At the end, was Childs a Thing? MacReady had said all it needed to do now was freeze and wait for the rescue team. What if Blair infected him, since he was alone there? Could’ve been a feint, could have been as Childs described it (chased after Bkair, got lost in the storm. remember they had to use guide lines during the last half of the movie.)
Was it perhaps left open for a possible sequel? Or was it just supposed to be like The Blob with a question mark at the end for a dark feel?
Yes, it’s possible. The only definite point made at the end is that they’ll both be frozen in the next few hours: if they’re both human, they’ll both be dead, and the world will be saved; if Childs is infected, another hero will have to save the world from him in Part 2.
I like the movie a great deal, but it does suffer from one plot deficiency that’s common to a large number of “monster” movies; the monster, invunerable though it may be to bullets, decapitation, poison, frost, going without food for millennia, etc, can instantly be killed by pouring diesel over it and setting it on fire.
They do make the point in the movie that the fire doesn’t fully kill it, there are still live cells in the remains capable of infecting a host.
There was a sequel of sorts made in comic form a few years ago. A submarine showed up saving both of them before they died from exposure, but also taking a creature with them. I never finished the series so I don’t know how it ended.
I think this is one of the great horror movies. I need to see it again. Its ending is damned near perfect.
I’m not bothered by the vulnerability to fire. If you’re talking about something that can change shape and infect a host, then invulnerability to attacks that damage organs makes sense: the entity isn’t dependent on an organ’s integrity to survive, obviously. Invulnerability to poison is also reasonable, inasmuch as poisons attack specific aspects of our bodies, and an alien physiology may have different vulnerabilities. Invulnerability to cold is somewhat reasonable, as that exists in some earth life-forms: if it can go into a dormant state, then it won’t need food or heat until it’s out of torpor. But fire? Fire attacks the entire creature, not just specific organs, and fire fundamentally rearranges chemical structures, separating some components off into smoke and otherwise acting in a way that you can’t rearrange yourself around.
I don’t know if that makes sense to y’all. It makes sense to me :).
This is one movie I watch every winter when it’s dark and snowing outside. It is implied that Keith David is a thing because he spent the last action sequence alone out in the cold and dark. It’s also implied tht Kurt Russell is one because he spent a long time outside alone in the cold and his underwear were found torn up in a trash can. So, both men have reason to think the other is a Thing. And they sit down in the snow drinking cold liquor waiting to freeze to death.
Why don’t we just wait here awhile … see what happens
Great ending… I like the fact that I don’t know for sure who is what.
Carpenter and Russell made a damn good team, and any of you who haven’t also seen Big Trouble in Little China should head immediately to the video store (or TiVo)
I never did figure how some reviewers could come to the conclusion that the original Thing was better thant the remake. Hell, what’s scary about James Arness in a carrot suit? The original movie was OK in the build-up, but the original Thing JUST WASN’T SCARY, whereas I think a good case could be made for the remake Thing (which was true to the original short story) was the scariest monster ever created.
Besides all the viable cells still laying around the camp, there are Things back at the Norwegian base. One of the corpsicles there didn’t seem to be frozen mid-hemmorhage so much as caught in the act of growing tentacles.
RE Fire
There are plenty of organisms which freeze solid in winter and thaw out alive in spring. One of the benefits of this is that no food is needed during this time. Decapitation is useless against the Thing since it doesn’t have any permanent organ structures. Poison needs to be distributed by a circulatory system. Fire can destroy the cells regardless of how they are organized and connected. Presumably, a strong acid would also work. But, they didn’t seem to have any.
As has been pointed out, Wilford Brimley discovered that even fire was not completely effective.
Re the comic
I bought one issue out of curiosity. The issue I have focuses on something Carpenter and Russel agreed on- that until the transformation is almost complete, a human can be unaware that they have been infected and that their cells are being replaced by the Thing.
Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack is an integral part of this film as well. That pulsing “thump thump” really gives me a creepy feeling every time I see the movie.
Great movie. The commentary track, with Russell and Carpenter, indicates that the ending was deliberately ambiguous, and that there’s really just no way of knowing. There are some nice loose ends that add to the general atmosphere of paranoia. For instance,
[spoiler]unless I missed it, there’s never a definite answer as to who destroyed the blood supply. The two people who should have had access are both definitely still human.
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I’ll have to rewatch that movie this weekend. One of the best opening scenes ever.
(I’ve got the DVDs for the three movies Kurt Russell and John Carpenter did together: Escape From New York, The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China. There were rumors of a movie called Escape From L.A., but I don’t believe them. Anyway, those DVDs all have commentary tracks with Russell and Carpenter, and they’re a hoot – the two of them start off talking about the movie, but often go off on a tangent, just chewing the fat; you can tell they’re old friends. You can occasionally hear Carpenter lighting yet another cigarette.)
Damnit, if a mod gets a chance, could you fix my spoiler tag? (And why the Hell can’t we do that ourselves? Never mind; I’m sure that question is answered somewhere on the SDMB.)
