The Thing (1982 movie): Did the Thing escape? (John Carpenter says there is an answer...very open spoilers)

[Miller]

@Tibby

I’m basing the virus idea on what was said in the video linked by @crowmanyclouds upthread. It covers a sequel script (mercifully scrapped) that went into more detail about the Thing.

The fact that the movie its from does not, in fact, exist raises some pretty serious problems with including it in canon.

@Tibby

According to it: “It said it would create a perfect imitation of someone. If they had a blood clot, it would have one too. And if they had a cold, it would even take over the cells of the virus and imitate that as well.”

Well, we do know (from the movie that actually exists) that if it copies someone with a physical defect, like a bad heart, that it will copy the defect as well, because we see that happen. Would it do that to a blood clot? I’m not sure - the blood clot isn’t really a part of the copied creature, at that point. And I’m not sure to what extent a blood clot is still living tissue, so I don’t know if the Thing could necessarily take over the cells in a blood clot. I’d guess that, if the Thing attacked someone with a blood clot, and infected them with itself, then the blood clot would remain, because nothing its done would cause it to be removed - it just colonizes all the living cells around the blood clot. On the other hand, if the Thing monstered out, then tried to reassume the form of the blood clot guy, I’m guessing the clot would be gone, because it’s not actually a part of the organism anymore, it’s basically a foreign body.

If it took over someone with a cold, I don’t think it would copy the cold, and I’m guessing that the person taken over would be suddenly cured of their cold - it shouldn’t be able to copy viruses, for the reasons both of us pointed out, but it should be able to out-compete the virus, by just being way better at the whole, “replacing genetic material in a cell with its own DNA” thing.

@Tibby

As for the Thing creating something like an earring, I could imagine it sequestering trace metals or calcium and extruding it through the earlobe like a tumor or skin tag shaped like an earring. It would still need living tissue to work with, though, so mimicking something like a gun?

That feels like a lot of extra steps versus just, “It puts the earring back in after it eats the guy.” We already know that, when impersonating someone, the Thing can wear clothes, use tools, and take actions to disguise the fact that its infected, so “It can put in an earring,” is absolutely not a stretch for it. Plus, if its growing its own jewelry, then it’s not an “exact copy” anymore, and is creating a potentially exploitable flaw in its camouflage.

Finally, if it has the ability to effectively forge trace metal in its body into specific shapes, I think you still have the “gun” problem. Because what would stop the creature from swallowing a bunch of iron ingots, and using the same process it can use on trace iron to turn it into some advanced mechanical device?

[DocCathode]

@Miller

Also, if infecting someone is that easy, most of the movie doesn’t make sense. Why monster-out in the dog kennel, when it could just as easily infect those dogs by licking their faces, which is totally normal dog behavior? Why not just chill in the dog kennel while the one person it infected beforehand goes around and licks everyone’s toothbrush? If nothing else, why not mutate into a form that spews aerosolized Thing-cells every where, then go hide in an air duct?

The kennel is the only time we see the Thing attack something with the intent to assimilate (as opposed to being discovered) and it does it by jabbing big fleshy tentacles into its victims and pumping them full of genetic material. (Metaphor? What metaphor?) I don’t think you can get infected by trace amounts of genetic Thing material - it appears that it takes enough that getting infected necessarily involves severe physical trauma.

I meant to respond to this before. My opinion- Infection by trace amounts takes a long time. Pumping a lot of Thing cells into the victim is much faster, but requires the Thing to shed a lot more cells. I have not seen the prequel (Friends tell me I should avoid seeing it). But IIRC the dog was the last functional Thing left. Which is why the Norwegian was so bent on destroying it. It only had the mass of a dog. If it tried to infect the other dogs or the humans with trace amount of cells, they may have figured out what was going and destroyed the Thing (and probably themselves) before total conversion. If it converted enough of the mass it had as a dog into enough aerosolized cells to effectively infect the humans, there would be no mass left. The Thing clearly has a survival instinct. To survive, the dog Thing runse from the Norwegian camp. (Sorry I suck at remembering names) The severed head Thing with spider legs and eyestalks doesn’t attack, it just tries to escape- and of course, Thing blood tries to run from a hot needle.

Whether the decision to convert the dogs in the kennel by attacking them and pumping them with cells is a matter of conscious thought or just instincts, I dunno. But it was the Thing doing what it needs to in order to maximize the odds of survival.

[Tibby]

I doubt swallowing iron ingots would provide enough metal that could be absorbed into cells and made bioavailable to create something large, like a gun. That would demand an entirely new (and pretty bonkers) physiology. But, there may already be enough trace metal in a normal body to produce a tiny ear stud—or maybe just fabricate an enamel stud that looks metallic.

On the other hand, if you’re imagining forging iron ingots into a gun right in your gut without first absorbing the metal into the cells, that’s an entirely different premise—and more far-fetched. Forging a large, precise, high-tolerance firearm from ingots would basically turn your digestive tract into a molten scrapyard. Your GI track is not prime real estate for high-end metallurgy.

We gotta keep it real.

[CalMeacham]

@Biffster

Well that’s a much happier ending! I think I prefer John Carpenter’s ending. The uncertainty and paranoia makes it better IMHO.

I don’t just like it because it’s a “happier” ending. I’m reminded of what L. Sprague deCamp wrote about plotting in his Science Fiction Writer’s Handbook. He suggests a plot about a spaceship that suffers an accident and has to land on an unhospitable planet. The survivors labor mightily to repair their ship. They finally do so and take off.

at this point, deCamp complains, some writers would have the ship struck by a meteor and crash, just because he’s a cynical writer who wants to show the universe is a perverse place not limited by human morality or dramatic structure. He registered himself as not liking such stories.

