There was a moment in The Thing when I did lose focus and begin to drift, started thinking that I couldn’t wait to get home and watch some more Party Down. Indeed after the opening moments where we see that this movie isn’t characterizing its scientists nearly as carefully as they did in ’82, it slows down to something of an odd pace. The alien is loose and running around, and so are the characters. Scenes from the first movie (of this ilk) are recycled; we get a sense of where they’re going with all this, but it’s not engaging. This continues for only about a half hour/forty-five into the movie. After that, the gloves come off, and I saw exactly what I wanted to see – and more.
In the original The Thing, there are three major Thing set pieces that always stand out in my mind: the dog, the spider-head, and the blood test scene. They’re all self-contained pieces of fantastic horror, and they do exactly what most horror films skip over. In the new one, there is exactly one scene like this – and it’s a pretty good one. Keeping spoilers to a minimum (ironically enough), it’s the origin of the two-faced thing that gets examined in the original movie. The rec room scene, I suppose I’ll call it, has got a great transformation sequence, a lot of Thing-related fatalities, and above all – and this is what the original did that few other horrors do – it was really intense.
Watch the movie for this scene, because this is when it’s most like the Carpenter version. That movie alternated between dedicated suspense and high-intensity terror. That formula didn’t translate wholly to the new movie, which tries its hand at the suspense part far more often, and doesn’t excel. The rec room scene is key though; writhing body parts split off and start skittering away as the face moans its alien moan, flamethrowers aren’t working, tables are being flipped, people are screaming in horror – it’s an expertly done scene, and it gives us a really cool Thing monster, something that I’ll touch on later, because presently it reminds me of what this scene, and the movie, is very reminscent of.
That’s The Mist, the wonderful Frank Darabont adaptation of God-knows-who, which had, like this movie, somewhat CG-obvious creatures, fire-axes being used to kill said creatures, paranoia, and a nostalgic monster movie sensibility. I believe that when Darabont set about making The Mist, he probably wanted to do what Kubrick did for science-fiction with 2001 – make the ‘proverbial good monster movie.’ That’s why there’s a black-and-white version on the DVD.
This is something that sets both The Thing 2011 and The Mist apart from modern horror movies. Attached to the new Thing was a trailer for Paranormal Activity 3, which shambles into theatres this month. That’s the type of horror movie the demographic (teenagers) wants to see. They’ve never been into creatures and monsters – it’s all about just people, just dying (the Human Centipede definitively does not count as a monster). That’s why Final Destination does so well, and Saw, and all those slasher movies that find creative ways to kill people. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but hey – I love a good monster every once in awhile.
I know what you’re thinking – The Thing wasn’t really about monsters, because the thing never got five feet without being fried. The horror came from the transformation sequences, and all the grisly, disgusting inventions it cooks up to escape the flame. This new movie decided, thank God, to take things a step further, and this is the real reason to see this movie before it closes shop without making its budget back. The Thing doesn’t mess around. He wants two things – to survive, and to kill. Due to the limitations of the animatronics back in the day a decade before Jurassic Park, the alien wasn’t limber, wasn’t mobile. It wasn’t much of a hunter.
People are often face to face with a dribbling, fangy alien with tentacle face, or hiding from it without nothing but an ineffectual knife – these moments were a pure joy and certainly worthy of comparison to the 1982 flick. It’s simple really: the design is cool. Though I’ve played the games, the aliens look a lot like, or take the principle of, the monsters from the Silent Hill series. You take a human body and twist it into a four legged tentacle monster. It’s really the most unnatural, unnerving thing you could ever imagine being in the same room with.
