The Thing

i) how many Antartic research bases have flamethrowers and automatic weapons lying around?

ii) how come their base seems to have normal 24 hour days, despite being below the Antartic circle?

The blood test scene is one of the greatest movie moments ever; terrific Morricone score (mostly electronic, IIRC, something of a rarity and an obv. trib to Carpenter); even Kurt Russell doing his Clint schtick was OK (I love the moment when he pours whiskey into his computer!) Plus a really sharp script by Burt Lancaster's son!

I used to really like Anne Bilson's film reviews in Time Out, although sadly her vampire nov was a bit rub. Still I think I'd like to read this too. What a great, great flick.

they need pistols and flamethrowers in case the norwegians invade (when amundsen landed in "scott"s sphere of operations" in 1911, there was serious if brief discussion of the possibility of invading the norwegian camp and disabling the amundsen exhibition = they had guns available, for stray polar bears?) (haha very stray: polar bears = arctic not anarctic) (and yeah, no flamethrowers) (but anyway don't the Carpenter lot soup up the flamethrower from some more ordinary oxy-acetylene torch gizmo?)

The Thing is a masterful horror movie, which improves upon Hawks original by having a better monster (after all that giant carrot...) This body horror has never been bettered - the actual melting of people.....

Want to read this book. I want to read Quirke's Jaws book. I want to see more of these films with themed canapes and bouze afterwards.

ho ho, I didn't realise I was making a joke... I just can't stop being funny.

I agree with the points about mechanical rather than cgi effects. and there is a lot to like about the film.

it was slightly ruined for me by seeing it in a room with a load of sweaty horror fans, preceded by a documentary on Carpenter that had all the best bits in it. Which was annoying... I'd already heard about the "you gotta be fucking kidding" bit but had been at great pains not to spoil it for special friend Irene, and then the cockfarming documentary did it for me.

The Thing is still not as good as Assault On Precinct 13.

(the secret nagging question is: SO WHAT IF THE THING IMITATES US EXACTLY? If we are all turned into exact copies of ourselves, what has changed? "Go with the flow maan, resistance is futile... gooey tentacloid palps? bring em on!!")

Arctic circle is a grebt place to set a vampire film btw.

i read the story when i was like 12 and it *really really* spooked me (the monster is described, apparently dead, in the first para, oh no!! it has THREE EYES!! OH NO!!): in the bit where they do the blood test, mcready is testing 35 ppl!! carpenter cuts it down to a slightly less pedantic four, i think

the gender thing she says was probably the last possible moment they could cast the way they did: actually not strictly speaking "realistic" (antarctic stations had been mixed sex since the 50s), it was for emotional-narrative focus as much as anything

the question of blair's infection is interesting, because so deliberately left ambiguous i. on hand he jumps to the "it's a shapeshifting alien much too quickly", ii. on the other, he destroys the helicopters/radio etc, iii. on the third hand he misdirects mac towards clark (who ends up being shot and then turning out NOT to have been thinged) => billson points out that the unspoken question is, if you become a thing and it becomes you, how much of YOUR behaviour wd be a mask and how much wd be real...

i suspect childs's thing-dom is kept exactly as ambiguous (and remember someone finds a bit of mac's torn clothing: so he's not out of the picture, just cz he's the hero => yes he's behaving mac-like, but then the thing-that-became-mac WOULD, to fool the others or fool us!!)

http://www.arahne.si/Arachne06.jpg

Any other films with absolutely no women in at all. Actually - nu thread...

(also it stars frodo)

(the caffeine (= coke obv) scene = brilliant loving parody of the scalpel/test-tubes scene)

http://www.hbo.com/films/laramie/img/photo_cast_clea.jpg

jordana = cookiecutter brunette "looker" zzzzz

Hott brasilian-american with wonderful hair
http://www.tiramillas.net/cine/atodo/jordana.jpg

and goth poseur(real goths have black hair)
http://www.hbo.com/films/laramie/img/photo_cast_clea.jpg

(Actually I only like her cos she reminds me of dreamy skate-punk princess Lois, who has way better hair)

coz ok i just watched the movie and then "remembered" this whole mark s bit where he's totally sympathizing with the "thing" and spins this great hypothesis about how mcready is clearly "thing" but has decided by the strength of his will to be human that it doesn't matter. and also about how the "thing" is always in us, and in fact is our mutual fear and at the end, reduced to panic, everyone is reduced to "fire cleans all" which is as unscientific as you can get (and clearly the surface-opposition is science v. grotesque).

also about how blair ceases to panic and becomes "okay" when he reaches the same conclusion w/r/t the "thing" -- i.e. that it doesn't matter.

all of which i guess is part of the "so what if the thing imitates us exactly" except it's also all the BAD things the thing does are entirely human. except the thing gets to make k-cool spaceships too!

i may also have read all this elsewhere.

okay I need to read the book and see "the faculty" now.

also the initial scene with the thing and the dogs is totally horrifying as is the arms-getting-chomped scene, and the way the narrative closure with the two burned stations kicks this whole "statement of human nature" thing into high-gear.