That’s pretty much the way I felt at the end of Carpenter’s The Thing. I loved that it was so faithful to Campbell’s original story, right up until they find the ship The Thing was building. But The Thing isn’t there at the time, so they can’t end it like the story. Our Heroes have labored mightily, showing creativity and resolution even in a situation fraught with paranoia that tests their mettle.

And then their ship gets hit by an asteroid and they all get killed.

Incidentally, while researching this I found out something I had been unaware of. In 2018 Alec Nevala-Lee, going through Campbell’s papers, discovered an earlier and longer version of Who Goes There?, the story on which The Thing is based. It bore the title Frozen Hell, and was evidently Campbell’s first try at the story, intended to be novel-length, before he reconsidered and stripped it down to short story-length. Frozen Hell was published in 2019.

https://www.sffworld.com/2019/04/frozen-hell-by-john-w-campbell/

Frozen Hell: Campbell Jr., John W.: 9781479442829: Amazon.com: Books

Richard A. Lupoff Reviews Frozen Hell by John W. Campbell, Jr.

[Miller]

@Tibby

I doubt swallowing iron ingots would provide enough metal that could be absorbed into cells and made bioavailable to create something large, like a gun.

I dunno, if it can do it with a little bit, why not with a whole lot? I feel like once you’ve taken the cork out of “it can manipulate metal like it manipulates flesh,” you’ve got a whole lot more complications to sort out. Certainly, way more than you have with, “It’s smart enough to put the earring back in after it kills a guy,” which is already well in line with the abilities and canniness that it shows in the rest of the movie.

@CalMeacham

And then their ship gets hit by an asteroid and they all get killed.

I’m guessing you aren’t a fan of the movie adaptation of The Mist.

I get what deCamp is complaining about, though - but I don’t think it quite applies here, because their “spaceship” isn’t destroyed by random caprice at the end. Instead, they deliberately destroy it when they realize that they don’t have a path to survival, and the only way to stop the monster is to destroy themselves, as well. I feel it really shifts the tone from, “The universe says go fuck yourself,” to “Humanity says go fuck yourself.” It’s got a bit of that “indomitable human spirit” vibe going, which helps cut the pessimism of everyone dying.

@DocCathode

Whether the decision to convert the dogs in the kennel by attacking them and pumping them with cells is a matter of conscious thought or just instincts, I dunno. But it was the Thing doing what it needs to in order to maximize the odds of survival.

Yeah, agreed that “hide and survive” is its primary motivation throughout the movie. Which makes the kennel attack a little weird, because changing in front of half a dozen dogs with no plan to instantly silence them is just suicide for it. Of course, given how little we know about the creatures abilities and psychology, it’s hard to really understand its motivations here. (One idea I like: it changes in the kennel because it doesn’t have a choice - it’s been holding the dog form for too long, and is exhausted, like someone trying to hold a flexed muscle for hours and hours.)

I think my main problem with the idea that trace amounts of the creature could cause total infection is that, if that’s true, everyone in the movie has already lost by about the halfway point, because they’d need a full clean room setup to stay uninfected in that situation. Which means that everything they do from that point is basically futile, which feeds back into CalMeacham’s complaint about the nihilism of the ending.

[CalMeacham]

@Miller

I get what deCamp is complaining about, though - but I don’t think it quite applies here, because their “spaceship” isn’t destroyed by random caprice at the end. Instead, they deliberately destroy it when they realize that they don’t have a path to survival, and the only way to stop the monster is to destroy themselves, as well.

I think you’re being a bit too literal here.

And certainly their actions make sense given what happens. It’s just that what happens in the movie has been changed from what happens in the original story.

Yeah, I didn’t care all that much for the ending of the movie version of The Mist. Of course, the ending of Stephen King’s story is pretty damned depressing, too, but it didn’t have the dramatic KICK you needed to provide a satisfying ending.

Compare it with what I think is the REAL source of the story – a virtually forgotten 1950s British science fiction film called The Strange World of Planet X (released in the US under the more compelling title The Cosmic Monsters. A young Stephen King probably saw this on some local Creature Feature TV show, as I did. Given his tendency to use material he’s run across as springboards for his own fiction, I strongly suspect this is another case of it. A secret military scientific research results in a catastrophic event during a horrendous thunderstorm, as a result of which giant mutated bugs swarm over the countryside. (In the novel the film was based on, it’s because we broke into another dimension, as in the Kng story, but the fil changed that). There’s a deus ex machina in the form of a friendly Klaatu-like alien to set things right in the movie.

[RickJay]

@CalMeacham

And then their ship gets hit by an asteroid and they all get killed.

But the problem with that is that it’s a deus ex machina (well, a negative one.) The asteroid has nothing to do with the story hat preceded it. It’s a cheat.

There’s nothing like that in The Thing. Everything that happens is a logical step from what happened before.

[CalMeacham]

@RickJay

There’s nothing like that in The Thing. Everything that happens is a logical step from what happened before.

MacReady and the others surprising The Blair-Thing as it’s intently working on its antigravity getaway device was logical, too. They got the drop on it and torched it.

The difference in the film was that the Blair-Thing was NOT there when they dropped in on him. You’d think he’d be working on it. The alternative is that he heard them and realized the jig was up and scampered back to the camp to do damage (maybe because of the shout “Blair! We got something for ya!”)