I love The Thing and The Things and I also think the prequel isn’t bad.
My kid and her friend were like “That is the best dog actor EVER!”
There are a lot of problems with the 2011 movie, to say the least, and many are really odd because parts of the movie suggest they wanted to pay tribute to the 1982 film, and yet many of the problems suggest they didn’t UNDERSTAND the 1982 film.
In the 1982 film, as alien and weird as the Thing is, you clearly understand one thing about it:
It wants to hide. Until it has the upper hand, it doesn’t like being noticed.
This is advantageous to the movie, because, of course, it’s much scarier when the Thing hides a lot. It contributes to the sense of paranoia. But the Thing in 2011 exposes itself over and over for no discernible reason. It’s way LESS scary when it’s a juggernaut monster crashing through the base.
I was wonderin when El Capitan was gonna get a chance to use his popgun.
Blair’s been busy out here all by himself.
My favorite detail in the film is Blair’s noose that absolutely nobody comments upon.
The noose? They’re not even slightly bothered by the fact he’s building a space ship to escape in!
I agree, I’d say the problem they had stems from them creating scenes to explain every weird thing that’s seen in the 1982 film. Once they got themselves all twisted into knots to do that, I doubt they had much room for anything else.
“I know I’m human” - the subtle paranoia that drifts into the plot is well done.
In addition to the dog horror scene and the head-legs scene; the chest compression/jaws scene is also memorable.
Also, an early Mac vs Windows thing (not sure if that was intentional).
Neither existed in 1982.
It remains an open question as to whether a person still thinks they’re a person when they’re a Thing, or whether the Thing just does a great job imitating personality, or what. The movie does suggest a Thing might psychologically sit in the background until it feels the need to take over. Which is, of course, even scarier.
There are a lot of things online trying to sort out who’s a Thing at various points in the movie and who isn’t. Almost all, however, go on the assumption McReady isn’t a Thing. In truth, you cannot know that for sure.
It’s not paranoia – it’s logic. Macready is stating, like Descartes, that he knows he exists, and for him the problem is everyone else. His next line is the next step in logic “And some of you are human, or you’d all just attack me.” After that, everything is predicated on figuring out who is human and who is “thing”, and Doc starts working on a test.
Is it paranoia if you know that a shape shifting being really is out to get you? It’s at least justified paranoia.
And that is the quandary - who is still human? Mac thinks some of them are still human - but who? Otherwise he could just mow them all down and be done with it.
One of the many things (ha!) I like about the film.
The short story I referred to in an earlier post addresses this question from the alien’s point of view.
Every once in a while you’re lucky enough to see a great film without having seen a trailer, or having a single thing spoiled, even the plot. That film was one of those for me, and man did I love it. Carpenter’s pacing is terrific, he’ll let the bad vibe really take hold of you before exploding into action (just the scene of Kurt Russell and the blood samples).*
- okay, I did realize later he was using the same unsterilized knife to take blood samples from each person. probably not good.
In 2018 an unpublished manuscript was discovered titled Frozen Hell, an earlier version of Who Goes There? that has 45 more pages. Check it out: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/43610618-frozen-hell
I liked the 2011 prequel film too. I know it wasn’t as popular but it held its own as a film.
Begs the question: Do thing/humans recognize each other somehow?
Very interesting. I’ll have to read it.
I tracked down another “lost” Campbell story, All, but was very disappointed in it. It’s the story that Campbell told Heinlein the plot to, and Heinlein turned it into Sixth Column/ The Day After Tomorrow. The Heinlein story is readable (if a bit racist), but Campbell’s original is almost impenetrable. On the other hand Who Goes There? is eminently readable, and probably my favorite story by Campbell, so this should be worth getting hold of.
My biggest nitpick of the 2011 film nobody else seems to bring up is their attempt at “bridging” the two films, despite the fact as shown at the start of 1982s The Thing both Norwegians are super gung-ho about killing The Thing even willing to cause injury or death to the naive Americans, yet the prequel established one of the two Norwegians had literally just showed up and had absolutely no idea what was going on. He sure went from “What the fuck is even happening?” to “EAT HAND GRENADE ASSHOLE” pretty damn quickly.
What if when a Thing takes over it leaves you in control and only exerts control when it’s found out?