(if true, this is the coolest thing evah btw) (best aspect: it can be totally real and totally unproveable simultaneously)

I thought that Blair WAS a "thing" by that point, that it had assimilated him just before he could hang himself (a noose in the background, isn't there?). But according to this, realising a lack of difference between the thing and the not-thing = becoming the thing-in-itself?

so maybe I do like this film after all.

Dan I think the point is that it's just the two of them, so the "thing" could obviously just eat the other since there's no other people around to get in its way, or it could just wait until they both froze and only it would wake up, or etc. i.e. there's nothing to be done.

i like the dig at humanity: the ultra-perceptive dogs realize that the new dog is the thing within 20 seconds, we have to watch a 90 minute movie and still don't know!*

*i think we do know though... in the last scene when Childs takes a pull of whiskey, MacReady shoots him a kinda "knowing" glance, which i interpreted as "why the hell would the thing be drinking alcohol?"... the thing wants to proliferate, not impede it's spread by killing it's own cells with alcohol!

also, there's this i ran across while trying researching spelling.

RayM:
Also, do you think there's a clue as to where Blair gets infected>
short scene: the dog walks down the hall into blair's(?) room and the shadow of blair's head(?) turns his head real quick followed by a quick fade to black edit.

other thoughts:
i was impressed on how well the thing always cleaned up after itself off-camera because on-camera it was always making a bloody gooey mess.

A long time ago I did a report at school comparing The Thing to this book. (Probably terrible writing and I don't have it any more, but anyways.) I don't know if anyone ever explicitly acknowledged a debt, but there are big similarities. Maybe it's a case of second-hand influence or something. Regardless I think this movie in fact does more justice than any other movie to the style of HP Lovecraft writing. Which is really cool, seeing that aside from his cult followers- his stuff gets a lot less use than it should, after doing more than anyone else to influence the best and most popular of the horror genre like Stephen King. I've seen it written that many horror movie fans are waiting for the day when someone does a really good Lovecraft movie (with arguable exceptions like the comedic Reanimator or Dagon) but until then The Thing comes closest.

Occasional poster Matt Maxwell mentioned this in conversation to me a few years back; it's an understandable comparison to draw.

crucially, there are no mountains in The Thing, or giant penguins, or shoggoths.

-In Mountains of Madness, before discovering the mountains, the Antarctic expedition from Miskatonic U. used special drills and dug up what they thought were petrified remains of an unknown life form. The remains are left on a dissection table in a tent. They turn out not to be petrified at all, the heat allows them to revive, and they eat everybody in the camp. The 2 main characters have been away on a scouting trip in a plane, and they return and find nothing but tracks in the snow. For the rest of the book they are haunted by what might, or might not be the Old Ones hunting them outside in the snow (they can't tell if it's howling or just the wind.)

In the movie the frozen alien was left to thaw on a dissection table, and ate an entire Norwegian outpost leaving nothing but tracks. The two main character Americans figure this out after a helicopter trip. When they return to their base they are haunted for the rest of the movie by what might, or might not be the alien hunting them in the shape of their friends.

-If I remember right, Carpenter's vs. of The Thing has some kinds of hints that the shapeshifter was able to reach populated areas, but the two remaining characters are already going to die and can't warn anybody. A paranoid, doomy ending instead of a victory (like in the original movie) is a pretty Lovecraftian touch.

the ancient things in the Lovecraft story are not like the Thing (although arguably the shoggoths kind of are).

anyway, tekeli-li.

Really cool story, the movie retold from the Thing's perspective: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

The last line is pretty cringey though

re: Carpenter and Lovecraft: anybody seen In The Mouth of Madness? I watched it with some friends and the general consensus was that it did a great job of capturing the feel of Lovecraft, but we were all v. high and I am having trouble remembering specifics.

I knew about the reboot or whatever but wait a goddamn minute:

So what makes "The Thing" different? First off, the film isn't so much a remake as a prequel, or what the producers are calling a companion piece to the original. As "Thing" fans may recall, early in the film, trying to understand why a Norwegian helicopter had been chasing a runaway husky before it crashed, Kurt Russell returns to the Norwegian base camp where he finds evidence that its research team -- now all dead -- had dug something out of the ice, apparently awakening an extraterrestrial creature that had been buried for thousands of years.

"That's the story we tell in this film," says Marc Abraham, who is producing the movie with his Strike Entertainment partner Eric Newman. "We go back to that original Norwegian camp and try to figure out what happened. It's like a crime scene, with an ax in the door, and the audience gets to be the detective, trying to piece together what horrible things have occurred."

