The Thing (2011)

[Pauly]

Yes, it's "what went down at the Norwegian camp...btw there were secret Americans there nobody knew about!"



That said, it sounds as if they are at least intending to try and make a film that does justice to the (quite classic) original. Maybe it'll be amazing?! Maybe it'll suck.

In other news though, I found this (apparently famous) piece of fan-fic that tells the Carpenter film from a er... different perspective.

Clarkesworld Magazine - Online Science Fiction and Fantasy : The Things by Peter Watts

 

[Scar Symmetry]

When I heard about this film and looked at who was involved, I wasn't impressed.

However, after watching that trailer I am definitely now interested.

 

[SilenceIsACrime]

Ok, The Thing is one of my favorite movies of all time - I am REALLY NOT OK WITH THIS.

I cannot stand CG effects; that is why the original kicked so much ass, what with all the amazing puppetry and things. The Thing was actually there.

I am totally going to go see it anyway, but I will be a skeptic until proven otherwise.

Also - it seems to me like it is part prequel/part remake as a lot of those scenes look familiar....

 

[Marv Attaxx]

I love the Carpenter Thing
Watched it last week to see if it still manages to freak me out. It did
Also: Mary E. Winstead

 

[Origin]

Strikes me as completely unnecessary. It was a classic/great on its own. But if it has potential more power to em very unlikely I'll go see it without Kurt but yeah haha.

 

[vampiregenocide]

I am excited for this as much as I am skeptical. The original movie is imo one of the greatest horror films of all time and stilll stands tall above modern horrors. It still creeps me the fuck out. I heard about a remake/prequel a while back and got excited. Been waiting for a while to see the trailer. I am pleased to see that it looks a lot of like the original, even some of the characters looks the same. That said, CGI is just never as scary as practical stuff, which is why The Thing holds its own so well against today's horrors. They had to rely on making practical effects look as real as possible, and it looked great. The acting was brilliant too, and I don't want to sound sexist but judging from this trailer they're going for the strong female lead which hasn't worked since Ripley in Alien.

This film is basically a reboot I think, taking influence from the original while expanding on it.

 

[Pauly]

Re: the CG, they intend on using as little as necessary and are relying more on practical effects, if you read the IMDB/Wiki trivia. Re: the Ripley reference... that's exactly what they're doing, if you read what's on the wiki page so far. Perhaps I should copy-pasta it.

