ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has 33 trivia items for this movie. Here’s a few of the ones I found the most interesting, in the blue text.
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The filmmakers used Kurt Russell height as an estimate as to how big the sets would have to be to faithfully recreate the Norwegian camp as no blueprints existed from the John Carpenter movie.

Note from me: Wow, there's a weird way to approach an architectural project!

It is mentioned in the DVD commentary that the remains that Kate Lloyd is examining at the beginning of the movie is one of the dog thing props from John Carpenter's The Thing (1982).

Note from me: Clever reuse of a prop. But I'm surprised that it hasn't deteriorated in almost thirty years. (Wait, maybe it HAD deteriorated and it looked even more bizarre that way! )

John Carpenter, the director of the 1982 remake The Thing (1982), was enthusiastic about making a cameo appearance, but scheduling conflicts prevented him from making one.

Note from me: They should have used a lookalike in makeup and then leaked the rumor that a strange "duplicate" of John Carpenter was seen lurking around on the set!

In order to not try to compete with Kurt Russell's portrayal of the 1982 film's protagonist, R.J. MacReady, the character of Kate Lloyd was designed to have traits in common with the character Ellen Ripley from the Alien (1979) film series.

Note from me: Wait, let me get this straight. In order to keep Kate Lloyd from being too much like Kurt Russel, they made her more like Sigourney Weaver. I'm not sure what any of that means . . .

This film actually solved a long-standing mystery in the 1982 film. This film reveals that the Thing cannot replicate inorganic things - such as fillings, earrings, clothes, etc. - and at a pivotal moment near the end, Kate realizes that Carter's earring has vanished revealing him to be a Thing. At the end of the 1982 film, the character Childs still has his earring in his right ear. It can be seen just before he takes a drink from the bottle of J&B.

Note from me: This comment is easily refuted. An alien smart enough to mimic a specific human would be smart enough to put on all its victim's jewelry, etc. after the transformation. The trivia comment really ought to be about how the alien in the prequel was foolish NOT to have done exactly that.

___________________ The Thing - Movie CLIP


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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I found a very entertaining 16-minute video with a fast-paced review of this movie which has some very interesting comments. Watching this comparison to the 1982 movie (for which it's a prequel, of course) tempts me to get both movies from Netflix and watch them as a double feature.

Maybe I'll do it on a cold rainy day, when Mom is out shopping and it's too wet to play.

On a day like that, when there's nothing to do, I'll have me some fun . . . with Thing 1 and Thing 2!

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________ The Thing (2011 Prequel) KILL COUNT


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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In my earlier post, I quoted the IMDB trivia item below, along with my comment about how I though it was wrong.
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This film actually solved a long-standing mystery in the 1982 film. This film reveals that the Thing cannot replicate inorganic things - such as fillings, earrings, clothes, etc. - and at a pivotal moment near the end, Kate realizes that Carter's earring has vanished revealing him to be a Thing. At the end of the 1982 film, the character Childs still has his earring in his right ear. It can be seen just before he takes a drink from the bottle of J&B.

Note from me: This comment is easily refuted. An alien smart enough to mimic a specific human would be smart enough to put on all its victim's jewelry, etc. after the transformation. The trivia comment really ought to be about how the alien in the prequel was foolish NOT to have done exactly that
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Yesterday, while watching a clip from The Thing (2011) I discovered I was right. The female lead thought that the character named Carter was NOT one of the aliens because he did have his earring. But in the last moments of the film she realize hewas an alien . . . because his earring in on the wrong side. So he fries him with her blow torch.

Therefore, I was right when I said an intelligent alien would have enough sense to take his victim's jewelry so he could complete his human disguise. Unfortunately this particular alien wasn't quite smart enough to know his left from his right.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Frankly the prequel does a fair job of presenting a story based on “Who Goes There?”, with FX I felt were pretty good, interesting characters, and scary scenes of the humans battling the aliens.

But the story has major flaws of its own, and the assertion that this is a prequel to the 1982 classic just doesn’t work because of major changes which this so-called prequel made in the original story.

There’s the really dumb fact that in the opening scene we see an arctic tractor fall down into a crevasse and trap three men as they stare at the buried saucer down in the crevasse. The movie never tells us how those men got out or how they got word to the base about the discovery!







In the original, the Americans find the saucer already uncovered inside a big round melted area.









Later they viewed a videotape the Norwegians made of them standing in a circle around the exposed saucers . . . for no logical reason other than to imitate the famous scene the 1951 original.