In the fine tradition of the prequel to The Exorcist.

except... that there was a fairly recent video game that covered all this ground already!

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/4/457774_front.jpg

Kinda thinking about playing that at some point, just out of curiosity. I heard that it was kind of a buggy mess, but still interesting? It might already be too dated to go back to, though...

really great game imo. i bet it would still play great. has a nice squad system and manages to work in some nice scares. quite tough tho.

haha the biologist who goes crazy and builds a spaceship in a cave in the ice = called BLAIR do you SEE?

wait, um no I don't see!

what was Mark on about here...?

probably a Tony Blair reference...?

or the facts of life

I thought the game was a sequel rather than a prequel

if it wasn't though it should have been

game was a sequel

it's a good sign that the new movie is going to have a cast of complete unknowns. that at least gives one hope. isn't it weird that NONE of the original '82 cast have ever done much since?

Well I'm sure Kurt Russell would like us all to forget Cap'n Ron and all but he has done other things.

ah yeah i meant aside from the big guy.

keith david & wilford brimley kept p busy

Love this movie and enjoyed the game a lot too tbh.

called BLAIR do you SEE?

ref to exorcist yes?

and try to figure out what happened. It's like a crime scene, with an ax in the door, and the audience gets to be the detective, trying to piece together what horrible things have occurred."

erm but we kinda know already

keith david & wilford brimley kept p busy

Yeah, David Clennon, Richard Masur, Richard Dysart and Charles Hallahan did, too. Solid, well-known TV work if nothing else. (I mean, leading roles on "thirtysomething" and "LA Law" for several seasons are hardly "nothing.")

This prequel strikes me as a perfect example of audience-insulting misguidedness. Does anyone really need a road map as to what happened at the Norwegian camp? Not really hard to piece together.

http://io9.com/5659890/first-thing-prequel-footage-cracks-open-the-alien-ice-block

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/46868

http://io9.com/5659148/the-thing-prequel-same-name-new-tagline

god, this is gonna be terrible

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2010/10/the_thing.jpg

i can just smell it: another joyless, poorly edited shitfest that adds nothing to the previous movie apart from needless backstory that could have been guessed by anyone who saw the original.

and it probably won't even make that much money! there is literally NO REASON to make this movie!

wtff
i hate this to the core of whatever disgusting mass of faux-humanity concocted it over a fusion-food speed-lunch meeting

xp!
nothing is sacred :(

yeah but carpenter was remaking! and that was good! cmon people be hopeful!

I gotta vote with rrrobyn and latebloomer here just because that photo looks so wrong.

oh come on like you guys would have been all "oh for sure that's gonna be awse" if it was 1982 and you were seeing this

http://www.moviecritic.com.au/images/kurt-russell-john-carpenter-the-thing12.jpg

Yes! Because that does look awesome!

Hell I remember when the Escape from New York ads and posters were running and I couldn't understand why my mom wouldn't let me see it.

right now is not a good era for remakes, as far as i've witnessed, that's the thing :/
xp
it looks so awesome

x-post

this isn't a remake, though! it's a prequel to a remake.

we live in an age of movies-as-fan-fiction. it's really depressing.

right now is not a good era for remakes, as far as i've witnessed, that's the thing :/

exactly

we live in an age of movies-as-fan-fiction. it's really depressing.

― soon to be major motion picture starring john wayne (latebloomer), Sunday, October 10, 2010 12:40 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

prequel is worse, it's true! can nothing remain mystery? fan-fiction with big budget! gahhhh
i do wish it could be good, as i wish all sci-fi movies could be good. but then, i wished so hard about Alien 4. never forget.

gotta say, wtf is with that brutalist ice tunnel they are running through. did antarctic researchers really have time to hire architects to stylize their bases.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9c/The_Thing_From_Another_World_01.jpg

this is pretty awesome

I mean, the picture. haven't read the comic

gotta say, wtf is with that brutalist ice tunnel they are running through. did antarctic researchers really have time to hire architects to stylize their bases.

― dayo, Sunday, October 10, 2010 4:47 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

I think it's supposed to be the Thing's spaceship they're running through

why can't they just make their own damn movie

that is my basic question

Is that one of the Daft Punk guys on dayo's poster?

Also, did anyone else think about warning the people in the screenshot about facehuggers?

Just re-reading this whole thread, and saw this: i suspect childs's thing-dom is kept exactly as ambiguous (and remember someone finds a bit of mac's torn clothing: so he's not out of the picture, just cz he's the hero => yes he's behaving mac-like, but then the thing-that-became-mac WOULD, to fool the others or fool us!!)

Mac and Childs both passed the blood test, yo. Childs gets separated during the whole final battle thing, so the audience can assume some ambiguity there, but I don't think Mac is ever off-screen after he passes the blood test.

