I disagree; the 2011 film highlighted the paranoia of being isolated with people who may wish you very, very ill–just as Carpenter’s version did.
The genius of Carpenter’s adaptation of the material is that he combined the ‘terror of being isolated with a murderous monster in a hostile environment’ aspect of the 1951 version, with the 'terror of being utterly unable to tell friend from foe’ from the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The 2011 prequel concentrated on that dilemma. How do you stay alive when those making decisions about you may be hostile to your continued existence? How do you deal with the fact that if you survive and accidentally help the monster survive, the entire human race may be in danger of extinction?
Both the 1982 and 2011 versions hit this hard–they depict power struggles between people who know they are people and “people” who may be working toward the end of humanity.
Both versions focus on the need for the humans to think their way out of this peril. That’s a genre of movie that many of us enjoy; the jump scares are incidental.
I suspect that a lot of people who love the Carpenter version tend to dislike movies with female protagonists. The appeal of Mary Elizabeth Winstead aside, I bet the 2011 version would have found more favor with a substantial number of fans if the role had been played by, I don’t know, Michael Fassbender or Jeremy Renner. Or someone similar. Maybe even reverse the roles played by Joel Edgerton and MEW—that might have pleased some and led to better reviews.
But for those who don’t mind female protagonists, the 2011 movie is entertaining and effective. Frankly, I appreciate the care taken to “explain” so much of what we saw at the beginning of the 1982 version; that was just plain fun.
I do not “dislike movies with female protagonists”, and trying to paint people who are critical of the 2011 as just being veiled misogynists is disingenuous at a minimum. Aside from CGI that was so obvious that it drew this viewer immediately out of the film, the characters were stilted and uninteresting, the “lets bring in a single expert to investigate this totally bizarre thing that nobody is an expert in” is an overworn and ridiculous trope, and as with many prequels, the film mostly serves to fill in backstory that nobody really needed to begin with.
What makes the Carpenter film so effective and creepy—aside from the score, cinematography, acting, and the general atmosphere of paranoia—is that it doesn’t try to explain everything beyond what the characters can figure out, and so as the viewer you are a participant in their story. It has just a little bit of exposition in where the creature came from (pre-title scene) and how it infects things (Blair’s computer simulation), both of which were the result of obligate notes from the studio, but for the rest of it, you only know what MacReady knows. The 2011 film has none of this, and spends way too much time explaining things that, while perhaps intellectually satisfying have nothing to do with adding to the tension of the film or driving the story along. I accidentally bought it a few years ago (I was looking for the Carpenter film on a streaming platform and had forgotten that there was even a prequel), so I went in with no preconceptions and a predisposition to favor several of the principal actors (including, despite your insinuation, Winstead), and found a story that was very nearly a straight remake except with low grade CGI, one dimensional characters, and zero tension. To be honest, I don’t even remember much of it except the terrible CGI, and I could not quote a single line from it. Contrast with the the original, containing a “Who’s Who” of character actors doing top grade work, memorable scenese, and eminently quotable dialogue.
I’ve never seen the prequel. I never bothered to see it because everybody I asked (including on the SDMB) said it sucked. I cannot be sure of all of these people. But, I am certain that most of them weren’t reviewing the film from a place of sexism.
Interestingly, even the crew was all men during Carpenter’s Thing. It wasn’t intentional; one person was pregnant and had to leave near the very start of shooting the film. According to Carpenter, that gave the movie a certain “energy.” No idea what that means, though. I don’t think it would have been different with a female character. Or perhaps it would-that would be interesting.
Having seen both the 1982 and the 2011 films, I think the all-male cast in the earlier film was certainly a boon to the end product. Very few films have no female characters (even prison dramas have 'em), and having not a whiff of romantic, sexual or gender tension made the intensity and focus all the better.
The 2011 film didn’t leave a lasting impression on me, other than a flat pancake kind of feeling, compared to the 80’s flick.
I thought the 2011 film would have been solid if it weren’t for the ridiculous CGI. The practical effects of the 1982 film are one of the best parts – it was baffling to me that they’d give all that up for some quickly dated-looking CGI.
I’m not sure the skill set necessary to make state-of-the-art puppetry effects is still there anymore (even if many of the original masters are still around). Of course, with The Thing, it was not just the execution, but the excellent ideas and images, that made the special FX extra special.
Rob Bottin is still around. I think also the sound effects helped.
Having re-watched it recently, I think I forgot when Blair becomes infected. Was that ever settled - was it after he destroys the communications equipment, when he was in the tool shed? And I am unclear what happened to Fuchs - it’s left as Mac’s speculation. Perhaps that was by design.
Yeah, it was the rubber eraser on the pencil in that case. Or the short gloves he was using. But, there was no suggestion that either occurrence was suspect.
Also, when the dog enters someone’s room, only a silhouette is shown, but it’s unclear who it is. It is not Clark as the silhouette was clean shaven.
And, who broke into the blood fridge? Both Copper and Garry are shown to not be Things during the hot needle blood test, but only they have the key.
Windows had the keys and dropped them when he walked in on bennings getting enThingulated. Which is why windows freaks out and runs for the guns when there is the very tense talk about who had the keys.
I thought the CGI effects in the 2011 version were fine. Could have been better, could have been worse. The dozer crash at the start and some at the end with the Tetris column and the Sander Thing were bad, the rest were fine including the creatures. The problem as said upthread was that the film was flat as a pancake and had no tension whatsoever. It also did nothing interesting with the prequel aspect and did silly things like show an axe being stuck in a door just because there was an axe in a door in the 1982 version. Same thing with the “dual head” monster, in 1982 it was a bizarre shocking split head, the prequel reasoned it was two heads coming together which made no sense. The monsters also didn’t “morph” ie once they burst out they just walked around as they were and didn’t change. And the worst bit was the set-up at the end which linked it to the 1982 film where a dog just randomly appeared and started running away even though no dogs were seen in the rest of the movie (edited to add: apart from a blink and you miss it dog biting a fence insert).
For me the best aspect of the 1982 film was the creeping dread that oozed out of the movie, mostly helped by the doom leaden soundtrack. As a kid seeing it for the first time in 1984 on VHS rental I couldn’t believe how creepily eerie it was, and scary too with the creature doing all kinds of things I’d never seen on film before.
The early to mid '80s was a great time to be a teenage boy in terms of movies: First Blood, Terminator, The Thing, Poltergeist, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Aliens, Evil Dead; just so much greatness.
EDIT: Almost forgot An American Werewolf in London. That movie scared the beejesus out of 12-year-old me, though not quite as badly as Poltergeist did.
Take a look at the photo–from the 1982 version–at the top of this article (worth a read in its entirety). This is clearly intended to be “two heads coming together” rather than one head splitting into two. Note the two sets of teeth, one per mouth; the two noses, etc.
It’s true that there’s only one eye shown per face. But it’s a real stretch to call this ‘one split head.’
Other than that: I agree that some of the CGI for the 2011 version was decent, while the bits you mention were indeed rather bad.
I don’t see two noses, I see one nose split in two, stretched across the separating halves of a face. Same with the teeth - that looks like two half-sets to me. The tongue, also, looks like one big stretched out lump of flesh.