It’s impossible to tell from the trailer whether this is a worthy sequel (prequel actually) to the Carpenter classic but ict’s a safe bet that the makers will have taken the CGI route for the shapeshifting this time and I think it’s also a safe bet that the effects won’t have a tenth of the impact of Rob Bottin’s original wizardry.
The story they surely can’t go wrong with, there are few more suspenseful situations than someone among us is not who he or she seems to be. So all in all I’ll be looking forward to the movie but my expectations aren’t high. Maybe Hollywood will pleasantly surprise me for a change. (Yeah, like that’s gonna happen).
Another run of the mill remake, rife with predictability from start to closing credits and, cynically, a woman in the Kurt Russell role. Yeah, that’ll work. Pass.
Doesn’t just about everyone in Norway speak English already? I don’t think it was a language barrier that led to the events of the first film, I think it was that the guy was half-crazed from the monster wiping out his entire station, and not thinking through what he was doing when he ran into the Americans.
I am curious to see how they conclude the movie. The original pretty much requires that nobody gets out alive. Are they going to have the guts to off the pretty brunette, or are they going to come up with some way for her to escape? If they do that, how do they justify having the protagonist cut and run, when the monster is still up and running around?
While this is true (as my friend who currently in Norway confirms), they don’t really speak English to each other anywhere close to 100% of the time…particularly when the people they’re speaking to are all fellow Norwegians.
And I haven’t seen The Thing recently enough to remember what the exact problem of the surviving Norwegian was, but here’s what Wikipedia has to say:
Good questions all. If they are to be consistent with the first movie then the survivors have to include (at least one) ‘thing’ in the form of a dog, and (at least one) Norwegian male (only to be shot very soon after). There might be more survivors, but that would be adding to what we know from the first movie. I think there are numerous ways that they could play it.
What would really please me is if the director uses they way the Norwegian base looked when the US guys came to find it in the first movie and matched the action scenes in the new movie accordingly - every fire-axe in the door, etc. accounted for.
Based on what I saw in the trailer, and the fact that this has the exact same title as the previous two movies about this subject matter, there’s no fucking way this is a prequel; this is a remake. The story arc described in the trailer is almost exactly the same as the previous two films, especially John Carpenter’s version. Also, John Campbell and his short story (“Who Goes There?”, in case ) are listed in the writing credits. IMDB
I think it could still be a decent movie, but I think the substitution of a female lead is lame, and I’m not sure why this was movie was needed at all. Carpenter’s 1982 version pretty much nailed it.
ETA: I read up a bit before I posted this, and I see now that this movie is supposed to deal with things that happened at the Norwegian camp where Kurt Russell and crew find a lone survivor at the very start of Carpenter’s movie. In that case, seeing as how all of the events of Carpenter’s movie are repeated, apparently in the same sequence, I think this movie is gonna be a piece of shit and pretty much just intellectual property theft.
However, since many people are too young to a)have seen Carpenter’s movie contemporaneously and b)don’t give a shit about IP theft, this movie will prolly be well-made enough production wise to hit the right buttons at the right time and be at least a modest success. Then there will be a sequel by the same director where the Thing fights with mysterious aliens, one of which bleeds acid and one of which has a tentacle face and hunts the acid-bleeder (and sometimes humans, too). That will also be billed as a prequel, tho.
If you speak Norwegian, apparently they give away the big secret right at the beginning. According to the FAQ at Outpost 31, what the Norwegian shouts at our heroes as he’s trying to shoot the dog is, “Get the hell away! It’s not a dog! It’s a thing! It’s imitating a dog! It’s not real! Get away idiots!”
Uh-huh. And how much would you wager that this “prequel” will follow almost exactly the same formula as the original, right down to the female Kurt Russell being one of the last to die, deciding to stay in the camp, freezing to death, just to ensure the creature doesn’t get out?
That’s so funny and, God help us all, probably true.
The irony is that even if the guy had spoken in English the odds are the Americans would have thought him crazy and still shot him to prevent him killing the dog. What he should really have yelled if he’d been thinking straight was, “Rabid dog!! Rabid dog!!” (Or just “Rabies!”, the word is the same in Norwegian.) The Thing would have been a steaming corpse in the blink of an eye.
At least TWO Norwegians. One was the helicopter pilot who dies in the explosion, the other was the bearded guy with the rifle who doesn’t know English ( presumably ) and gets shot by Garry. We never get a good look at the pilot who is tightly bundled up and is only seen digging frantically in the snow for the fallen thermite charge before it blows. No reason at all it couldn’t have been a woman.
That said I am as wary of this film as I was of the unnecessary remake of the The Wickerman. This was probably Carpenter’s most consistent film after Big Trouble in Little China. I’d hate to see it shat upon.
Anyone ever watched the unused scene that had a stop action version of the Thing right before the end? It wasn’t a polished scene, but it was so cheesy, they were wise to cut it. The effects and touches that made it into the movie are still fresh in my mind, even though I haven’t seen it in years. Little things, like steam rising from the Thing as it defrosts (or steam from the actors’ mouths for that matter) were constantly reinforcing how isolated the crew was. Running away was no option in such a climate. I’ll pass on the CGI fest out of respect for Carpenter’s drippy, splattered version.
My favorite line is from Palmer when Norris’ head grows legs and tries to walk away: “You gotta be ****** kidding.” He says it in such a bewildered, exhausted tone - cracks me up every time. That’s what most of the audience is probably thinking at that point.
I’m anxious to see the special effects in “Tree of Life”. I read the director did it old school, using the effects creator and techniques from Kubrik and Clarke’s * 2001*. I’m excited about the special effects of this movie because they aren’t computer generated.
In my experience, TIMEkspressen bus drivers can’t speak English worth a damn. Mostly younger people tend to be better.
Maybe she can run off into the distance, to die of exposure instead of the Thing.
And of course all the Norwegian actors are lower-billed. We have magical Americans and a Dane who come out of nowhere. True Kurt Russell’s crew had no way of knowing what the makeup of the other team was, but it seems a bit forced.
This is the second thread I’ve seen recently describing the John Carpenter version as a revered classic. I personally liked it (more or less despite the gore), but I’ve always sort of assumed it was a lowbrow guilty pleasure on my part and most people did not like it, or regarded it as cheesy and gross.
Is it really considered a classic and/or held in high regard?