Luckily our intrepid heroine is able to take action, and she proves quite capable in this movie. Picking up on the creature’s game pretty quickly (she probably got a few pointers from Kurt on the sets of Sky High and Death Proof), she leads the charge as Norweigans are being picked off all around her. I never really got to know any of these people. I know none of their names, save Sanders and Peder, though I don’t know who Peder is, just that his name came up in subtitles a lot. These guys, heroine Kate Lloyd included, aren’t nearly as memorable as MacReady, Childs, Norris, Palmer, Fuchs, Windows and the gang. When they died I was really more interested in their transformation, and what mutants their bodies would provide. I wasn’t really upset or anything, except maybe for the younger looking guy and the dude who gets killed by the facehugger arm – everybody was just standing around watching as he died a slow, horrible death. Pobre bastardo.
There is an ending in this movie that will undoubtedly piss off the purists. It’s a sure case of ‘we never needed to know that,’ but it’s like Gears of War 2, for those who played it – they show you questions, meaning they do things that are cryptic and try to maintain that less-is-more legacy that’s served the genre so well. In Gears 2, that was plainly amatuerish storytelling. Here, very little is gained, as mystery is uncovered only to give way for mystery, but it all seems useless, because the first mystery was so good.
The Thing was the Avatar and the Machete of 2011 for me. While I wasn’t as excited to see this as those two, this one is so, so much better. Would buy again, and indeed sometime in the future I’ll revisit this one to talk about the ending, and some other things that require spoiling for elaboration on. So for now I’ll leave you with one final recommending comment: Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a total badass.
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October 15, 2011 at 1:41 AM
Craig D.
Oh, goddamnit. Now I have to see this in a theatre.
October 15, 2011 at 12:41 PM
Jung-ho
I think it’s worth the effort. At the very least it’s an hour and a half of solid entertainment, and – as I forgot to mention this in the post – the leadin to the original is pretty cute.
October 15, 2011 at 3:00 PM
Craig D.
I’m glad to hear you liked it. I was fearing that you wouldn’t. I was dreading a post along the lines of, “Well, despite my cautious optimism, The Thing 2011 is unfortunately…” The negative reviews I’ve read have all sounded like they were written by people who were going to hate the movie no matter what, and like I pointed out in the last post, for the most part they make the exact same complaints that critics made in 1982. I’ll be seeing it soon to see for myself, and I’ll walk into it with no expectations one way or another, no bias for or against. I’m not sure if I’ll enjoy it as much as, say, The Mist, but I’m sure I’ll like it better than pretty much every American horror film of recent memory. Not that that’s saying much. 😛
October 15, 2011 at 4:36 PM
Jung-ho
I hear you. My remaining concern with The Thing (now that I’m satisfied it’s a solid flick), is its moneymaking. The theatre I sat in was barren, and it got me to thinking how niche this film actually is. We’re totally into it, but we’re nerds and we like the original. Everybody else wants Paranormal Activity 3.
Time will tell… That poor Mary Elizabeth Winstead hasn’t been in a big hit since 2007
October 18, 2011 at 1:42 AM
Craig D.
I still haven’t seen the film (I might see it tomorrow, but if not, it’ll be before the week is out) but I’ve found a couple of interesting links to share. #1 is an interview with the screenwriter, Eric Heisserer, and he has some very interesting things to say about what was cut from the final film. Perhaps we’ll get an extended cut on DVD? #2 is a featurette on YouTube that focuses on the effects, with some “before and after” shots showing how the practical effects were enhanced with CG.
1. http://tinyurl.com/3qbtjnw
2. http://tinyurl.com/3jsqu23
October 18, 2011 at 2:12 PM
Jung-ho
I can only hope for an extended cut, though I think it’s a rule for all horror movies to have an unrated DVD version (no matter how little new content is added). Watching that stuff about the creatures really made me want to see this again
October 18, 2011 at 8:44 PM
Craig D.
This movie sucked! John Carpenter should sue! CGI is worse than rape!
Just kidding. I liked it.
