So, which is better and why?
Are there other horror movies of the “predator kills a group one by one” kind that are equally good? Note that I said “equally good”, I know there are plenty of horror movies that involve a predator killing a group one by one.
The Thing.
I rewatched The Thing quite recently and was surprised at how crap it is - I do like the animated creature aspects, but it’s just too corny and badly acted. Whereas Alien, though dull at times, is pretty good.
I’d choose to watch ‘Predator’ or ‘Aliens’ before either of them though.
Damn, why didn’t I think of that?
I voted for the Thing. Is it a better film? I don’t know, but I know which of the two I would rather watch if I had to choose. The Thing is a goddamn classic.
For me, The Thing was ultimately more scary. Part of it was the tension and suspense the other part was that it was more relatable. At least for a 10 year old boy growing up in Minnesota where it got too cold to go outside. Alien was scary but I never thought I’d be stuck on a space ship.
In my opinion, Alien is more suspenseful, better acted, has more of a plot and a much more interesting design / fright factor for the monster. The Thing left me non-plussed; parts of Alien gave me night terrors as a kid.
The Thing. I haven’t seen it, but anything is better than Alien.
Alien had Sigourney Weaver. Getting mostly undressed. The Thing just had a bunch of bundled up guys.
Both movies are very good. I can’t choose just one.
I can.
I have rewatched both in the last year and enjoy both a lot. Having to choose I would go with The Thing. The stakes seem higher because it takes place in the present (well the present of the movie’s release) and on Earth.
Alien is the better film, but The Thing is more entertaining, no matter it’s technical merits. In other words, if they’re both playing at the same time at the same theatre and all other things being equal, I’d see The Thing every time (and then sneak in to the other theatre for the last 10 or so minutes of Alien ;)).
I went with The Thing. Alien was good but relied too much on jump cut scares. The Thing gave you the ‘hunted by alien’ but added that level of paranoia from the alien could be anywhere or anyone and you won’t know until it is too late.
I think this is my answer. But I’m very close to not having a preference - I like them both for different reasons.
HERE BE SPOILERS:
A “problem” with Alien, if you can call it that, is that there is no way to recreate the experience of seeing it in the theater when it first came out. No one had heard of Sigourney Weaver then. The other actors in the film had varying degrees of fame-- Veronica Cartwright had been acting since she was a child: she was Violet Rutherford in Leave It to Beaver, and had appeared in Hitchcock’s The Birds. John Hurt was still riding international glory from appearing as Caligula in I, Claudius: he had been famous in the UK for a long time, and now was famous all over the US.
So, what happened in the film that was shocking, and gave the viewers an anything-can-happen feel, was that the characters were killed in reverse order of the fame of the actors playing them. That was completely counter to expectations. Usually the unknown in a film like that is the redshirt, and the most famous actor is the one who is left at the end.
No one thought Ripley would survive at the end, and the tension of the last ten minutes, when the computer is counting down “T minus n minutes,” was unbearable. It wasn’t* if the alien would get here, but when*, and how. Until the credits rolled, no one really thought Ripley was safe.
If you see the film now, even if you manage not to know how it ends, Sigourney Weaver is still the most famous person in the movie, so it’s not surprising that she is the one alive at the end.
Anyway, The Thing had nothing like that kind of tension. Also, while it’s true that Alien is loosely based on a movie called It! Terror from beyond Space, It! isn’t a very good film, and Alien doesn’t resemble it that much. The Thing, on the other hand, is a clear remake of a very tight film from the fifties, that some people don’t think needed remaking.
That last bit is mostly opinion, but it’s one I heard a lot around the time the films came out. Of course, I had seen the original Thing before I saw the remake, and I didn’t see It! until years after I had seen* Alien*, and that probably made a difference.
That sums it up for me. I found the remake to be a bore & a chore to watch even once. The original is fun to watch again & again.
I feel that way, but I chose The Thing. I think The Thing just has a couple of more plot elements that make it slightly more interesting. Plus, the cold ending, no pun intended, is just amazing. . . . “Why don’t we just… wait here for a little while… see what happens?” . . . Awesome!
I agree with this as well. I’d rather re-watch The Thing over Alien. For the same reason, I’d rather watch Pitch Black over both, though maybe not over Aliens.
“Aaah! You said it was clear!”
“I said it looks clear.”
“What about now?”
“…looks clear.”
This.
I voted for “Alien.” While both films are fun, enjoyable romps, I think “Alien” has a few things that put it over the top:
First, the characters in “Alien” are a more diverse and interesting group. Each one of them has a unique personality and POV. And all of them have a relate-able reaction to the crisis. Even Veronica Cartwright’s whiny, crying Lambert is completely understandable given the predicament. I have watched both films many times, and I find that I care more about the Nostromo crew than the Antarctic base crew. In “The Thing”, they all seem like interchangeable cannon-fodder.
Second, the space-jockey’s ship. That sequence, to me, was the true heart of the film rather than the chest burster scene - the space jockey and the ship were something truly alien and utterly defied any human notion of how the universe worked. The notion that this was a one-time only fleeting encounter between humanity and some strange alien race whom humanity would never, could never know anything about stands up there with anything Lovecraft ever wrote about the vastness of the universe; that the universe held mysteries that humans would never be able to know, or even comprehend. “The Thing” has scenes to rival the chest burster sequence, but nothing to rival that incredible image.
As a side topic, what bugged me most about “Prometheus” is that it retconned the space jockey from being a biological/technological hybrid creature into just the space suit that the albino but otherwise very human looking aliens. I loved that the space jockey was something that completely defied our human concepts of how life forms / machines / the universe worked. Making it just a humanoid in a space suit makes it so much less interesting.