I mean, duh, the depression in the snow is round. We need men standing around the edge to see that?

However, in the prequel the Norwegians find the saucer deep under the ice, and they make no attempt to melt the ice and expose the saucer, the way we see it in the 1982 film.

And the movie only hints that it might have uncovered itself when the engines fired up briefly at the end of the movie. That, of course, was long after the Norwegians first discovered it and used thermite to melt the ice, as seen in the videotape of the event which the Americans viewed in the 1982 version.

At the end of the movie, one of the Thing/humans is torched while sitting inside one of the two tractors at the crash site — and then the last surviving human drives off in the other tractor.

So . . . where was that torched tractor when Kurt Russell and his companions arrived at the crash site just a few hours later when they investigate the deserted Norwegian base?

All in all, this attempt to make a prequel was ambitious, with good CGI FX . . . but it didn’t match up with the events in the Carpenter version, and that was supposed to be the whole point!

I should also mention the fact that my respect for the 1982 film went up while watching it immediately after watching the 2011 prequel. It just works so much better than this flawed "prequel".

However, a flaw I object to in both movies is the question of why the helicopter in the 1982 opening scene (and the post-credit sequence at the end of the 2011 prequel) didn’t just hover over the running dog and drop the grenades on it, instead of flying all over the place and shooting at it from a distance?

We know they had grenades in the helicopter, because in the 1982 version. the Norwegian tried to throw one at the Thing/dog (and the Americans standing with the dog) when the helicopter landed.

He screwed up, of course, and dropped the grenade, blowing up the helicopter and the man inside it.

Besides, the Norwegian who was shooting at the dog should have known that bullets wouldn't kill it. Blowing it into pieces might have worked for a while, but even the pieces would be able to form into small creatures, and they could probably reunite!

Plus, the creatures that formed from the pieces could still absorb humans and animals — so even that wouldn't have ended the threat.

I could also point out that the Thing in the prequel demonstrated less intelligence than it did in the 1982 version, in which the alien never revealed itself as being non-human unless it had no choice.

But in the 2011 version we see the scene below, in which the Thing/woman is standing behind the lady heroine and wants to kill her . . . so it breaks out of the human body, screaming like a banshee and causing the lady to get away and alert the base.

Hell, all it had to do was grab the poor gal from behind and choke her silently, thereby making it easy to absorb her and add another alien to the group — while NOT alerting the rest of the people to the fact that neither of the women were humans!

________ Juliette Is The Thing | The Thing (2011)


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel.]

[Krel.]

Watched the movie today on the syfy channel. The movie gives no indication of how the first takeovers were accomplished. John Carpenter showed how in his movie, with the dog being alone with one of the men. John Carpenter didn't want the audience to figure out who the dog absorbed, so he used one of the movie crew for the shadow.

Judging by the fireball, that was one powerful incendiary grenade. Maybe the thing was flammable?

The saucer seemed to be deeper under the ice in this movie. The saucer melted the ice, and seemed perfectly fine afterwards, not wrecked at all.

It looks like they were angling for a sequel to this movie. It left her sitting in a snow tractor, with the knowledge that there was a Russian outpost only 50 miles away.

They say they didn't want a female MacReady, so they made her...A female MacReady?

John Carpenter has said in an interview, that both men were human at the end of his movie.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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David, both of your posts are brilliant, well-written, and thought provoking!

My only complaint is that I didn't write them!

Call me vain, call me selfish, but don't call me unappreciative of a great contribution to All Sci-Fi. Here's my contribution, based on your comments.

A Google search of the question, "How many total penguins live in Antarctica?"got me this.

The answer: 12 million.

If the Thing had managed to absorb one single penguin (or one walrus, for that matter), Antarctica would have quickly been overrun by the alien creatures. Both of the penguins and the walruses would have easily been able to spread the alien life form to all the surrounding sea creatures, like the many kinds of whales.

Whales migrate from pole to pole, and in a very short time they would have spread the alien life form throughout all the oceans on Earth!

Consider how easily the aliens could then spread to all the land animals and humans, both of which consume fish by the ton on a daily basis!

Based on these speculations, the fact that the alien ship crashed in Antarctica (and remained preserved in the ice for many years until it was discovered) sounds like the perfect way for the aliens to plant their "seeds" on a planet whose life had not yet evolved to the point it has today, and then wait until humans became the dominant specifics on the planet!