Forgive my laziness, but instead of typing up some thoughts here, I’m just going to copy and paste what I just posted on my regular message board:
I’m at a loss here, staring at my computer screen, wondering what the hell to type. And that’s a good thing, because it’s much harder for me to describe why I like a movie than to describe why I dislike one. The Thing is not as good as the 1982 version, but it’s kind of amazing how successful it is at capturing what made it so good: the combination of paranoia and social decay with grisly, Lovecraftian creature design. (Flamethrowers, too. They make everything better.) You rarely see horror movies like this anymore, and it’s a fucking miracle that we occasionally get something like this and The Mist. This movie is so much better than any Saw or Hostel or Paranormal Activity movie, and better than the overrated Dawn of the Dead remake that all I can do is laugh at the 33% rating it has on Rotten Tomatoes.
It’s not perfect. Some of the victims are redshirts you know nothing about, and there was a wasted opportunity to include elements from the 1938 short novel and 1951 film that weren’t used in the 1982 film. (For example, characters arguing about the safety of introducing alien germs to humans, or the characters forming a circle around the spaceship to determine its size.) It suffers from Die Hard 2 syndrome, meaning that it’s almost as good as its predecessor, but not quite, and it’s so similar it sometimes feels redundant. It’s not supposed to be a remake, but some of the scenes come straight from the 1982 film. Also, the final Thing creature doesn’t look all that great. It’s not that the effects are bad, it just looks a bit silly.
But this is nitpicking. The film works as a good companion piece to the 1982 film. Despite having too many similarities, it’s got enough good new stuff to make it feel worthwhile, so many scenes that nobody ever thought to try in 1982. (Especially in the third act, when it departs from the 1982 film and turns into a Thing hunt.) The creature design is fantastic, and the effects, blending puppetry with CGI, work well for the most part. As for the characters, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is so awesome that I would be fine if the Die Hard series continued with her taking over from Bruce Willis, and they get everything they can out of the xenophobia and language barrier between the Americans and Norwegians.
I was prepared to throw up my hands and say, “Damnit, the critics are right. It sucks.” But I can’t. The critics are going to be reassessing this movie again in the years to come, just like they hated the 1982 film when it was released but saw what was so good about it later. Don’t get your hopes up and think it’s as good as the 1982 film, because it’s not. Just walk into it expecting a good horror movie and you’ll like it. I’ll certainly be seeing it again, and it’ll be fun to watch it back to back with the movie that I’m getting sick and tired of calling “the 1982 film.”
October 18, 2011 at 9:50 PM
Jung-ho
Christ you summed up exactly how I feel. Especially the end creature – a gigantic Sander face looking mad on a big alien body was just… well, yes: silly. But the two-faced monster, the one I guess they call Splitface, is so cool. The transformation scene/killing of that youngish guy – just great. And it’s limber too! That’s something that’ll chase you out of the room, not crawl away with spider legs.
That’s really the one thing I’d hold this movie over John Carpenter’s with; the head opening like jaws and the spider head are classic and to this day very, very creepy, but the new crew really let their design work run wild here, truly getting across the idea that this alien can turn any benevolent body part (be it an arm of one half of your face) into a skittering nightmare.
This may sound like reactionary bullshit (and blasphemy), but honestly I wish The Thing was a series. I know we’ve already got a trilogy on our hands, but the premise the latter two movies took to heart, and all the things you can do with just that element are fucking gold.
I’m sure in two days I’ll calm down and reneg on that point.
But yeah, I was waiting for the team to gather in a circle – the 1982 version (if I’m remembering correctly) showed the Norwegian camp doing that as a callback to From Another World. What the f
October 18, 2011 at 11:11 PM
Craig D.
There are sequels to Carpenter’s film if you want them. There’s a video game (called The Thing) and a comic book series (called The Thing from Another World) that continue the story. (Jesus! These titles are getting confusing.) I’ve never played the game or read the comics, but you can read the plot summary for the video game on Wikipedia (link: http://tinyurl.com/gvjjs) and the cutscenes are on YouTube.