I would totally see this if they'd called it "..And Another Thing"

Or "You've got another thing coming"

"That Thing You Do"

I don't thing so.

There's SomeThing About Mary

"That Thing You Do"

ha ha, rom com version

infected dog escaping from Norwegian helicopter, taking shelter in US base = "meet cute"

you guys who're all like "why can't they make their own movie" understand that Carpenter's Thing was...a remake...right

Yeah that's been pretty well established!

If any of the recent spate of remakes/prequels/"re-boots" of old horror movies had been any good I think more of us would be optimistic!

^ this. The Thing is a good, 80s interpretation of a cold-war horror original, neither detracting from it nor losing out because of it. in that, it can stand on its own form of originality (much like The Fly did). whereas current remakes (lol of 80s remakes or not) have little to do with 'interpretation' and creating their own real of-the-now qualities, and much more to do with studio quotas. sure, i wish this new movie was from the heart of hollywood magic but, uh.

but hey, maybe the pairing of the screenwriter for the new Nightmare on Elm Street AND the new Final Destination + a some-time screenwriter for Battlestar, with a first-time feature director will have created the combo we're looking for

we all gotta start somewhere!

seriously though, i mean, john carpenter actually directed B horror movies in the 60s! i feel like his The Thing was more like 'let me show you how i can do it better' - and now we've gone back to hacking out half-assed stuff that isn't about doing better except in the special effects dept.

Real of-the-now qualities? What if this time, in the prequel, we find out that the first movie was a dream (Inception) by the team that dug up the creature, that was actually buried under the ice by the Vatican in the middle ages because it was the illegitimate child of Jesus and Mary Magdalen (Da Vinci Code) and by waking it up they start the Apocalyps, that will end the world in 2012? (oh, and there should be a diversion about terrorists too, obv. - maybe one of the team should be a muslim who jokes about bombs all the time)

?

what if it turns out the thing was brought to earth on a predator ship

fuck washing a post-post-modernism

maybe this is actually the next bourne movie

That Bourne Thing You Do (romantic horror sci-fi comedy)

That Bourne Thing You Do To Me (the pr0n parody remake)

Bourne Again would be a good title for the inevitable 2022 franchise reboot starting Frankie Muniz.

If any of the recent spate of remakes/prequels/"re-boots" of old horror movies had been any good I think more of us would be optimistic!

Exactly! They're all half-arsed plot + reuse of dialogue from first film + ironic winks at audience + stunt casting

Carpenter's remake took the basic idea and ran with it in all sorts of interesting new ways, with some really quite startling effects

ugh

http://io9.com/5659983/they-live-remake-might-ditch-the-infamous-alien-sunglasses

seriously though, i mean, john carpenter actually directed B horror movies in the 60s!

erm, carpenter didn't direct his first feature film until 1974 (Dark Star) and didn't make a horror movie until 1978 (Halloween)

Well, yes but he did direct short films; they are technically movies (and not tv)

Whatever the case, he had ideas, man

oh fer sure, i mean halloween alone is a game changer

erm, carpenter didn't direct his first feature film until 1974 (Dark Star) and didn't make a horror movie until 1978 (Halloween)

― Ward Fowler, Monday, October 11, 2010 11:46 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

why didn't you just say "until 1978 (Oct. 31)" if you're trying to be so accurate

lol

dbl lol

the 'funny' 'thing' is, until the carpenter movie halloween wasn't really 'celebrated' here in the uk - and it took ET to really popularise trick or treating. i love seeing our supermarkets full of spooky crap, so god bless you john carpenter

Amazed to find that this movie received such negative reviews when it was released.

Watched the film last night and really was struck by how skilled and confident Carpenter was when he made his great 80s films. What the heck happened after They Live?

He still had one more great one in In The Mouth Of Madness, but yeah, ever since it's been pretty dire. Even his lauded material for the "Masters of Horror" series was basically shitty.

Love it.

I think what happened is that Carpenter got old but, like so many of his peers (Romero, Craven, et al.) , no longer had the vision or energy to make something great on a low-budget. So many of his later movies are like half-assed big-budget aspirants hampered by their limited resources. I mean, I can only guess how much more "Escape from LA" cost than "Escape from NY," and the difference between those two says it all, really.

the great aspect of this film is really all in the casting and the characterization. you've got a bunch of dudes who are already bored and trapped by their situation, some of whom clearly don't like each other already and some of whom are power-tripping or misanthropic or weak-willed, others who are utter pros and smart as hell. it's essentially '12 Angry Men' vs a super fucked-up alien.

