Well…some of that does get undermined by Ripley’s slow strip down to camisole and panties, lovingly ogled by the camera. That’s certainly classic 80s.
Only slightly undermined, IMO. And certainly made up for by her being the sole survivor when all the manly men are xenochow™
To be more specific, it isn’t a prequel, it is a turd. Wow. The worst movie that I have seen lately that is as boring is the latest Red Dawn.
It can be. It’s all about the implementation.
There are people who prefer THING to ALIEN? Who are they, and why are they allowed to walk the streets unmedicated?
You hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly what bugged me about the film. And IIRC, the ads for the movie when it was in the theaters were all about the special effects, and not about the movie itself-- “Come see it for the cool FX! It’s like nothing you’ve seen before!” Nothing about acting, or story, or anything else.
Of course, Alien’s tagline, “In space, no one can hear you scream,” was kind of stupid.
Alien, most definitely.
Alien had two females, The Thing had none. 
Seriously, Alien was a NEW sci-fi concept which grew in the cinema world. The Thing was a remake and no real follow up to the creature or the story.
“typical” means the normal thing, not the exception. In that time period, strong female leads in action/sci-fi were the exception, not the norm.
I think we can agree that Alien had the best trailer. It’s downright unsettling and made me jump the first time I saw it. The trailer for The Thing copies the graphic device of having the title assemble from white bars but doesn’t do much with it (which is odd given that it takes place in a snowbound environment). In my opinion Alien has the better score, too - Jerry Goldsmith wrote something that sounds lush and beautiful but also sick and wrong at the same time. The Thing has a great theme but my recollection is that most of Ennio Morricone’s music was dumped, and so beyond the theme the soundtrack is very thin.
Was or is? I’m with RivkahChaya on page one, in that some of Alien’s appeal doesn’t work any more; not just because of the casting but because the shocks have become familiar. In retrospect it’s a clever machine, and you can appreciate the workings, and once you’ve seen the tricks it’s still a good-looking film, but it feels like a mantlepiece ornament nowadays. The Thing gets going faster and is a lot more visceral, and the twists are sufficiently complex that I’m not entirely sure I could write an accurate summary of the middle part of the plot from memory, despite having seen the film several times.
Plot-wise the novelisation of Alien explains why they do some of the things they do, but I’ve always wondered why they can’t ask for help, or divert to the nearest space station, or something similar (or return to the place they came from).
The Thing, on the other hand, has a sense of inexorable doom about it. Dallas and his crew are essentially fighting for their own personal survival, whereas the chaps of the snowbase have to catch and kill the monster otherwise humanity is doomed. If a rescue party had found the Nostromo I’ve sure that the alien would have run amok, but they would have subdued it in the end; they’re not invincible, and against a well-lit backdrop the alien would be very conspicuous. The Thing, on the other hand, would slowly assimilate the rescue party, and so in a way it was fortunate that the isolated snowbase found it first, albeit not fortunate for them.
On a tangent, when the Thing is imitating people, does it understand the things they say? When you’re talking to a Thing-person, is The Thing talking to you? Or does it just allow the minds of its victims to continue believing that they are not The Thing?
Not sure about the movie but in the short story, the infected people still behave the same way. The only exception being when The Thing sees that it’s threatened or has a good opportunity in which case The Thing takes over.
Working from my own memory: An infected person never seems to act in The Thing’s interest while looking like a normal person. Whenever The Thing acts in its own interest, its vessel becomes monstrous.
I cannot recall once when an infected-yet-normal-looking person or dog acted out of character. Which would suggest that The Thing lets its vessel act as it normally would unless it has a reason to take over. The short story explains this by saying that since it has to pass off as the local lifeform, it lets it do its own thing because otherwise, it would behave in a way that would be detected as odd by the non-infected.
That’s pretty much par for the course for people-imitators in science fiction. Read Philip K. Dick’s The Father Thing or Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers.
So I’m not the only one who thought the 1982 Thing borrowed pretty heavily from Invasion of the Body Snatchers? I’ve read Jack Finney’s book, but I’ve never read “Who Goes There?” How similar are they, and which came first?