I wouldn’t be opposed to a movie sequel to Carpenter’s film, since the biggest problem with the prequel is that it’s so similar. It may ruin that wonderful ambiguous ending, but I don’t think it’s reactionary bullshit or blasphemy at all. I cringed every time the characters in the prequel did something exactly the same way as Carpenter: tipping over fuel barrels to soak the Thing and burn it with the flamethrower, the flamethrower not working when someone is Thinging out, preparing a blood test only to see the medical equipment sabotaged, locking potential Things up in a shack and having them escape, and I almost laughed when someone pointed out the dog guy, and we see him kneeling next to one of the dogs, looking exactly like Richard Masur. When Carter says “what do we do now?” I was expecting Kate to say, “Why don’t we just wait here awhile…”
My favorite scenes in this movie are going to end up being the ones that try something new entirely: the first transformation and the resulting helicopter crash, the Thing arms detaching and crawling away, the Spider-Man 2 Dr. Octopus moment with the Thing tentacle whipping around the room, the Jurassic Park kitchen scene, going into the alien’s ship, and God knows what else my horrible memory has made me forgotten over the last few hours. There were so many nice little touches: Kate listening to “Who Can it Be Now?” and opening the film with the Norwegians telling sex jokes and there’s some great dialogue: “So I get murdered because I floss?” The overall plot may stick too close to the 82 film, but there’s just way too much cool shit going on in the prequel to dismiss it.
I did notice some callbacks to the 38 story and the 51 film. Kate did briefly point out that introducing an alien to humans would be a bad idea, but you need to have read the story to know that she’s probably talking about the potential for infectous diseases that humans have never been introduced to. And the evil scientist from the 51 film who wants to keep the monster alive and study it, even if it gets people killed, is here. Still, there’s so much great dialogue from the 38 story that they could have used, and I would have lost my geek mind if they had thrown buckets of kerosene on a Thing like they did in the 51 film.
Before seeing this movie, I just assumed that Splitface had been a Thing transforming into a single person, and was killed before it could complete the process, not two different people melded together. Still, I loved what they did with it, more than Sanderface.
Sorry for my long rambling, but The Thing is one of those topics I could talk about all day. Today was like Christmas for me, only without having to lock myself in a bedroom to avoid seeing relatives whose heads I would like to remove with hedge clippers.
October 19, 2011 at 12:07 AM
Jung-ho
The Thing is definitely worth rambling over, no matter how it turned out. I’d certainly be a lot sadder if it sucked (as it stands I’m only half-sad because we’re a loony minority), but I would’ve talked about it ceaselessly, in shifts. There’s too much to like about the movie, and the more I think about it, the more I want to see it again. in this day and age it’s frequently that the nerds are being served in Hollywood, as their culture is mainstream now, as pointed out by Adam Scott in Parks and Recreation. It’s only so rare however, that your specific niche in the nerd world is served. I’ve been averaging one movie a year: last year it was Scott Pilgrim, before that D9. Why so far between?
October 19, 2011 at 12:23 AM
Craig D.
I doubt that we’re in the minority. Critics and bitchy fans are very loud, but they don’t represent everyone. Check out the Rotten Tomatoes page for this movie. 32% from critics, but 73% from users. Also, the reviews that I’ve been reading from bloggers are significantly more positive than what most critics have had to say. Quite simply, more people are enjoying this movie than not enjoying it. Like I said, the critics are going to change their tune in a few years, mark my words.
Except for Roger Ebert. The closest I think he’s ever come to changing his mind is when he reviewed Blade Runner: The Final Cut and basically said, “Oh, alright. I guess I don’t hate it anymore.”
This was my first time in a theatre since Iron Man 2, which Wikipedia tells me was May of 2010. Before that, it was District 9, Watchmen, and The Dark Knight, in reverse order. I would have seen Sherlock Holmes in a theatre if I had any idea how good it was going to be, but I just assumed that it would be terrible since it was Guy Ritchie, and discovering it on DVD was a pleasant surprise. I never saw Avatar in a theatre. I saw about half of it when my TV company gave me HBO free for a month, and I turned it off when Sam Worthington yelled “YEAH, THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ‘BOUT, BITCH!!” at a big space elephant. That’s when I decided that I just had better things to do with my time, like fuck my toaster.
