Click here for the review of The Thing

SPOILERS must be tagged with the "SPOILER" tag!

apparently there is a post credits scene. did you see it? maybe that scene addresses your issue with the ending.

It's not post-credits; it's "inter-credits" (they show a few credits, then show part of the scene, then another few credits, then another part of the scene, etc.) It's the material the explicitly links the ending of this movie to the 1982 one. It does not address my dissatisfaction.

And yet nobody asked "why" they remade/are remaking two perfectly good foreign language movies that made a sufficient impression anyway.

That's easy: the majority of Americans won't see foreign language films, so there's potentially a lot of money to be made on English-language remakes, even if they are only slavish recreations.

I know this is a prequel to the 1982 movie but the trailer makes it look like it's practically a scene for scene remake of it.

Is reading a problem in the states? That and having something of an attention span? No offence, it's a massive issue in the UK too.

Yeah, yeah it is.

Yes it is. I remember a conversation I had with a friend one time after I rented Stephen Soderbergh's version of Solaris.

My friend, after getting through the first fifteen minutes went off to do something else because the story made no sense at all according to her. I watched it, then rewound the VHS (before I had a DVD player obviously) and re-watched a few key points. Then it made sense. I then explained it to her. Her response:

"I don't like movies like that that require me to think a lot".

Or a little for that matter in her case. No disrespect to my intended. But much of the public that goes to movies nowadays doesn't like to think and doesn't like to read. Like I've stated previously: to quote an anonymous Holywood insider: many of the people who greenlight movies and the ones who go to movies nowadays are people whose cinematic frame of reference starts at Top Gun and ends at Pirates Of The Carribbean. To them a movie like say The Wild Strawberries or Cul De Sac is farther away than Mars.

As far as this new version of The Thing goes, I'll most likely wait for Netlfix. My father loves the original Thing From Another World yet can't stand Carpenter's The Thing. I like the classic TFAW yet I also love Carpenter's film. As I pointed out to him, the Carpenter film is less a remake of the Hawks film and more a re-interpretation of the source material (campbell's novella).

Well to be fair, most critics were pretty confounded by Solaris as well and it's usually not considered one of Soderbergh's finer moments.

Ok granted, I often watch a movie because I want to relax and not have to think too much. However I also read books to do the same thing... how hard is it to READ something? Really?

If Transformers was in Japanese with English subs, it'd still be the Bay orgy that it is in English.

I admit to being surprised by JB's positive review. I could never figure out why anyone wanted to make a prequel version of Carpenter's Thing, if for no other reason that we already know the end. Plus, Carpenter's version bombed badly at the box office, though it's attracted a cult following since.

The original 1950's Thing is one of the first monster movies I ever saw as a kid, and it scared the crap out of me. Years later, when I read the original story, Who Goes There, I realized that the original movie did not include the best part of the story: the fact that the alien could mimic and take the place of normal people. Carpenter's version accomplished that very well, and provided a sense of intense paranoia that added so much to the horror aspects of the story. So this prequel has got to jump a pretty high bar for me. I was going to wait for the DVD, but JB may have convinced me to take a chance with the theatrical version. But I'll still approach it with low expectations and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

As a completely redundant piece of information for all you movie-lovers, there's a newish short story published in 2010 and called “The Things” by Peter Watts. It tells the other side of the original novelette by John W Campbell, “Who Goes There?”. Naturally, this is as told by the alien “thing”. Personally, I think nothing can improve on the Campbell original.

My own thoughts: The original was all about the paranoia of who is the thing. This one seemed more centered and focused on the monstrosity of of it the Thing, and in setting up the situ for the next film (such as how the spaceship came to NOT be under the ice and the state of the the Norwegian camp when MacReady & Company visit). The paranoia, it seemed, was almost secondary much of the time.

One final thought: I applaud the use of John Carpenter's score, if only at the end when they're "connecting" the two films.

Nitpick: It's Ennio Morricone's score (although he intentionally did it in Carpenter's style). Yes, it was a pleasant surprise to hear it.

Wow, it wasn't terrible. Hm.

I don't know. Berardinelli must have seen a different movie than the one I saw.

I agree with JB's review.

It's a mistake to compare this movie with Carpenter's version; it's nowhere near as good as that. It lacks the paranoid atmosphere, the character development, and the realism of Carpenter's version. But it's entertaining nevertheless. The first half plays careful homage to Carpenter, and it's fun to pick out the setup of the Norwegian base, the two-headed guy, and the familiar Morricone score (who didn't appear to be listed in the final credits, I believe) from the earlier movie. There is also an arrogant scientist who seems to play the same role as the obnoxious effete doctor in Howard Hawks' original Thing (don't know if that was intentional, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt). Unfortunately, the last part of the movie turns into a predictable creature feature, and goes downhill from there.

And I also agree with JB that the ending (before the credits) is disappointing and mishandled.

Though I agree that John Carpenter's "The Thing" is great and is among my top 5 favorite horror films, I can't agree that it had good character development. The characters are all thinly drawn; we don't learn much about them beyond the their functions within the base and the fact that they lead a mundane existence up there. Even Kurt Russell's Macready is limited to the mold of the archetypal hero. This was a common criticism of the film at the time of its release; however, I'd argue that we don't need fully rounded characters to be invested in their situation. The scenes depicting the group's prosaic lifestyle is sufficient to get me to believe and care about the characters in "The Thing."

Let's say we had learned more about the characters; the writers would probably give them a few defining characteristics. The writers would be building a path for an uninspired solution as to how the humans are distinguished from the thing: the characters would ask each other questions based on the "unique characteristics" assigned by the writers. We've seen this approach used in plenty of movies involving clones and doppelgangers of some sort. Instead we get more innovative scenes, like the one in which The other issue is that developing the characters would have stretched out the running length. The original "Thing" is a lean and efficient film.

[quote="jadedmoviegoer"
Though I agree that John Carpenter's "The Thing" is great and is among my top 5 favorite horror films, I can't agree that it had good character development. The characters are all thinly drawn; we don't learn much about them beyond the their functions within the base and the fact that they lead a mundane existence up there.[/quote]

I agree with you. I'll just expand on my point to compare Carpenter's version with the new movie. In Carpenter's version, we knew the characters' names and at least one defining characteristic for each guy. The roller skating cook, the dog lover, the doctor, the pot-head, the bad-ass black dude, and of course Wilford Brimley's Blair. In the new movie, we hardly know any of the characters, not even by name (it doesn't help, of course, that most of them are Norwegian), and one of the main characters, the helicopter pilot, is off-screen for 75% of the story. At least in Carpenter's version, we knew who was being killed.