Me, I’m excited (which proves I’m not a Thing ). I loved the original; it was one of the scariest movies I had ever seen. I liked the idea of a prequel even though we all know how its gonna end
Which, in a way, kind of is a drag- obviously the new chick gets Thing-ed because all that’s left of the Norweigean staff are those two dudes in the helicopter (who, hell, might be Things too, just to throw off suspicion)
I’ve read that one of the things John Carpetenter wished was for a bigger special effects budget- now 30 years later we have a much bigger special effects technology to work with which is promising.
Something I’ve always wondered was the actual threat of the Thing in populated areas. I mean, that was the concern, that this alien would be set loose on the population. But in an ice station in antarctica its easy for the Thing to wreck havoc- I would figure in populated areas they’d develop thing-detecting protocols (hot needle on blood sample?)
Well, one will have to tell me how the Thing, which apparently is only one organism is supposed to take over the world in thirty six hours, all by itself. It’s not like he duplicates.
It actually was lucky as hell to be discovered in a very remote location.
I mean exactly what I said. The plot of Carpenter’s Thing is totally incoherent in both the behaviour of the Thing(s) and M.O. At times the movie is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, at others it switches to Alien, back and forth, back and forth. There’s absolutely no reason, if the Thing really duplicates (and not merely absorbs), that, at the end, there’d be three people left with the crazy/infected saucer-building scientist, and only one fucking thing. By the middle of the movie, it would already be too late.
The Thing never exhibits group attacks, nor even group apparitions (at best, you get a fully disguised Thing, and one half baked).
Good luck taking over Earth one human being at a time.
(and dont get me started on people being the Thing and acting like they’re not aware of it. IT doesnt infect, it kills and imitates)
The point of the original story was that the Thing could take over multiple people and that any part of it could take over an almost unlimited number of other creatures.
One of the reasons Campbell set the original story in the Antarctic is because he didn’t what the creature to see a bird and use that to reach civilization. This is specifically stated in the story.
Judging by the trailer, they jettisoned most of the story other than the setup. The film is low on my list of things to see – scary movies are just plain stupid.
You really think a Hollywood prequel 20+ years after the original is gonna line up? If there’s a pretty protagonist it’s even odds they’ll find a way to have her escape, whether it makes sense or not.
If the original Thing could mass infest people the story would be over in about 10 minutes. The dog could just sneeze aerosolized bits of itself everywhere, or shake skinflakes/fur everywhere. Boom, everyone’s a Thing.
Yeah, I remember going around with you on the “infection” thing a while back. That’s not what I was referring to. You said that there’s only one thing at a time. I don’t understand how you can say that, since we see the creature separate a portion of its body on screen, in an attempt to escape, while the rest of its mass stays behind to fight. I’m sure you remember it, it’s arguably the most famous scene in the movie. Apart from that, the fact that they keep finding, and killing, versions of the creature, and it keeps coming back, is pretty hard evidence that there can be more than one of the beast running around at a time.
That’s pretty easy to explain away actually. First, Things are canonically selfish; they aren’t just trying to convert everyone for the greater glory of Thingdom; they aren’t motivated to convert everyone according to some maximum-efficiency scheme. Second, there’s the question of how much of their identity/personality/knowledge is copied with that sort of conversion-by-contamination. It may be that a Thing can only transfer its personality and knowledge (like how to build flying saucers) if it can grab someone and maintain contact for some time. But if it just spews Thing-bits all over, it’ll just create a bunch of competitor Things that don’t think like the original, don’t have the same goals and don’t know anything more than the human victims did.
I think he’s referring to the idea that people who have been taken over by the creature might not know that they’re infected - sort of a Manchurian Candidate kind of thing, where the conscious mind thinks that they’re a normal human, while the alien lurks in the subconscious, ready to take over at the most opportune time.
There’s a scene where one of the bodies is dripping blood from under the tarp/blanket covering it, as one of the guys (I forget which one) is looking out a window or something. He turns up be-Thinged soon after. This was before they figured out that body parts will split off, blood will attempt to flee destruction, etc.
The kennel scene is the only time you see the creature in the process of infecting other creatures, and I think it’s pretty instructive. You can see it here. One thing I always forget is the part where the creature sprays down one of the dogs that’s attempting to escape with some sort of liquid. Apparently, this isn’t enough by itself to infect the dog, because it follows this up by impaling the dogs on tentacles. My guess is that infecting another creature requires a fairly sophisticated biological structure - a single alien cell can’t work as a vector, it needs enough cells to build a special “infector” cell, which it injects into its victims via one of its tentacles.
Alternatively, inhaling a few cells isn’t a strong enough dose to reliably infect: our own immune systems can handles a couple of cells caught in our mucous membranes. But pumping a super-load of infected cells directly into our blood streams overwhelms our defense systems and allows the monster to take over.
I’ve never seen the original The Thing. It was never on my radar as I was growing up, in fact I hadn’t even heard of it until relatively recently (mid-90s). I’ve just never got around to ever seeing it. It’s probably not really my kind of movie.
So by the rules of the OP Title, that makes me a Thing. Am I “Thing 1” or “Thing 2”?
). I loved the original; it was one of the scariest movies I had ever seen. I liked the idea of a prequel even though we all know how its gonna end