Development
“It’s a really fascinating way to construct a story because we're doing it by autopsy, by examining very, very closely everything we know about the Norwegian camp and about the events that happened there from photos and video footage that’s recovered, from a visit to the base, the director, producer and I have gone through it countless times marking, you know, there’s a fire axe in the door, we have to account for that…were having to reverse engineer it, so those details all matter to us ‘cause it all has to make sense.”
— Eric Heisserer describing the process of creating a script that is consistent with the first film.[15]
After creating the Dawn of the Dead remake, producers Marc Abraham and Eric Newman began to look through the Universal Studios library to find new properties to work on. Upon finding John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing, the two convinced Universal to create a prequel instead of a remake, as they found remaking Carpenter's film would be like "paint(ing) a mustache on the Mona Lisa"[16] Eric Newman explained; "I'd be the first to say no one should ever try to do Jaws again and I certainly wouldn't want to see anyone remake The Exorcist... And we really felt the same way about The Thing. It's a great film. But once we realized there was a new story to tell, with the same characters and the same world, but from a very different point of view, we took it as a challenge. It's the story about the guys who are just ghosts in Carpenter's movie - they're already dead. But having Universal give us a chance to tell their story was irresistible."[17]
In early 2009, Variety reported the launch of a project to film a prequel—possibly following MacReady's brother during the events leading up to the opening moments of the 1982 film—with Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. as director and Ronald D. Moore as writer.[18][19] Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. became involved in the project when his first planned feature film, a zombie movie taking place in Las Vegas written and produced by Zack Snyder called Army of the Dead, was cancelled by the studio three months before production began. Needing to start all over again, he asked his agent to see if there was a The Thing project in development, since Alien and The Thing are his favourite movies.[20] As fan of Carpenter's film, he was interested in the project because, being European himself, he had always wondered what happened at the Norwegian camp.[3] In March 2009, Moore described his script as a "companion piece" to Carpenter's film and "not a remake."[21] "We're telling the story of the Norwegian camp that found the Thing before the Kurt Russell group did," he said.[21] Eric Heisserer was later hired to do a complete rewrite of Moore's script.[22] Heisserer explained that in writing the script, it was necessary for him to research all the information that was revealed about the Norwegian camp from the first film, down to the smallest details, so that it could be incorporated into the prequel in order to create a consistent backstory.[15] The decision was made to name the film the same title as the first film, because the producers felt adding a "colon title" such as Exorcist II: The Heretic had felt less reverential.[3]
Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. explained that he created the film not to simply be a horror movie, but to also focus largely on the human drama with the interaction between characters, as the first film had.[23] The director felt that horror movies worked better when time was spent to explore the characters' emotional journeys, allowing the audience to care about them.[24] Mary Elizabeth Winstead insisted that the film would not feature any romantic or sexual elements with her character, as it would be inappropriate considering the tone of the film.[25] Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje said that the film would try to recreate the feeling of paranoia and distrust that the first film had, where the characters can't tell who has been infected by the alien.[26] The filmmakers drew additional inspiration for the film from the original novel Who Goes There?, in making the characters in the film educated scientists as opposed to "blue collar" workers.[3] However, the filmmakers drew no influence from the events of the The Thing video game.[3] The director also drew additional inspiration from the film Alien in creating the film, particularly in regard to casting a female lead,[23] and in the way the alien creatures are filmed by not showing too much of them.[20] Matthijs van Heijningen also cited the films of director Roman Polanski as influence, such as his work on Rosemary's Baby.[24] Actual Norwegian actors were cast in the film to play the Norwegian characters,[3] and the director allowed the actors to improvise elements different to what was scripted when they felt it was appropriate, such as a scene where the characters sing a Norwegian folk song.[24][25][27] Many scenes involving characters speaking Norwegian will be subtitled,[28] and the language barrier between them and the English speaking characters is exploited to add to the film's feeling of paranoia.[29] Director Matthijs van Heijningen said that the film will show the alien creature in its “pure form”, as it was discovered in its ship by the Norwegians; however, it is not revealed whether this is the creature's original form or the form of another creature it had assimilated.[5] John Carpenter wished to have a cameo appearance in the film, but scheduling conflicts prevented this.[3]
[edit]Filming and post-production
The movie was shot in the anamorphic format on 35mm film, as the director dislikes the look of films shot digitally.[24] The director chose not to fast cut the film, instead opting for a slower pace, hoping to build a sense of pending dread.[24] The prequel was filmed in Pinewood Toronto Studios, Port Lands on March 22, 2010 and ended on June 28, 2010.[30] On set, the director had a laptop computer which contained "a million" screen captures of the Carpenter film, which he used as a point of reference to keep the Norwegian camp visually consistent with the first film.[31] Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. created the practical creature effects for the film, in the studios of Amalgamated Dynamics.[32] In addition to creating the effects for the human-Thing transformations, Gillis, Woodruff and their team had the challenge of coming up with the look of the alien in the ice block unearthed by the Norwegians. While it was initially only intended to be shown as a silhouette, the director liked their designs and encouraged them to fully create the creature, which was realised by creating a monster suit that Tom Woodruff wore.[29] In order to emulate the creature effects of the first film, Heisserer has revealed that traditional practical effects will be used on the creatures whenever possible.[33] The films computer generated imagery will be created by Image Engine, the effects house who worked on Neil Blomkamp's 2009 film District 9.[23] Computer Graphics will be used to digitally create extensions on some of the practical animatronic effects, as well as for digital matte paintings and set extensions.[23] Alec Gillis stated that the advancement of animatronic technology since 1982 combined with digital effects allowed the effects team to expand upon the possible creature conceptions.[31] Matthijs van Heijningen preferred to use practical effects over computer imagery, as he believes actors give better performances when they have something physical to react to.[3] Stunt men covered in fire-retardant gel were used in scenes when characters are set on fire.[29] The original Ennio Morricone score will likely be reflected in the film's score, but Morricone will not score the film, nor will his music from the ’82 version be used.[28]
The interior of the crashed alien spacecraft was created by production designer Sean Haworth.[29] To design the ship, Haworth had to recreate what little was shown of the spacecraft in the Carpenter film, then "fill the gaps" for what was not originally shown. Haworth and a team of approximately twelve others then created the inside of the ship as a several story high interior set constructed mostly out of a combination of foam, plaster, fiberglass, and plywood.[29] The ship was designed specifically to look as if it were not made to accommodate humans, but rather alien creatures of different size and shape who could walk on any surface.[29] A section of the craft called the "pod room" was designed to imply the alien creatures manning it had collected specimens of different alien species from around the universe for a zoological expedition.[29]
[edit]

 

[vampiregenocide]

Hmm fair play. We shall see.

