The Thing (2011)
Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
When paleontologist Kate Lloyd travels to an isolated outpost in Antarctica for the expedition of a lifetime, she joins an international team that unearths a remarkable discovery. Their elation quickly turns to fear as they realize that their experiment has freed a mysterious being from its frozen prison. Paranoia spreads like an epidemic as a creature that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish in this spine-tingling thriller.
12 connections found
View:
12 films that influenced The Thing
What critics say influenced The Thing
Whenever director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. isn't blurring the line between referencing and replicating John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing (itself a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film The Thing from Another World), he's borrowing liberally from Ridley Scott's claustrophobic Alien.
I seriously doubt it was on screenwriter Bill Lancaster’s mind, but he wrote the perfect set-up for a prequel-cum-remake when he penned the script for John Carpenter’s The Thing, a chilly, fantastically grotesque, and nerve-rattling adaptation of John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella “Who Goes There?” (which had previously served as the source material for Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks’s 1951 classic The Thing From Another World).
There was Hawks’ production “The Thing from Another World” (1951), a Cold War-era science-fiction-horror hybrid, and Carpenter’s 1982 “The Thing,” which hewed more closely to the source material, the 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. short story “Who Goes There?”
That's not to say it can hold a candle to the superb 1951 "The Thing From Another World," directed by Christian Nyby with contributions from producer Howard Hawks , featuring James Arness as the clawed, hulking, carrot-headed enemy from out there.
That’s right, van Heijningen’s “The Thing” is not a tired reimagining or reboot, but rather a pleasing prelude to the events that took place in Carpenter’s horrifying classic, which is a loose remake of 1951’s “The Thing from Another World.”
Whenever director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. isn't blurring the line between referencing and replicating John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing (itself a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film The Thing from Another World), he's borrowing liberally from Ridley Scott's claustrophobic Alien.
Almost thirty years since the release of John Carpenter's superb 1982 sci-fi thriller "The Thing," it remains one of the great so-called "monster movies" in cinema history, comparable in sheer mastery and creepiness to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien" with one key location change (Antarctica rather than outer space).
All three "Things," along with everything from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" to "Alien," owe their central ideas to the Depression-era story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell Jr. There's a rock-solid notion in that tale, that of an alien being able to take over a human body and cause pure paranoia in the populace.
…shocker a la "Alien."
It's Alien meets 30 Days of Night when a crew of Americans and Norwegians dig up something otherworldly in the Antarctic ice.
The problem with this weekend's take on The Thing, though, is that it sprinkles in the requisite nods to the 1982 original but never figures out how to build a compelling narrative around it.
Whenever director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. isn't blurring the line between referencing and replicating John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing (itself a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film The Thing from Another World), he's borrowing liberally from Ridley Scott's claustrophobic Alien.
Almost thirty years since the release of John Carpenter's superb 1982 sci-fi thriller "The Thing," it remains one of the great so-called "monster movies" in cinema history, comparable in sheer mastery and creepiness to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien" with one key location change (Antarctica rather than outer space).
I seriously doubt it was on screenwriter Bill Lancaster’s mind, but he wrote the perfect set-up for a prequel-cum-remake when he penned the script for John Carpenter’s The Thing, a chilly, fantastically grotesque, and nerve-rattling adaptation of John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella “Who Goes There?” (which had previously served as the source material for Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks’s 1951 classic The Thing From Another World).
There’s also a decent making-of featurette (“The Thing Evolves”) that briefly touches on the filmmakers' incredible attention to detail in maintaining the continuity between the prequel and the 1982 original, a short stunt featurette about using flamethrowers on the set (“Fire and Ice”), and a DVD and digital copy of the film.
Advertisement
If anything, those looking for hidden messages should see the most obvious one -- the filmmakers clearly found Ridley Scott's claustrophobic "Alien" and James Cameron's superlative "Aliens" as inspiration for their flick.
From Aliens to Independence Day, there isn’t a way to make the alien genre fresh and the 2011 The Thing is proof of that.
While the basic narrative structure, mood and atmosphere closely resemble the 1982 film, its production design and claustrophobic action sequences suggest Aliens was also a significant influence.
They recently announced plans for a return to the world of "Blade Runner," another movie that just didn't work at the box-office, and now we've got this weekend's release of a prequel to John Carpenter 's " The Thing ," another choice that makes no logical business sense.
Screenwriter Eric Heisserer (the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake) attempts to forge a connection between Kate and the hunky helicopter pilot but all it does is anoint the two as the film’s eventual survivors rather than giving them depth.
The script, by Eric Heisserer (" Final Destination 5 ", " A Nightmare on Elm Street "), follows the familiar patterns of the first film (replacing the infamous blood-test sequence with a clever new technique) and it also clones other classics of the genre.
Heisserer is also responsible for Final Destination 5 and the 2010 iteration of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and thus appears to epitomize the career of a Hollywood screenwriter: success comes by steadfastly refusing to have an original idea.
The director, in case you were wondering, is a newcomer named Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., and the screenplay was written by Eric Heisserer, whose other credits are Final Destination 5 (a sequel) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (a remake).
Although it's being touted as a prequel, 2011's edition, adapted from John W. Campbell Jr.'s short story "Who Goes There?" by Eric Heisserer (2010's "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "Final Destination 5"), melds and hits most of the same beats as 1954's "The Thing from Another World" and John Carpenter's 1982 remake.
He gives us the giant block of ice, the axe stuck in the wall and how the two-headed Thing monster came to be, but ultimately this is trivia filmmaking made all the more trivial in that the director and screenwriter/ remake killer Eric Heisserer (A Nightmare On Elm Street) have forgotten that the devil wasn�t in the details of the mystery behind the scenario but how it affected those chest deep in it.
For someone familiar with The Thing 1982, you spend a lot of the time watching the new one waiting for something new to happen, and when it does, it totally whiffs it (the climax in the UFO is unforgiveably sloppy, with special effects that reminded me of 1997’s Lost In Space, not Rob Bottin).
Advertisement
A perfect way to describe The Thing is to reflect back on George Lucas' new Star Wars trilogy, which actually looks more dated than the original from 30+ years ago.
Did director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. think he was remaking Jurassic Park?
The result is a piece of studio-produced fan fiction that indulges in an intensely close, even fetishistic extension of all the hints and details given in the original film, but misses the forest for the trees to an incredible extent: in attempting to foreground the narrative of The Thing '82 as accurately as possible, the filmmakers have accidentally forgotten not to make The Thing '11 a massively disposable retread of Alien peppered with some Jurassic Park just for the fun of it.
A lot of the new movie works more on the level of those chase sequences in Jurassic Park involving in-door velociraptors.