YES!

this film is perfect

the making-of featurette on the DVD is probably the best one of those I have ever seen (except for maybe Tron)

The Thing: A 140,000-Year-Old Organism Discovered in Antarctica's Ice-Shrouded Lake Vostok

An ancient living laboratory of our planet's past in Antarctica may have provided a preview of what we can expect to find deep below the barren surface of Mars and in the ice-shrouded seas of Jupiter's Europa. Two of the world's leading experts on life at the lower temperature extremes, Buford Price of the University of California, Berkeley and Todd Sowers of Penn State observed that microbes colonizing life appear to have two levels of metabolism: a survival metabolism in which they remain alive but become dormant until exposed to nutrients or higher temperatures, or, a maintenance metabolism for steady sustained growth.

The team observed that some organisms in permafrost appear to have "protein repair enzymes that maintain active recycling of certain amino acids needed for cell repair for at least 30,000 years." They added that the "extremely low expenditures of survival energy enable microbial communities in extreme environments to survive indefinitely."

In the Antarctic's ancient ice-bound Lake Vostok they reported that nitrifying bacteria with low but active metabolisms have been found encased in liquid veins at minus 40 degrees F for more than 140,000 years. And, it takes about 108 years for carbon to turn over in the cells.

They projected from their conclusions that life moving so slowly that it appears to be frozen, dormant, or undectable may survive in the cold, icy and "cosmically radioactive conditions of outer space."

so fuckin awesome

It's also just...comforting, in a cosmic sense. I love knowing that life exists in such complexities.

I adore Lake Vostok. Did not realize it was only discovered in '96!

Ready or not, here comes the prequel...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-35t-TUq0_Bw/ThwUBZKMD0I/AAAAAAAAAG4/8bQP8nDGttQ/s640/the-thing-teaser-poster.jpg

fucking swedes

Terrible poster.

fucking swedes

Norwegians. And yeah, terrible poster. Doesn't the tagline directly contradict that image?

IT'S NOT HUMAN. NEARLY THOUGH. ONLY HAND TO GO. BRB.

There was a (pretty great) computer game that already told the story of what happened before the events of The Thing.. I wonder if that story's been discarded?

"from the producers of Dawn of the Dead"

no need to say more.

x-post - If it's the one I'm thinking of, I loved that game.

I'm not ready for this.

I just find interesting how all these awful remakes (no wait, they're calling them reimaginings), for all their excess and ultra graphic violence, look like highly sanitized, disinfected versions of the original movies.

will this have model work? (this will not have model work)

yeah that games talked abt upthread iirc

lol

I am nothing if not consistent

Love this movie and enjoyed the game a lot too tbh.

― t(o_o)t (ENBB), Tuesday, March 16, 2010 10:19 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I just find interesting how all these awful remakes (no wait, they're calling them reimaginings), for all their excess and ultra graphic violence, look like highly sanitized, disinfected versions of the original movies.

― Marco Damiani, Wednesday, July 13, 2011 10:25 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

^ this

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a great example of this

it's 100% gorier than the original but it still can't replicate the low-budget sleaziness

The wikipedia entry for this sounds vaguely encouraging, though. They WILL use animatronics for a lot of it. And they're going with a deliberately slow pace, to match the 1982 version. I dunno, this could be pretty rad as long as somebody gets to pour bourbon into a computer

Why is it being pushed as a prequel? "Three days before the astonishing events of the original film... exactly the same thing happened!"

IGNORE ME

I dunno, this could be pretty rad as long as somebody gets to pour bourbon into a computer

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, July 13, 2011 8:11 AM (4 minutes ago)

J&B scotch iirc

Ha I should have remembered that, I love J&B

They WILL use animatronics for a lot of it. And they're going with a deliberately slow pace, to match the 1982 version

this is all PR bullshit

Oh yeah? Dish, dish!

Xp You're all PR bullshit

j/k

the makers of these remakes/"reboots"/reimaginings ALWAYS say this kind of thing. "We love the original movie because it's so perfect - we are going to be very faithful to the tone and spirit of the original" yadda yadda. It's part of the schtick.

Yeah, all these remakes all go filter-happy in an effort to recreate the original scuzzy visuals, with the result being this surreal disconnect between reality and some TV commercial version of reality.

hey shakey you know who else says that kind of thing? your mom. she reimagined my schtick last weekend, though, was pretty awesome

*cries*

*does the knucks with imaginary friends*

Wellllll here's the trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uHzlAjpDSEM

Yeah, all these remakes all go filter-happy in an effort to recreate the original scuzzy visuals, with the result being this surreal disconnect between reality and some TV commercial version of reality.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, July 13, 2011 8:43 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

^ this this this, more than anything, this. fucking hate the tendency in contemporary horror to make everything look like a fucking audi commercial with added "grit".

where do i know that "hey lo lo ley" scandewegian yodelling song in the background from?