October 19, 2011 at 1:07 AM
Jung-ho
Fuck your toaster, or just watch Aliens again. Avatar is a very sore subject for me. I waited far too long and those guys worked way too hard to end up with such narrative drivel. “You will never be one the people?” Give me a break.
Ebert is the master of being like, oh mercy me I actually meant that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly wasn’t a two star movie but a Great Movies movie… Same with BR, same with Once Upon a Time in the West. Three movies difficult to “get” in their time. Just like The Thing, though he hasn’t reversed his opinion after all these years. Good for him, I suppose, but he’s just as wrong in this year 2011 as we was in 1982 – he and all those big time players did not take kindly to The Thing: The Next Generation, and some of the rationales I’ve heard are (surprisingly) consistent with criticisms of other horror movies:
Not gory enough. Maybe he didn’t say that, but he did say that this one lacked the slow burn. Alien came out in ’79, alright? I want to see the monster now. Just because James Cameron found a good balance doesn’t mean everyone has to forever. I might make a post about the whole “less is more” issue in horror now. It’s BS
October 22, 2011 at 2:51 AM
Craig D.
About two months ago, for no reason other than to have something to do, I decided to watch a movie every day, and I’ve been posting my progress on a message board. Today I watched Carpenter’s The Thing yet again (this must have been my 13th or so viewing) and I was struck at just how perfectly the 1982 and 2011 films match up. I can’t remember if it got every tiny little detail right, like the beard length or coat color of the Norwegian who shoots at the dog, or the precise distance between Splitface’s two faces, but the two movies certainly fit together like a puzzle piece, at least when seen a couple of days apart.
Semi off-topic, I’m also using my movie-watching venture to catch up on my John Carpenter. Despite being in love with The Thing, I had only seen a few of his films. I saw They Live and Big Trouble in Little China each for the first time in the last couple of days. I really liked They Live, but Big Trouble just did nothing for me. I’ll give it another chance in the future (I didn’t like Blade Runner the first time I saw it, and now it’s my favorite movie), but on first viewing it just left me wondering what all the fuss was about. I’ve got plenty of more catching up to do: I still haven’t seen Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog, Christine, Starman, Prince of Darkness, In the Mouth of Madness, Village of the Damned, or Vampires… I think I’m gonna have to turn in my film fan membership card.
October 22, 2011 at 11:14 AM
Jung-ho
Prince of Darkness, The Fog, and Mouth of Madness are all on Netflix streaming, if you have it, and for some reason I was able to locate a full Starnan on YouTube through Crackle. Don’t know if it’s still up. After Thr Thing 2011 I actually was planning on going on a Carpenter binge -I saw Ghosts of Mars before I saw Halloween (still haven’t seen Halloween), so I don’t feel like a real JC fan yet.
When I watched Big Trouble it was maybe two years ago and I had a similar reaction. I liked it, but my favorite of his is still a tie between The Thing and They Live. I have a feeling it’s one of those movies (like I’ve heard The Big Lebowski and Streets of Fire are) that you don’t ‘get’ on the crucial, nebulous, nerd level until thr second viewing. I can buy that, because whenever I think about Jack Burton stumbling his way to victory, it gives me a chuckle
I haven’t watched The Thing 1982 since the new one – I feel like there was a guy in the Norwegian camp who was sitting in a chair and who had shot himself… I don’t remember that in the new one at all
October 22, 2011 at 2:25 PM
Craig D.
I dropped Netflix streaming when they decided to rape their customers with a 60% price increase, and now I just have the DVD plan. Streaming was nice, but the selection was shit. I watch a lot of movies on YouTube so I won’t have to wait for a disc in the mail, although you have to search around because movies are usually broken up into about ten parts, and sometimes different users have different parts. Or in the case of Big Trouble, one user uploads the whole thing but flips the video so you see a mirror image. I’ll try to find the other Carpenter films I’ve missed on the site. If they’re not there, I’ll get them from Netflix.