I can easily envision a multi-movie story in which the Thing aliens battle with mankind across our planet, hiding among us while we desperately try to route out the enemy on a world-wide scale before they completely absorb the human race!

Damn . . . what an idea!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel.]

Thanks Bud. I have to say that some things did bug me, the primary one being all the Americans at a Norwegian outpost. It makes no sense, except maybe that Hollywood thinks Americans won't watch a movie if the main characters aren't American. I grew up watching Hollywood movies that involved other nations without Americans. They had American actors, but they weren't playing Americans.

Having them all be Norwegian could have worked. You start off with them speaking Norwegian, then slowly have them transition to English.

What should have happened after they cut the ice block and brought it back to the outpost, is to cover it to keep the sun off, keep it frozen and contact their government to have it transported to a biological secure facility. Or at least have one set up there.

The American helicopter and crew wouldn't have stuck around unless there was a good reason, like bad weather. It was a transport helicopter, it should have dropped everyone off, then gone back to base. There was no reason for them to stay, except to put more Americans in the outpost.

The Norwegian helicopter was gone to refuel? WTF?! They don't have their own fuel supply? If the helicopter has to fly off to God knows where to refuel every time it need gas, then it will have a very limited range of use for the outpost. A better excuse would have been that it had some type of mechanical difficulty, and was being repaired.

The block of ice didn't look like something exploded out of it, it looked too neat. Almost as if it were carefully, and cleanly melted.

Notice that no one was videoing anything? In John Carpenters movie, they found video tapes that the Norwegians made of EVERYTHING! But I didn't see a video camera in the movie. The head scientist kept talking about how important this was. They should have had someone taping everything.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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Dead right on all counts, David.

While watching The Thing (2011) it occurred to me that the Norwegians did practically everything wrong in the way they handled a monumental scientific find. Literally everything.

What I'm about to describe would not work with the prequel, because it had to follow the established plot from the 1982 film (even though it didn't do that very well). So, this is a "reimagining" of the concept, addressing the situation as if it were a real event.

What they should have done after finding the saucer was alert the world's scientific community and let them begin a comprehensive effort to study the saucer and its occupant right there in Antarctica.

Remember, this would be the most important scientific find in the history of mankind. Because of this, the world leaders would form a coalition of scientists, while a mammoth construction project would begin to build a huge facility right over the saucer.

A separate building would be constructed over the frozen alien, and the ice would be careful removed from around the creature without lifting it out! It would remain inside a block the way we see in the film, but surrounded by a lab located partially below the ice, with all the equipment and personnel needed to cautiously explore the nature of this extraterrestrial.

Once all these facilities were complete enough to allow the scientific teams to move in and begin work, a very meticulous examination of the saucer and the alien would begin. The guiding principle would be to study and understand the saucer's technology and the alien's physiology, without damaging either one.

Great care would be taken to insure that the saucer's unknown capabilities weren't accidentally activated.

As for the alien, the exobiology teams would not want to cause the alien's body to decompose, and they would also take extreme precautions to prevent releasing alien microorganisms which might cause unknown diseases.

Naturally none of the humans would realize the true nature of the alien and the terrible danger it posed. So, this version of the story would portray a team of intelligent and methodical scientist who are taking great pains to prevent mishaps, but who nonetheless encounter a much more dangerous situation than their "worst case scenarios" ever came up with.

I envision a story in which a small tissue sample from the alien manages to absorb a scientist or lab assistant, and the intelligent alien sets out to slowly replace all the humans studying it before they even realize what's happening.

By the way, if you think the idea a giant Antarctic research facility doesn't sound plausible, check out the post I just made in SCIENCE now, add FICTION later



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

Something I forgot to mention. When the creature went through the kitchen wall, did you notice how thin the wall was? The outer walls at outposts in Antarctica are about a foot thick because of all the insulation that is needed to keep the heat in the buildings.

David.

[The Spike]

Hvem går det?

The Thing is directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and adapted to screenplay by Eric Heisserer. It's based on the novel "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell and is a prequel to "John Carpenter's The Thing" from 1982. It stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Eric Christian Olsen and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Music is by Marco Beltrami and cinematography by Michel Abramowicz.

Antartica, 1982, and scientist Kate Lloyd is requested to investigate something strange at a Norwegian base station. By accident the Norwegians have discovered what appears to be an alien craft frozen beneath the ice. Their thoughts prove to be correct and they are rightly celebrating a magnificent discovery, particularly as there appears to also be a frozen being in the ice. But it's not long before everyone at the base begins to regret unearthing the being...