Campbell’s story is from 1938. Finney’s is from 1955.
Wait, what? When do the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers turn into hideous monsters? I’ve never read the book, only seen the first movie adaptation, but the pod people in that are clearly very much aware that they aren’t human, and frequently act in furtherance of the invasion while still appearing perfectly human. Plus, the pods are imperfect imitators - people can tell that there’s something “off” about them, to the point that the movie starts with a doctor treating a spate of patients who are convinced that a close loved one has been replaced.
That’s very different from The Thing, where the creature can imitate its victims so perfectly that it’s an open question if even they know that they’re not human anymore. Maybe they were better copies in the book? But I’m still pretty sure they didn’t do this when they got discovered.
I’ve never actually seen either version of The Thing, but Alien is damned near perfect, so I voted for it. The only thing I can think of that could improve Alien would be if Ripley disrobed completely at the end (and I say that not just for prurient reasons), but The Thing doesn’t come close to meeting that.
Both versions of The Thing are worth seeing. I personally prefer the older one, but I almost always prefer the simpler version of a film over the big FXsplotation version. I like the 1956* Ransom!* over the Mel Gibson “big” version from 1996. I by far prefer the 50s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers over any of the other versions. There are exceptions: I like the Hayley Mills* The Parent Trap *over the film Twice Blessed that it’s based on, and I like *Alien *over It! Terror from beyond Space, but It! really isn’t such a great film (neither is Twice Blessed, for that matter). It! is interesting mostly because of its influence on Alien– and Alien had other sources.
The Thing prequel, or whatever the hell it was, was, as someone said upthread, a turd, and should be avoided at all costs.
IMO, of course.
Invasion of the Body Snatcherrs is the derivative oner – Jack, Finney’s book followed not only John Campbell’s Who Goes There?, it followed the first movie version of The Thing AND it followed Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters (which for my money is the much better expression of the idea). Finney’s story also has a terrible ending - the film adaptation (especially the original version, before the front office screwed with it) was better.
As for “The People in Invasion of the ody Snatchjers didn’t act like that!” – yes they did. In all of the cases I cite, the alien invaders take on nt only the outside form of the people, they also take on their memories and knowledge (they don’t have any problem, speaking English) and the ACT just like ordinary people --even when they don’t obviously think people are watching. As for whether they KNOW they’re aliens – who can tell? We’re never told of the interior life of any of thee Things. But the inhabitants of the Southern California town acts like the ordinary humans they’ve taken over, just like the people taken ovber by the Things do.
The ones in Heinelein’s The Puppet Masters don’t, but tt’s a difgferent case – they’re not people replaced by shape-shifting aliens, they’re “hag ridden” by controlling aliens, and in that case we know the psychology – the aliens are in control and thinking their own thoughts, and only act human as long as they know they have to fool other, non-“assimilated” humans.
Cal, I don’t think you’re quite catching the distinction being made here. The observation was made that, in The Thing, we never see any of the infected humans acting to further the goals of the creature. Whenever an infected human acts against the other humans, it’s always preceded by a violent physical transformation. This raises the question, “Is the Thing in conscious control of its human pawns, or does it let them run on autopilot, and only takes over when it’s physically threatened?” If an infected human says to one of his friends, “Hey, there’s something you should check out in the tool shed,” is that a deliberate ploy on behalf of the creature to separate and infect another human, or does the creature not have any idea what it’s host just communicated to its next victim, and only preys opportunistically?
I don’t recall any ambiguity on this part from the movie version of Body Snatchers, but like I said, it’s been a long time since I saw the movie, and I never read the book. I’m not questioning whether the aliens had human memories or not, or tried to pass themselves as normal, I just don’t recall there being any real question that the aliens knew they were aliens.
Yeah, the Pod People knew they were Pod People, to the point of specifically targeting for “podding” the people expressing skepticism that Uncle Whoever wasn’t really himself.
I’ve got the distinction. But it’s not clear to me that THing-ified people don’t know that they’re Things. The Thing might just be a really good actor.
And whether they turn into hiseous monsters is irrelevant to this.