Sound of Music

LOL Uncle Owen from the Star Wars prequels is in this.

trailer predictably reveals several bad decisions right off the bat

oh my gosh that looks shit

ie, mixed-gender cast, CGI face-morphing, car crashes, various shots cribbed from the original

that's the funniest tagline ever.

in a place with nothing...they found....BWOMMMMM.....SOMETHING

lol it stars "Kim Bubbs"

Sound of Music

rly? have never seen sound of music, guess it's achieved full background media ubiquity tho.

ie, mixed-gender cast, CGI face-morphing, car crashes, various shots cribbed from the original

don't see why any of these are bad or uninevitable.

trailer looks okay-ish, if unremarkable. points for fairly naturalistic cinematography for a contemporary film and a suitably grizzled cast. lead seems terribly unconvincing, but i'll reserve judgement on that. the fact that she's a fish out of water seems to be the point, so i won't fault her casting on that score. a few details (such as the black & white dog chewing his enclosure) suggest that it's going to be a straight-up remake, but who knows. maybe it's just the dog that escapes at the end to complete the chain...

like the idea that it'll have a longer, slower build-up than the original, which pretty much hit the ground running.

was kidding about the Sound of Music, didn't really notice the music

I dunno if I wanna get into why all of those things are particularly bad. The mixed gender thing should be fairly obvious, I would think.

The Dawn of the Dead remake is a lot better than any of the recent horror remakes I can think of.

Yeah, DOD remake is pretty fun and it's quite unlike Snyder's subsequent films. Best opening credits sequence of modern times too.

yeah, the opening scene of the DOD remake is brilliant. don't think the rest of the movie really lives up to what the opening promises, though. failure to follow-through on zombie-baby chestbuster kind of broke my heart.

belly burster, w/e...

re the yodelling: eurovision, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap3_USxKQ34

1:20 in

i really want to like this but.. there's a shaggy funkiness to carpenter's movie that goes beyond kurt russell and which seems.. well, not in evidence here. everybody has great hair, for god's sake! in an antarctic research station!!! in the 1982 movie there was this kind of crass bonhomie, pot smoking, everybody a little nutty, as you would be. it's funny how sequel peeps will architect everything down to the nth degree as far as plot and set continuities go but then just throw hairstyles out the window, and the look of the movie, too. why not match the cinematography as well as the plot? why's it all got to be this ultra-contrasty shiny wetness?

like, the research station looks positively tasteful. it would not be. it would be dirty and drafty and cold and the lighting would suck.

Man, no good will come of this. Why don't they ever remake bad movies and make them better? Why must they remake classic movies? I can name a million on-paper solid horror films that could be better.

I just find interesting how all these awful remakes (no wait, they're calling them reimaginings), for all their excess and ultra graphic violence, look like highly sanitized, disinfected versions of the original movies.

okay, so tracer OTM. especially about the "shaggy funkiness" and dirty, careless, human lived-in-ness of carpenter's research station. also the lack of oddball personality, both in the cast and the cinematic style.

lack of (apparent) personality in this new version, i mean.

yep. this movie is POINTLESS

you might even say it's lacking a certain.... SOMETHING

y'all should go and see the troll hunter instead, if you want quirky gritty original norwegian horror. well more comic fantasy than horror but anyway, it's good.

the original is playing in LA tomorrow on a double-bill w/ cronenberg's 'the fly'

trollhunter is fun

this trailer is like what happened to elaine's hair over the course of the seinfeld run.

seeing trollhunter on sunday. excited!

oooh I hadn't heard about trollhunter - i wanna see it!

It worries me that there's not a scene in the trailer (except for vehicle falling into crevice in the ice) that doesn't seem to be a lift from Carpenter's movie. And there seem to be very few Norwegians.

I don't think I even want to watch the trailer after these reactions.

The trailer itself isn't bad! It's just impossible not to be cynical about this movie.

a few details (such as the black & white dog chewing his enclosure) suggest that it's going to be a straight-up remake, but who knows. maybe it's just the dog that escapes at the end to complete the chain...

it's a direct prequel. but it's basically a remake anyway, i.e. the same basic events happen.

it's a pre-make!

surprised that term hasn't caught on yet

Bailed out on the trailer halfway through. First of all, can we FUCKING GET RID OF THE PSEUDO-GREGORIAN CHANTERS THAT INDICATE "UNKNOWN SCARY SHIT FROM THE ANCIENT PAST"

Zero suspense, no indication that this movie is even supposed to be scary.

Trailer for the original 100% better...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouZkkIsLiNg

The Fog has my favorite Carpenter trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XI559irkMQ

The Fog is the most underrated Carpenter. Scared the poop out of me when I was little.

did you get your poop back

John Carpenter stole my childhood poop, and now I will never get it back.

The Thing: "Man is the warmest place to hide."
The Fog: "What in the living hell is out there?"