No serious John Carpenter fan wanted this film, it wasn't needed or required. His 1982 film is an awesome slice of sci-fi horror, a remake itself of a very good film, "The Thing from Another World" (Howard Hawks 1951), Carpenter flipped the scenario around from Hawks' movie to great effect. Paranoia and creeping dread blended with amazing beasties to make for what many feel is one of the ultimate sci-fi horror movies going. So why remake it then? Well, we are told by Heijningen Jr and his team that this is a prequel to Carpenter's movie, asking the big questions such as just what happened at the Norwegian base station before Kurt Russell's manly mob got there? Making this a sort of filling in the blanks session. Not a bad idea at all is that, something good to work from, even if we know from the beginning of Carpenter's movie just how many Norwegian's survived!

Now the problem here is that it may be a prequel, and attention to detail in scenes linking both films together is rather ace, but it's devoid of freshness, the makers pretty much following the exact same formula of Carpenter's film. Cue a group of scientist types getting spooked by something ghastly stalking them, cue one by one them getting offed in grizzly ways by an assimilating menace and cue paranoia and suspicion. They even put in the test sequence from 82, only with a metal slant instead of blood, while the creatures are the same only bigger in body horror terms and budget. Instead of Kurt Russell's mighty machismo, we get Winstead's spunky lady (she's the one without the face fuzz here), but it's the same old same old routine, only for the "Scott Pilgrim" crowd. When all is said and done, this is pretty much a remake of a far far better film.

Yet for all that is annoying and unadventurous about it, it's still a bunch of fun, the director is capable in having us wonder what is around the corner, utilising the cramped interiors for maximum fret. The various creatures born out of the Thing itself are monstrous, especially the two headed one which we see horrifically birthed, and even though the CGI is there, with some of it poor, much of it is blended with practical work and the human actors to stop it from being "all" about the effects. It's also nice to report that there is undeniably love and respect for the 82 cut. Leading cast performances are efficient, but Winstead is just too young and looks out of place, she does not, however, fail for lack of effort to make her thinly written part work. Bonus is the Norwegian actors adding some intense character dynamics to the plotting. Beltrami's score nods appreciatively to Morricone's original, and on Blu-ray Abramowicz's steely coloured photography really pings out of the screen.

In an alternative universe where there is no John Carpenter film, this would be a well regarded entry into the creature feature stable. With enough shocks and squirmy screams delivered for the genre eager crowd. But unless you are someone who hasn't seen Carpenter's superior movie, then this will feel like a shallow imitation, just like, ironically enough, one of The Thing's assimilated humans. A generous 7/10 from me because I did have fun watching in the privacy of my own home with the lights off. Other Carpenter fans, though, are most likely to start rating from my 7 and work backwards I feel...
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The quality of mercy is not strnen.

[Bud Brewster]

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Thinking Like a Writer!
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~ A Question for the Members: The upcoming Presidential election has created a bizarre situation!

Half the country thinks that Donald Trump is "God's gift to America" — while the other half thinks he's the Anti-Christ who will destroy our nation.

My God . . . how can American citizens be so drastically divided on their opinions of this outrageously flamboyant man who yearns to be the leader of free world?

~ My Theory: As crazy as it may sound, it's almost as if a race of alien beings have assimilated half the country — and the alien replacements are totally devoted to their alien presidential candidate!

Those of us who are still human are baffled by the alien presidential candidate's maniacal supporters' devotion to a man who states that he admires Hitler and wants his generals to be totally devoted to him . . . rather than to the American Constitution!

What I'm describing is an unusual "invasion" tale, in which the aliens do what the "pod people" did in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and in the 1982 version of The Thing.

As scary as this may sound, it actually explains why 50% of the United States of America thinks that Kamala Harris is the right person to lead this country . . . and the other half believes that a total nut job like Donald Trump could possibly be the right man!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[WadeVC]

[Bud Brewster]

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That's an excellent comment, Wade. I apologize for making comments which insulted Trump supports by insulting him.

Message boards that contain posts like I made invariably drive away members who have a great deal to contribute on the subjects we all enjoy discussing. I'm grateful that you chose to address your concern, rather than loosing your respect for me and for All Sci-Fi.

Thanks for the honest and respectful way you reminded me that I was doing the very thing which your message implored us all NOT to do.

Bud
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[WadeVC]