It's been a decade since the first "X-Files" movie came out. And six years since the supernatural conspiracy show that spawned it ended its nine-year TV run.

But now FBI agents - make that former FBI agents - Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are back for their second big-screen outing, "I Want to Believe." David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson return to their iconic roles as the guy obsessed by his sister's alien abduction and his skeptical, medically trained partner. Chris Carter, the intellectual, serenely easygoing surfer from Bellflower who created the whole paranoid universe, is also back as the film's co-writer/producer and first-time feature director.

The series' big mysteries - Who are these creatures from outer space and what is their agenda? How much is the government covering up/in cahoots with them? - aren't addressed in "I Want to Believe," and the principals sure aren't talking about any of that.

Why it took so long to get Mulder and Scully back on screen is a different matter.

"It was 10 years of output for me; I needed some input," explains Carter, who spent half a decade pursuing such interests as studying theoretical physics and learning to fly. "I put myself into what I call uncomfortable situations, where I didn't know anything and had to learn a new way of thinking."

Duchovny, it could be assumed, didn't even want to return to the franchise that made him famous, since he had pretty much bailed on the last season of the TV series. But not the case, the actor says; he's been one of the most eager voices pushing for a new movie.

"I would always say yes whenever Chris and I would talk about it," the actor reveals. "If a love/hate thing was going on, it didn't have anything to do with the content or the people. It had to do with me wanting to get on with the rest of my life and career. When you think about it, I did eight years and Gillian did nine. That's a lifetime, and there are no other dramas that keep the same characters that run that long. `Law & Order' and `ER' got completely recast. It's just burnout; but there was always love for the show and the characters."

Ironically - or is it just "X-File"-y? - Anderson was a little less gung-ho about a second movie, even though she'd stuck out the series to the end.

"A part of me would have been happy to leave around the same time that David did," she says. "But I was also interested in following through on the agreement that I'd made with Fox, and also checking out the new characters and actors that were coming in. But it was a huge relief to feel like I'd put in my time and that I'd participated in something that I could be proud of, and then it was time to move on to other interests."

Actually, 20th Century Fox suggested making a second movie as early as 2003. But the key reason why a sequel didn't get under way until late last year was a perfectly normal Hollywood one. A contractual conflict flared up between Carter and Fox television, and nothing "X-Files" was going to be done until the money matter was settled.

"It was a negotiation, and I had to file a lawsuit to preserve my right to continue to negotiate," Carter explains. "It never became anything. There was never discovery or any of that stuff. The swords were never drawn. But another movie was prevented until that was resolved."

Agreement reached, Fox again offered to back the new movie. But with the Writers Guild strike looming, it had to be done quickly. Another year or two's delay, all felt, would be too long to expect audiences to still be interested in Mulder and Scully's drama.

"I actually thought that it wasn't going to happen because of the business problems," Carter admits. "And I said at one point, `OK, we did 202 episodes and a movie; fine. That's a lot of work.' And then David and others encouraged me, and I really saw it as an opportunity, six years later, to look at the series in a different way.

"People liked the series for the storytelling and the scares, but really that relationship, for me, was something to look at. And the search for extraterrestrial life became tantamount, to me, to a search for God. I loved that part of it, and this story actually shines a light on that."

In "Believe," Mulder and Scully have long since retired from the FBI but are brought back in when an agent is kidnapped. Certain psychic aspects of the case put intense strains on their relationship - they've apparently been living together - as well as on their individual belief systems.

"I was surprised by the relationship, and how much a part of the mood of the whole film it is," Anderson, currently pregnant with her third child, reveals. "Somehow, it's almost another presence that's set up early in the film. The script carries the weight of their history with it, and I like that it's tangible."

"When you think about the kinds of movies that you might compare our movie to - thrillers, horror movies - at the heart of it is this relationship between Mulder and Scully which is really adult," Duchovny adds. "There are never actual relationships in other movies in this genre; it's usually a loner, and if it's a couple, it's kind of rudimentary. While this horrifying, thrilling stuff is going on, you've got these two people ... not quite bickering, but trying to figure out where they're at."

As for the more spiritual turn of events, Carter figures that it's totally in keeping with who the characters have always been.

"Mulder and Scully had built-in dilemmas, if you will," the director says. "Scully is a medical doctor who has faith in science, yet that cross around her neck is about her religious faith. And Mulder has no religion, but has a faith that there are questions to be answered and the truth is out there. What we did, in a way, was crystallize those conflicts in this story. And it is about faith."

But if there's a third movie, will it be about all of that other "X-Files" stuff?

"Sure," Duchovny affirms. "That's, like, the bread and butter of the series, really, and it's kind of a natural for 2012."

That's the year those who want to go by the Mayan calendar and other prognostication sources think something big and probably not good is going to happen to the planet. It's also when, in "X-Files" lore, the aliens are supposed to make their main move.

For now, though, Carter points out that the second movie isn't so far off the expectation track, whatever some fans may want to believe.

"If you look at the 202 episodes, about 80 percent of them are not `mythology' episodes that deal with the big conspiracy and the search for Mulder's sister," he says. "When we finished the first movie, we said that the next movie we would do was going to be a story that stands alone, what some people call a monster-of-the-week story. We wanted to do a story that didn't require new viewers to have any knowledge of the ongoing arc of the saga."

Bob Strauss (818) 713-3670 bob.strauss@dailynews.com

RELATED LINKS:

Read the review of 'X-Files: I Want to Believe'