The Thing Prequel

Saw this today. Not bad, not bad. It could have been much worse. It's way more remake than prequel; the overall structure follows Carpenter's almost exactly. The effects are a mix of CG and traditional, and were pretty impressive in parts. The characters were very flat, especially compared to the awesome collection of dudes in Carpenter's. There was some stupid stuff, of course, but also a new detail or two that were interesting. It's not going to replace either previous classic - not close - but I think it's worth seeing. Yeller's right on: it's a good story told twice.

Sounds like I'm waiting for Netflix.

Bio's assessment is dead-on.

Pretty much what bio said. It was alright but nowhere even close to what the John Carpenter film or even the original film were. The movie was too concerned with its effects and the whole boogity boogity thing and it lost the important part of the originals, the characters.

I will say that the only new detail they added the whole inorganic thing makes absolutely no sense at all.

I thought that made perfect sense, and it thankfully prevented them from ripping off the blood test from Carpenter's flick. For a movie that made very little attempt to do anything whatsoever different from the '82 version, it was one of the few things that set it apart. The blood test was cooler, though.

Also, on the creature designs: they were solid, and some even maybe sorta kinda approached the brilliance (and insanity) of the original, but they all kept going back to the "big toothed maw/tentacles" motif. In the original, every Thing looked different and got progressively freakier, while all the Things in this movie looked pretty much the same except maybe the "double" Thing that goes on to be later discovered by MacReady and the doc.

Continuity problem! In this movie, the saucer is uncovered when it tries to take off, but in the original the Norwegians are shown uncovering it with explosives.

Also, the ending, which was the only ending it could have been, was handled poorly. It felt really rushed and tacked-on as an afterthought.

Overall, I thought it was quite good, but it can't even touch Carpenter's brilliant film.

I thought the creature design was largely ripped from Resident Evil. The games. 2&3, mostly.

The inorganic thing was a good idea but was handled poorly. The dude could have just put on the earring, like putting on a watch; it's an accessory, not something integral like a filling or metal bone-plate. Something with tattoos, say, would have been cooler, and made more sense for the direction they were going. Either way, I kept thinking of The Terminator: "Nothing dead will go!" and T2: "It can't create moving pahts. It doesn't werk dat way."

Another thing that dropped this a couple notches was for me wasthe Thing didn't show smarts at all. In the previous ones, it disabled the vehicles, turned guys against each other with paranoia, and half-built a makeshift craft underground. In the remake, it was just a brainless monster.

Also, they never explained what happened to Kate. She's just left alone in the cold. That's a pretty massive loose end considering it's a prequel. I was sure she was going to sacrifice herself.....

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Originally Posted by BioMechanic

I thought the creature design was largely ripped from Resident Evil. The games. 2&3, mostly.

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Totally.

I did like that they showed where the bloody axe came from.

However, one major thing I think the missed the boat on was playing up the language barrier in regards to the paranoia aspect of the plot. They could have really done something cool with that...they touched on it, but only barely. It could have been a million times more effective.

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Originally Posted by Dolemite

I thought that made perfect sense, and it thankfully prevented them from ripping off the blood test from Carpenter's flick. For a movie that made very little attempt to do anything whatsoever different from the '82 version, it was one of the few things that set it apart. The blood test was cooler, though.

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It makes no sense whatsoever though if you stop and think about it. Specifically it's always wearing the same clothing as the person who it just devoured and whose clothes it ripped to shreds, sure you can try to make excuses saying oh, well it goes and gets new clothes but nope when it becomes the helicopter pilot in the end after gettting him on the ship it comes out in his clothes, you're not going to tell me it had a change of clothes on the ship

Hmm...didn't think of that. Good catch.

Ok, so the whole inorganic thing was a good idea that was just done poorly in this movie (the fact that the Thing ripped through your clothes was a major plot point in Carpenter's film). Or maybe the Thing that took him over was...um, just really careful and didn't rip his clothes?

I'll kill you cunts if you paid to see this backwash. "Not bad" isn't good enough when you're remaking classics.