Now these, my friends, are tag lines.

The Fog, the scene near the start with the guys on the boat. Fucking superb shit.

I guess i don't have very high expectations for this prequel, but that trailer looks alright.

i'm sure this will be terrible, but i still got chills in the first ~20 seconds of the trailer just because i love the original premise so much. show me an antarctic research base and i'm set, i'll watch you even if you're a prequel to alien vs predator.

whoa, this just seems masochistic (if true):

Annual viewing on "The Ice"

The Thing is typically viewed by members of the winter crew at the U.S. South Pole station after the last flight out (usually in a double-feature with The Shining). [31]

Might as well, otherwise people would be making inevitable requests/references to it for the next six months.

masochism kind of goes w/the territory

Just re-read Ebert's old review. He misses the point on a couple of fronts. One, he complains about the lack of characterization, but the fact that these characters remains so vivid to us today is surely because of the way Carpenter drew them; most films today, I leave not knowing half the characters' names. Two, he complains that the dudes would have benefited from the buddy system, but how so? If Ebert was paying attention, it's introduced way, way early that someone may have already been Thing-afied by way of the Norwegian dog wandering around. The buddy system would not have helped.

Anyway, re-watching again tonight, this movie is just tight.

With this and Blade Runner, 1982 seems like some kind of high point of special effects. It's essentially all been downhill since then.

I think it's spiritually significant that I was born in 1982. It's one of the best years for genre movies ever.

ET, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, Dark Crystal, Conan/Beastmaster, Star Trek II, Tron ...

Plus a host of other touchstones: Porky's, Fast Times and . Diner, Liquid Sky, Fitzcarraldo, Fanny and Alexander, Sophie's Choice, Tootsie, The Verdict, White Dog, 48 Hours, First Blood ...

Ruddy hell, seeing it written down like that...what a year for films.

Yeah, it was really something in my memory, a lot of things happening all at once.

Also, Road Warrior came out the very end of December 1981, so I'd count that in there, too.

Right, I was ten years old in '82 so only saw ET in the cinema, the rest on VHS over the next few years. Given that the space shuttle has been retired, couldn't those funds now be reassigned to a u&k time-machine-building project to get us back there? deadly srs.

the thing is on telly right now! there is literally nothing wrong with this film

you've got to be fucking kidding

\o/

£%$

there is literally nothing wrong with this film

― mark s, Monday, August 22, 2011 6:02 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

i think the early silhouette is norris's: which means his heart-attack is

1: genuinely faked to take norris-thing out of the firing line
2: real in the sense that a thingified norris has norris's bad heart
3: "real" in the sense that the thingified norris can give itself a heart-attack as a ruse

haha at the diff between 1 and 3

who gets into the blood cupboard? copper and garry are both proven non-things, judging by subsequent events -- unless copper too is already a thing when his arms get bitten off and he's faking death? (but his body gets tested, doesn't it...)

can the thing in one body recognise other things in other bodies? everyone in the film assumes yes, but maybe no? maybe it's only as aware as the body it's hiding in

there is literally nothing wrong with this film

― mark s, Monday, August 22, 2011 6:02 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

double OTM

the world needs a book by mark s about this movie, 33 1/3 style.

x-post - Triple.

I tried to get my parents to watch it with me last weekend because it was on On Demand but instead they made me watch some Gerard Butler crapfest. I was displeased.

The nature of the Thing:

It has a heart-attack when it's hiding in Norris's body.
It is stoned when it's hiding in Palmer's body, and in fact says "You've got to be fucking kidding"

what kind of name is Windows anyway?

I am still a bit perplexed as to why that scientific research station in the antarctic had so many machine guns knocking around. Is this usual?

war with Norway iirc

who gets into the blood cupboard? copper and garry are both proven non-things, judging by subsequent events

OK, so Bennings and Windows are in the storage room, and Bennings tells Windows to go get the keys from Garry. Windows leaves, comes back in, finds Bennings being assimilated, and you can hear the keys fall to the floor. From that point on, it's chaos, and the keys are unaccounted for. But here's the important thing (lol) -- while all this is going on, Blair is missing, and when they're burning the bodies from the Norwegian camp along with Bennings' remains, they notice he's missing. Blair was probably already a Thing, got the keys when Windows dropped them, destroyed the blood supply knowing that Copper or Fuchs would think of the serum test, then either returned them to where they were dropped or slipped them into Garry's room.

aha YES! though actually bennTHINGs could also have them and pass them to A.N.OTHERTHING when off-camera -- or just split, unless things only split when under attack?

we have always been at war with norway

also: conservation of mass is way more of an issue here than machine guns

"is this usual?" <-- it is an unusual situation all round really

I saw the trailer for the Thing remake/reboot the other day and all I could think of was mark s on this thread -- it remains one of my favorite things from ile.

