The Thing(s)

[Graham Kennedy]

Huh, as well as the boss walking around with a gun on his hip like he's in the old west, they have a rack of four or more shotguns. Why is a scientific research outpost so heavily armed?

[Graham Kennedy]

"I know you gentlemen have been through a lot... but when you find the time... I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!"

[Graham Kennedy]

Onward!

[Graham Kennedy]

So The Thing 2011. Interesting that it wasn't until I saw a Lady protagonist in this one that I realised there are no female characters at all in Carpenter's version.

[Graham Kennedy]

Ha, the chief scientist in the Norwegian camp is a bit Dr. Carrington. Asshole incarnate!

[Graham Kennedy]

So is the implication here that drilling into the Thing woke it up?

Also, this is another example where you can kind of feel sorry for The Thing. It's done nothing bad, yet it arrived, had its ship blown up, and then somebody stuck a drill up its ass!

[Mikey]

Erm, sorry if this seems like a stupid question, but of the three you mention I've only seen the Carpenter one. Are all three adaptations of Campbell's short story "Who Goes There?"

[Graham Kennedy]

Yes. "The Thing From Another World" is a 1954 black and white movie. It's a looser adaption in that they changed the nature of the beast since they didn't have the budget or effects to do a shapeshifting monster.

The Thing 2011 is a prequel that covers the events at the Norwegian base leading to the start of the Carpenter movie.

And I'm coming down with something, feel queasy as hell. I'm going to sleep and will post thoughts on the last film tomorrow.

[Mikey]

Feel better. And if you look in the mirror and see a Siberian husky... burn everything.

[Graham Kennedy]

Well that was a fun night of frequent loo trips. Not ordering food from that place again.

So... I really like the idea that being converted into a Thing expels any non-biological parts from your body. It's logical, given what a Thing does, and it's creepy when the Heroine finds bloody fillings on the bathroom floor. Also it makes for a good test for the Thing, because on the one hand you can eliminate some people if they still have fillings, but on the other, NOT having fillings doesn't prove that you've been Thinged. As one guy says, "I'm an alien because I floss?"

I also appreciate the effort they put in to having the Norwegian camp wind up exactly as we saw it in the original film. Apparently there were no architectural plans for the camp from the original film, so they snapped dozens of photos from it and used them to recreate the camp, scaling everything to Kurt Russel's height. You even get details such as the axe in the wall, and in a deleted scene you see why the guy that slit his wrists and throat did so.

That they went to such trouble therefore leaves it completely baffling to me why they chose to ignore the tape the Americans recovered showing the destruction of the saucer. On the tape we see the Norwegians finding the saucer and then using thermite bombs to blow it up, exactly as happened in the original movie. Yet in this film that's discarded, and we see the Heroine blowing up the saucer with a hand grenade at the end. I found that a great shame. The grenade scene didn't even work very well, either - how did one grenade cause all that damage? Presumably secondary explosions from the craft, but there's nothing to indicate that.

Also I didn't like how the saucer was uncovered - not in the explosion, but by starting its own engines and apparently the heat melted the cavern ceiling above. But with all that ice melting, there'd be water all over the place. And there wasn't.

I get that they wanted a climactic battle in the saucer, but it just doesn't work for me.

Oh, and when she tells pilot guy she knows he's a Thing because he's missing his earring, he doesn't know which ear. Why not? Don't Things have all your memories and knowledge? They'd never be able to pull off a convincing imitation without it. So how come he forgets his earring?

Also, that scene brings up something I've mentioned for all the movies. When she torches him, he's said "No! Wait!" So... why not say "Okay, I'll wait. What have you got to say?" She has the chance to communicate with a Thing here. She has him at flamethrower-point, she can torch him any time she likes. She's in minimal danger, so surely it's worth taking a minute to hear him out. He's the first alien that's ever offered to talk to anybody!

Here's a thought. She's left with one vehicle. It's mentioned that they could head for the Russian camp fifty miles away... but the American camp is also seventy miles away. If she decided to head there instead, she might very well arrive just around the time that the last two survivors were enjoying a drink in the burning ruins of their camp. So Mac and Childs could actually wound up being saved by her!

[Mikey]

From my minimal POV, I'd say that the Carpenter film was as good as it was because of a) great direction and b) the willingness to trust a really great source story, and to stick to it. It seems the intent of the later film was to distance itself somewhat, or provide a novel view; and when anything besides "making the best movie possible" is a priority, WTF's are bound to follow.

[Graham Kennedy]

Couple of things I've found reading up on the 2011 movie.

They made a big noise during production about how they were going to use as much in the way of practical effects as possible, as a nod towards the original which is considered a landmark in such effects. But apparently this was abandoned because the effects really didn't come out looking very good. So they went back and layered some pixels over all the rubber monsters. I appreciate their effort, and I'd love to see what the rubber monsters looked like sometime.

Most notably, the big weird CGI cube thing in the ship? That was originally supposed to be an alien pilot. You can see him here :

They also played out the beginning and end differently. We discover that the ship doesn't actually belong to the Thing. There was an alien race - the pilot's race - collecting specimens from different planets, and they picked up a Thing. It then took over the ship, and the pilot crashed it in the process. So when she goes into the ship at the end there was supposed to be a bunch of alien bodies, some half-assimilated, some just ripped apart, etc. She works out what was going on whilst battling the Thing.

I'd far prefer that over what we got myself, but apparently they felt that the "discover the backstory" plot got in the way of the "fight the Thing" plot.

I like the 2011 movie, but overall I have to say I think it's a bit of a missed opportunity.