 

[Pauly]

P.S I think one of the awesome things about the concept of The Thing, which I hope is explored further, is the idea that those who are Thing'ed, don't necessarily even know they'e copies of themselves (e.g. the guy who has the heart attack because he's a perfect copy with the same heart condition), until it becomes necessary for the biomass inside them to take on a different form, and presumably use the matter of the brain for other squishy purposes. Creepy.

The only thing that always bugged me was that even though it was clearly sentient since it was making an means of escape and obviously had a great big saucer for a ride, 'it' is hard to define since there is never really one 'thing' in the film, it's spread out like a virus between many characters.

One reason why I enjoyed the fan-fic (the guy does write proper sci-fi btw) was because it made the creature into a coherent entity that is literally the sum of it's parts and something far removed from biology on Earth (bar funguses, I guess). Great big flying saucer, dumb kill everything alien is less appealing a concept.

 

[vampiregenocide]

I relate it to the flood in Halo; it's a concious virus, infecting other organisms to use their biomass as both energy and a means of physical movement.

 

[SilenceIsACrime]

Alright, after reading what Pauly posted I am significantly less annoyed and actually pretty damn excited about this. The fact that they are paying so much attention to details from the first movie as well as using traditional special effects is a huge swing in the right direction.

Too bad Kurt and his amazing hat probably won't make a cameo....

 

[chronocide]

Just so people realise, the "original" is a remake, though it's far better than the true original.

 

[highlordmugfug]

Want to see very bad.

 

[SilenceIsACrime]

So I was perusing the comments of this trailer on YouTube and someone said that they are using the same CGI that was in the movie District 9. If this is the case.... ohmyfuckinggodddddd

I, for one, was extremely upset when Avatar won "Best Visual Effects" over District 9. Might just be me, though.

 

[DavyH]

Love/hate/love/hate/love/hate/love/hate....

I can see this happening to me with this film...

The Carpenter version is without doubt one of the best (the best?) SF/horror films ever made, years ahead of its time and still holds its own in terms of quality of visuals. The casting was inspired and the suspense was pants-shittingly awesome.

I don't see it being beaten, but if this version even approaches it, it'll be well worth a look. Pauly's great find above makes it look like there has at least been some care and attention.

As for the production team, I must confess to being one of the two people worldwide who admits to enjoying the Dawn of the Dead remake.

OK I've convinced myself. I can't fucking wait!

 

[Triple-J]

I like the trailer but I'm still unsure about it as it seems to cop the vibe of the original very closely and I think that might end up being it's weakness but I'm pretty sure it can't be as bad as some of the horror remakes we've seen recently as this seems to have had some thought and effort put into it.

It's great to see all the love for Carpenter's version here though as it's one those movies which many people love but is kind of underground really as it never seems to make those "50 greatest movies ever!" type lists.

 

[Scar Symmetry]

Great Wall of China of text

Ok, now I am excite.

 

[Pauly]

I think copping the original is reasonably fair game, after all the film came out in the early 80's and is more of a cult classic than a box office one. Doing it as a prequel keeps, as the director said, it from treading on untouchable turf (should be called Thing not THE Thing though, has to prove itself worthy!) while reintroducing people to the story.

There's this uber poor quality Comic Con trailer I found as well:


This will be the perfect date movie!

 

[technomancer]

Just so people realise, the "original" is a remake, though it's far better than the true original.

Yup, mainly because the Carpenter version follows the novella Who Goes There that they're both based on much more closely. IIRC the novella was awesome and well worth a read.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this, and have been for quite a while. Carpenter's The Thing is one of my favorite movies.

 

[Scar Symmetry]

I am now watching the "original" to celebrate this joyous news.