At the Norwegian camp, Mac and Copper find a guy sitting in a chair who cut his own throat and wrists. The camera pans down and you see his hand, holding a straight razor with a blood icicle coming out of his wrist. You see him again in the prequel, but you don’t see him kill himself. He disappears and when we next see him, we see exactly what Mac and Copper found.
Wikipedia tells me his name was Colin. I didn’t even remember his name or anything about him. That’s one of my problems with the prequel – they go through all this trouble to include stuff from the 82 film but we never really learn anything about this guy. I’m never going to think, “Oh, it’s Colin, you know, the guy who liked _____ and had a _____ personality,” I’m just going to think, “Oh, it’s that guy who looks like Xander Berkeley.” Having the movie focus on a couple of Americans was probably a necessary compromise, but they didn’t have to give them all the personality. Do you remember anything about any of the Norwegians? The movie is basically about Kate, Carter, Adam, Sander, and Redshirts #1-10.
When I was watching the prequel, during the final scene with the helicopter going after the dog, I was wondering if some of that was footage from the 82 film. Watching the 82 film last night, I honestly couldn’t tell a difference. It’s just a shame that we didn’t get to know anything about Lars and Matias before they met their fate at the American camp.
October 22, 2011 at 3:38 PM
Jung-ho
Funny you bring up Xander Berkeley, because he was in one of the adaptations of Who Goes There? – the episode “Ice,” from the first season of The X-Files. I guess it’s an unofficial adaptation, but it’s almost the same story.
When Netflix jacked up the price I actually went the other way, choosing streaming, but that’s probably just because I went to college. I miss being able to rent movies I don’t want to own (even if they’re only, you know, $2 on Amazon. Like Evangelion 2.22. I bought that for $15 and watched the first half last month with no impetus to return. By God it’s terrible…
My issue with the ending to the prequel has to do with audiences who have never heard of John Carpenter, like the guy I went to go see the movie with. If you don’t really get what’s going on, it does seem like a strange way to end a movie, and the guy assumed that they actually killed the dog, because they cut to black after the gunshot. I knew better, of course, but I felt like the only one in the theatre who was sitting there with a moronic smile on my face, almost giddy over this replication of 1982’s opening sequence.
October 22, 2011 at 5:20 PM
Craig D.
I’ve never seen a single X-Files episode. I recently tried to find that episode on YouTube, but all I found was a video about the making of it. I guess I’ll have to add it to my DVD queue and go through the horrible trouble of waiting three whole days for it to get here.
I used to have a bookshelf full of DVDs, but I sold most of them after I discovered Netflix. Buying a movie before seeing it just seemed ludicrous now, and there simply weren’t very many films that I wanted to be able to watch at any time. I only have about 20 DVDs now. Oddly enough, you can get The Thing 82 on DVD for five bucks brand new on Amazon. I figured they would jack up the price because of the prequel. It’s certainly selling well. Right now, it’s #129 in Movies & TV, #3 in Documentary (?!), #5 in Science Fiction, and #7 in Horror.
I actually thought that the ending of the prequel would work terrifically for someone unfamiliar with the 82 film. It’s exactly the kind of ambiguity that the 82 film ended with. Did they kill the dog or not? And of course, it’ll work for fans of Carpenter’s movie who knows what happens next. Guess I was wrong. Oh well. Like we’ve discussed, this was never going to be much more than a niche movie anyway. I’m still amazed that it even got made.
October 22, 2011 at 8:10 PM
Jung-ho
Amazed and thankful it got made, though it was the product of two producers just going through and asking “what horror movie can we remake now?”, after their Dawn ’04 was so successful. Good thing they got some good people to work on it, and had a good remake philosophy.
I still buy movies. Couldn’t tell you why, but I did even when renting from Netflix. I suppose it started with finding movies unavailable on the site (like Akira for the longest time), and then I just got addicted, if such a thing were possible.
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