I like The Thing well enough, but I voted for the one that isn’t a total sausage fest.
Alien was great the first time I saw it, and I don’t think any scene in Thing matches Sigourney in her undies battling evil.
The Thing is a movie that I’ve tried to rewatch several times to understand why some people are so fond of it. My only full viewing of it left me unimpressed, and every attempt to revisit lasts under 30 minutes because I find the characters unbelievable and annoying. The special effects are impressive, but not smoothly integrated into the story – more like, hey lets take a break and look at this really neat and super gross stuff our effects staff devised.
My feelings exactly. Saw it when it first came out and I knew nothing about it. I can say that this is the only movie that has ever scared me.
The Thing was good too, but I have to go with Alien.
That’s actually sort of cool, though. It’s annoying how Hollywood wants us to believe that no matter how crappy and physical the job, no matter how harsh the conditions, Jessica Alba wants to work there with an all-male crew, despite her 250 point IQ.
You must not know too many woman field researchers. Most of the ones I know would kill to do Antarctic field research. Regardless of their looks. In fact, one climatologist I know is a dead ringer for Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and she’s dead keen to do work on Marion Island or SANAE if she can.
And in Alien, it wasn’t just one woman on an otherwise all-male crew.
There’s no doubt that Alien is the better movie, but The Thing was a better movie going experience.
Alien for being a genre defining movie,
The Thing for that short story written from the viewpoint of the alien, Better than the movie was.
The other poster referred to The Thing as a sausage-fest. not Alien. What was notable to me about Alien was isn’t wasn’t precious about the crew make-up like Star Trek (see how international the future will be, kids!) and it’s the first movie set in space that I remember as being grubby.
Some stop motion but a lot more simple models, puppets, practical effects, and shooting scenes and then running the footage backwards–all very old school and still quite effective, IMHO.
They did a few stop motion scenes, especially at the very end – there were pictures of them in Cinefantastique when the film came out, but Carpenter axed most of them because they didn’t quite fit in with the “look” of the rest of the film. A bit survives in the as-released film – the Thing breaking up through the boards in the basement, and then a tentacle feeling around, grabbing the explosives plunger, and pulling it into the hole.
There was then supposed to be a bit where the dog-shape that emerged from the side leapt out , still attached to the rest of the thing-stalk by a connecting cord, and approached Russell’s character, snarling. The excised footage has since been released on some of the extra-features DVDs. Here it is on YouTube:
I love both movies, but I’ve got to go for Alien. I wouldn’t rate these movies just on fright factor, because they are really different genres.
The Thing is pretty much a straight up horror movie where the monster just happens to be from outer space, whereas Alien is a science fiction movie with horror elements. As such, I think it has a lot of value just for the ideas it presents, the amazing set designs, its visualization of future space travel and what alien races might be like, etc. HR Giger’s alien was really alien, and terrifying.
I see a lot of people complaining that Alien’s special effects weren’t that great and that the tension wasn’t as high as it was in The Thing. I’m wondering how many of you who think so are younger and saw the movies long after their release? If so, I think much of the magic of Alien may have been lost, because by then Giger’s creations and their derivatives were well known, and some of the plot elements in the movie were widely known, parodied, or copied (the chest burster, for example).
But if you saw it when it came out, all this was new. The effects were great for the time. The Alien was terrifying because you never see the whole thing until the very end - all you see are lots of teeth and slime for a long time. The sense of alienness of the whole environment was part of the tension. The ‘Space Jockey’ and some of the other scenes on the moon really triggered a sense of weirdness in me, like it didn’t compute. I found it all an amazing experience. I even remember that the ‘milk’ shooting out of the android and the gross spaghetti mass of his internal construction were very creepy at the time.
I also have to give Alien the win for set design, cinematography, and other technical elements. It was beautifully shot and the interior and exteriors of all the ships and bases were very novel and very interesting.
The Thing, on the other hand, was much more conventional, although the story was perhaps more coherent. But there aren’t really any new ideas in it - there’s an alien shape-shifter, and the rest of the story is how a group of isolated people might deal with that. It’s an old story. But it was executed very well and the tension was crazy good. Loved that movie. But for me, Alien was better.
In contrast to Alien. Which was why I pointed out that looking like Mary Elizabeth Winstead* and having a genius IQ doesn’t preclude people from working in the Antarctic now. It’s not “cool” that Carpenter portrayed Antarctica as a cootie-free zone. It’s pathetic, is what it is.
And I was that “other poster”, BTW.
*who’s way hotter than Jessica Alba
Not an easy decision, but I picked Alien, just because it’s been a long-time favorite; a movie where I remembered a lot of the scenes and situations long afterwards. I just went with my gut.
I saw Alien shortly after it came out, on cable. Even on the small screen, it was visceral. I’m sure I saw The Thing, but I don’t specifically remember seeing it, so it was probably cable or VCR.
For The Thing, I remember reading the story as a kid (though I don’t recall the title “Who Goes There?” which I see it was, on googling it.) It’s one that stuck in my mind among many many I’ve forgotten, as a big sci fi fan (book club member, read all the Hugo anthologies, etc.) It’s memorable along with titles like “I Have No Mouth and Must Scream”, “A Boy Loves His Dog”, and “City / State”. I’m sure I saw the 1951 film at some time too, as I have fleeting B&W mental images.
It seems to me that The Thing is a better story, but Alien was to me the more impactful movie. I also remember really liking Aliens, thinking it one of the few sequels that’s at least as good as the original. Downhill after that, though!
I still haven’t seen the 2011 film; my wife isn’t a fan of this type, and I don’t often watch movies alone any more.
One man’s pathetic is another’s bold avoidance of typical Hollywood token casting, I guess.
…and that’s just crazy talk.
Are you kidding? The first Thing was a bad camp piece. “You, the greatest scientist on earth…!” “Keep your eyes on the skies! Keep your eyes on the skies!”
A big man for the monster?
No fear here.
The Thing, c. 1982 is a thousand times better. There is excitement and tension.
In re: the OP:
Of course, a woman getting undressed can trump a lot of excitement and tension.
I completely disagree. The Thing is a science fiction story about people coping with the ptresence of the Problem, and trying to understand how it works, and figure out a logical response – which they do. (In Campbell’s story Who Goes There? this pays off, in that the men at the camp survive, destroy the shape-shifting alien, and get its high tech as a kind of reward. The movie took it pasty and went for a “downer” ending)
Alien, on the other hand, was the Monster Loose in the Old Dark House, with science fiction trappings. The logic wasn’t there, just gobbledegook double talk.
Heh. Just remembered one of my better Dungeons and Dragons DMing moments: characters had fought lycanthropes a few weeks back, now it was the full moon and someone local had been killed by a lycanthrope, and they knew one of them was guilty but nobody knew who (including the player of the infected PC). So they gathered by moonlight and passed around a normal knife, each of them cutting their hand to see who would heal instantly. . . .
It never occurred to me until just now that the scene was an homage to The Thing.
You just fought some ignorance, btw: I figured that social sexism probably meant there weren’t women who worked in Antarctic research stations when the movie was made, but it turns out that women have overwintered in Antarctica since 1947, and US research stations have included female researchers since 1969. Consider my ignorance fought, with thanks: sausage fest indeed.
Wait, you think including strong women lead characters in an SF film would be “typical Hollywood token casting”? In the late 70s/80s? Seriously?
Happy to help - it helps that I know some people in that area of research. The numbers aren’t at 50/50 even now, but field science in things like Geology and Biology tends not to be a male-only domain.