Originally Posted by
Dolemite
I could swear there was a thread about the prequel as well, but perhaps it was just discussed in the "Just Watched" thread.
Anyway, John Carpenter's The Thing is my favorite movie ever made in any genre. It's just a rare example of a film that remains pretty much perfect from beginning to end and, despite how nuts the events transpiring get, they nonetheless remain grounded and believable. The cast is uniformly amazing and memorable and Rob Bottin's groundbreaking physical and makeup effects work is still fantastic (and nightmarishly original), even to this day. Plus, the Carpenter/Russell commentary on the DVD is one of the best ever. Hell, I even have a nice little Thing area on my toy shelf featuring the old McFarlane monsters and the MacReady put out by Sota Toys a few years back.
The prequel? Well, I had low expectations for it the second it was announced, although my negativity was tempered by the fact that it WAS in fact a prequel and not the dreaded remake everyone was fearing. Although, I have to admit, I was intrigued by the idea of telling the story of the Norwegian outpost only hinted at in the Carpenter flick, and after reading interviews with the filmmakers about how much they loved the 1982 version and how beholden they were to it, not to mention the fact they they kept going on and on about the fact that they were using physical effects as much as possible as opposed to CG...well, I gave it a chance.
Unfortunately, the prequel ended up being pretty disappointing. It was basically a carbon copy of the Carpenter movie but with bland characters, zero tension, and (despite promises of the filmmakers), the effects were almost entirely CG...poor quality CG. In the end, the prequel was completely forgettable. But it DID have Adebisi from Oz, so there's that, at least.
In way, I'm actually happy the prequel bombed, as it probably put the kibosh on any plans for a remake of the Carpenter film (I keep having to stop myself from typing "the original" as there's the 1950's movie to consider, despite the fact that all these movies are actually based on John W. Campbell's Who Goes There?, to which Carpenter's adaptation is far more loyal).
As for the PS2 game, I enjoyed the hell out of it. The Thing theme aside (which was well-done), it had very solid gameplay and graphics for the time (the new Thing designs were nice and twisted and remained in line with Bottin's work) and a good story and atmosphere. The whole fear/trust system with your teammates was handled very well, although it was hampered somewhat by the times you'd give one of them a blood test that would come out as negative, and then two seconds later when you reached a scripted point they'd Thing-out nonetheless for the sake of the storyline. But other than that, it was a great game.
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