-soldier, and much of the runtime recaps the complex alien conspiracy from the prior nine seasons. Mulder is ultimately convicted, but he escapes prison with the help of remaining FBI allies.

That marked the end of the television series, but creator Chris Carter envisioned further stories.

I wanted to get something out there that, for me, was a labor of love and a movie that has fantastic production values.

In 2008, The X-Files: I Want to Believe arrived as a standalone feature detached from the overarching mythology and the events of the first film. Rather than continuing the conspiracy arc, the movie functions like a monster-of-the-week television episode with paranormal elements. Former FBI agent Fox Mulder comes out of hiding to help investigate a missing agent whose disappearance may connect to several missing women in West Virginia. An FBI agent played by Amanda Peet seeks Mulder’s paranormal expertise while consulting a psychic. Mulder and Agent Dana Scully, played by Gillian Anderson, soon become drawn into a case involving organ harvesting and body mutilations.

The movie is a Frankenstein story.

Although the film achieved moderate financial success, it received mixed to negative reviews. Many critics criticized the underwhelming plot details. Chris Carter also felt the movie fell short because he had to edit the footage down to secure a PG-13 rating demanded by Fox. Eighteen years later, Carter has recut I Want to Believe to restore his original vision and emphasize the horror elements.

The new cut, titled The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn, launches on Hulu and Disney Plus on August 14. Ahead of the release, Carter discussed his reasons for reworking the film, the strange true story that inspired the plot, and the meaning of the updated title.

Polygon Interview with Chris Carter

Polygon: For the director’s cut of The X-Files: I Want to Believe, you gave the film a new title, “Vrach Frankenshteyn.” Would you mind explaining why?

Chris Carter: The original inspiration for the elements of the story came from a doctor in Cleveland who had successfully transplanted the head of a monkey onto another monkey. I just found that to be amazing. It is like one of those things that verges on science fiction, which is where I always like to play, between what is scientific and what is science fiction.

I actually went to Cleveland to visit him. We sat, talked, and he told me about how successful it was. The monkey did not survive, ultimately, but he did successfully transplant the head of a live monkey onto the head of a formerly live monkey.

That was a Frankenstein story, and the movie is a Frankenstein story. If the audience has some idea that it is a Frankenstein movie from the beginning, I think it is going to make it that much scarier and compelling.

Why is this new cut important to you?

When we made the movie, we were asked to make a PG-13 movie. We gave them a script that we thought was going to satisfy PG-13. We shot the movie we wanted to shoot, delivered it to the studio, and they said, “This is not a PG-13 movie,” and we had to cut it back. Then we did that and satisfied them. They said it is still too scary for a PG-13 movie, so we had to cut it back further. The censors were so hardcore. I always felt like we didn’t get to show the movie that we set out to make.

It is hard to make movies in the ice and snow.

Another thing is, once it was cut back, the studio lost interest in the movie and did not promote it. So the movie was not seen by the wider audience that it might have gathered. The fact that it was shot almost completely in the ice and snow is another thing that makes it uncommon. You do not see movies like that all the time and there is a reason, because it is hard to make movies in the ice and snow.

How did this new version come about?

It really came as an offhanded comment to the guy who runs 20th Television, the feature wing over there. We were talking about something else, and I said, “Would you ever consider doing a director’s cut?” He said, “Sure, let us talk about it.” It was really just one of those happy accidents.

In contrast to a lot of director’s cuts, the new version is a few minutes shorter than the original. Can you talk about why and what was cut out?

Between 2008, when the movie was released, and now, we got two X-Files reboots. So we got a lot of Mulder and Scully. When we made the movie in 2007, people had not seen Mulder and Scully for five, six years. Here, we have seen Mulder and Scully pretty recently, and I felt like the story that involved their emotional relationship had already kind of been told in the second reboot. So, I took the liberty to take some of that Mulder and Scully relationship out of the movie in the service of making it as scary as possible.

What was the most important change for you?

Just the elements of horror, the graphic quality. Now the movie plays at the pace that I originally imagined. I think it is a much scarier movie now. And with the title, Vrach Frankenshteyn, we tell people from the get-go that it is a scary movie in the vein of Frankenstein.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn arrives on Hulu and Disney Plus on August 14.

Source: Polygon