Really? The Powers That Be are actually considering a third installment in the “X-Files” franchise, despite the beating the second film took at the box office? Apparently so. Or at least, according to some guy who knows some guy, who wrote in to Dread Central telling them about it. As DC states, I think this is just wishful thinking, especially considering how awful “X-Files 2: I Want to Believe” did. Seriously, really? A sequel to a sequel that no one wanted in the first place, and those who got it didn’t even liked it? Wow.

When David Lynch’s quirky and often surreal “Twin Peaks” ended after just two seasons in 1991, I didn’t think anything could take its place. But I was wrong. In 1993, Chris Carter unleashed “The X-Files” upon the world. It was the answer to my, and million of others’, prayers. Inspired by the 1970s TV series “The Night Stalker,” Carter placed two very different FBI agents at the center of his creation: Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) is a believer in little green men and things that live under the stairs, because he had witnessed the abduction of his younger sister Samantha by aliens; Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) is a skeptic and a woman of science. In the stand-alone episodes, they took on fat, flesh and brain-eating humans, vampires, firestarters, parasitic twins, mutant children, serial killers, and much, much more. In the interconnected stories – these provided the show with its mythology – they confronted government conspiracies and cover-ups, orchestrated and overseen by the Cigarette Smoking Man, the Well-Manicured Man, and Alex Krycek. They were assisted in their search for truth by FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, Deep Throat, the Lone Gunmen, and Mr. X.

Hey, in case you haven’t heard, the second “X-Files” movie, “I want to Believe”, which features the long-awaited reunion of Dana Scully and her paranoid partner Fox Mulder, opens today in theaters all across America. Now the question is, is this the sequel we’ve all been waiting for ever since 1998’s somewhat incomplete “Fight the Future”? Not so much, says the movie critics at Rotten Tomatoes, where the film currently has (as of this writing) a fresh rating (i.e. thumbs up) of 28%. 28%!!! To put that in a little perspective, Paris Hilton’s combined movies have a rating of 25% freshness rating at RT.

Okay, I’m filing this one under, “Chris Carter really wants to get our goat, so he’s made this crap up just for that purpose”, and no one’s going to convince me otherwise. Besides the fact that the trailers and pictures I’ve seen from the movie, and I’ve seen tons, bears no resemblance to what happens here at all, the whole idea that Scully and Mulder have been involved for the last six years just reeks of fake. Then again, the person who claims to have seen the movie, and sent in this spoiler, did poo-poo the film’s serial killer plot, and would Carter really diss his own movie’s plot just to throw out some misinformation about Scully and Mulder? Hmm…

Instead of going on about how I still don’t like the subtitle for the “X-Files” movie sequel, I’m going to go ahead and skip the griping and move on to telling you that we have eight new images from the movie, most of them featuring Mulder all by his lonesome doing his investigation what-have-you. There’s also a picture of Scully apparently in front of some medical types, perhaps trying to get back to her roots (remember, she’s a doctor) post-Mulder and the X-Files wackiness? Who knows. Check out the new images below.

Yahoo! Movies is currently hosting an exclusive two-minute clip from “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” (seriously, just typing that subtitle makes me feel dumber), which they say is the opening scene from the movie. It doesn’t actually look like an opening scene — it has a bunch of FBI agents, led by Billy Connolly (playing a psychic) going up and down a frozen ice patch, while the scene is intercut with a woman is being stalked at her house, apparently at another time and place. Or something. Eh, who knows, Chris Carter and company are so desperate to hide every shred of info about their precious movie in the hopes of making it uber secret and thus more “in demand”, it borders on being desperate.

Let’s face it, if you were a fan of “The X-Files” when it was still a series on FOX, all you’re really waiting for is that moment when Scully and Mulder finally gets together again after all these years. And after that? Well, there’s a story about how some serial killer is abducting women in some cold ass place and Billy Connelly shows up as a psychic who helps out. Plus, rapper Xzibit plays a barely credible FBI agent, and Amanda Peet has a co-starring role as a hottie FBI agent, and is just a tad more credible.

At the beginning of this new “X-Files 2: I want to Believe” trailer, Billy Connelly’s character, a psychic, describes what happened to a girl who was abducted, as Mulder prods him on in the background. After which, Connelly’s character asks Mulder, “You believe in this, then?” (i.e. the psychic stuff). That was pretty funny, I thought. In any case, here’s the second trailer for “X-Files 2″. Or, I guess, the first official one? Either/or.

I have to admit, I’m not exactly jumping on Oprah’s couch waiting to see “X-Files 2: I Want to Believe”. For one, that title. Ugh. “I want to Believe”? I still can’t believe they went with that title. For a movie that is already late in coming (I should have been made at least five years ago, if not sooner), nothing I’ve heard or seen about “X-Files 2″ has made me want to see this thing more, and I was a very big fan of the show from Day 1.

Three new “X-Files 2″ images have surfaced on the Internet. Some are official stills that FOX has released and some may not be — I really have no idea, since the “X-Files 2″ movie has been so closely guarded, to the point of being detrimental to the film in my opinion. To be honest with you, I don’t know why they’re playing so hard to get, especially for a movie based on a TV show that many people stopped watching a long time ago.