"is this usual?" <-- it is an unusual situation all round really

oh sure, but fantasy-horror only works if the inrusion of the bizarre and grotesque is the only thing marking things out as an otherwise normal situation.

the antarctic is only a "normal" situation in quite an extreme sense: i'm not startled by the idea that a US base, even a research base, has a small stock of weaponry

a: the antarctic treaty has always a fragile affair and military activity is not beyond the imagination
b: if this is US territory, then the right to bear arms applies!

i don't actually remember any machine-guns, as opposed to rifles, and isn't the flame-thrower souped up from items to hand?

i believe guns are pretty standard in the antarctic - you might need them for wolves, bears, psychotic penguins, etc

wolves and bears ?!

if they got lost

packs of feral huskies descended from countless polar expeditions

mutant experimental bears and wolves introduced by the evil norwegians

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2007/12/21/goldencompass.article.jpg

http://withfriendship.com/images/i/44827/at-the-mountains-of-madness-is.jpg

^^êveryone who goes to the antarctic has read this, why be unprepared?

that was at the north pole tho xpost

the events pullman described were north, but the bears are from svalbard which is in norway, so why wouldn't evil norwegian scientists bring them south also?

well OK, killer microscopic invertebrates

Guns would kill them for sure

i: obv you need guns in case someone goes mental
ii: everyone who goes to the antarctic MUST already be a mental

QED

it's like i'm the only one that understands the meaning of the word normal

to anyone who adores this film, i highly recommend this book:
http://www.calamaripress.com/images/Snowmen_cover.JPG

xpost Yeah, there are no machine guns in this movie. And most of these dudes seem the type of cats to carry weapons regardless of location.

Did "Alien" start the whole team of characters being called by a single name thing (Ripley, Macready, etc) or is there a war movie precedent I'm not thinking of?

MASH is pretty single-name isn't it?

many of the characters take their names directly from the john w. campbell original: copper, blair, norris, macready, commander garry -- so it's already pretty single-name, and the all-maleness presumably amplifies this; there's a military tinge to it even though the film's camp isn't military

alien is slightly diff -- and at the time more startling -- bcz women get militarised

good god, i had never known this aspect of campbell's life:

His mother, Dorothy (née Strahern) was warm but changeable of character and had an identical twin who visited them often and who disliked young John. John was unable to tell them apart and was frequently coldly rebuffed by the person he took to be his mother.[3]

!!!!!!!

omg that is what this film is entirely about!

this changes everything

i mean, how completely insane is that.

(was searching wiki cause i thought i remembered campbell having been in the military (hence the slightly military tone of Who Goes There) but no)

except "penetrated with slimy tendrils" instead of "coldly rebuffed"

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

oh wow

xp

dunno ... MASH is fairly two-name, characters with nicknames, titles (Hawkeye Pierce, Hotlips Houlihan, Father Mulcahy, etc)

As Sam Moskowitz has written about Campbell in his early critical study of science-fiction writers, "From the memories of his childhood he drew the most fearsome agony of the past: the doubts, the fears, the shock, and the frustration of repeatedly discovering that the woman who looked so much like his mother was not who she seemed."

hope this moskowitz guy wasn't pulling our leg

i just remembered everyone saying "hotlips, hawkeye, radar" etc, but yes, we were aware of titles and non-nickname surnames, so poor guess on my part

Sgt. Bilko

... tho he was called Ernie occasionally.

So, yeah, war movies basically.

"Where Eagles Dare" has a one-name-only cast but "Dirty dozen" has first names, ranks, etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ssiWgTA1qk

...and a mere 9 years later: i recently obtained and read the Anne Billson book mentioned by mark s when opening this thread...

(It is, as he said, very readable)

I saw the trailer for the Thing remake/reboot the other day and all I could think of was mark s on this thread -- it remains one of my favorite things from ile.

― ¯\(°_o)/¯ (Nicole), Tuesday, August 23, 2011 8:21 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

same!

As Sam Moskowitz has written about Campbell in his early critical study of science-fiction writers, "From the memories of his childhood he drew the most fearsome agony of the past: the doubts, the fears, the shock, and the frustration of repeatedly discovering that the woman who looked so much like his mother was not who she seemed."

amazing anecdote if true

the doubts, the fears, the shock, and the frustration of repeatedly discovering that the woman who looked so much like his mother was primarily composed of chitin and radioactive mucus

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51V7K8HACAL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://www.tylerham.com/pics/thing1.jpg

^want

One thing I noticed is when PalmerThing's blood hits the floor, it's right next to a stack of puzzle boxes and model kits.

what kind of name is Windows anyway?

― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Tuesday, August 23, 2011 4:13 AM (10 hours ago)

Windows is the radio operator - his nickname comes from being the "window to the rest of the world" or something.

Did "Alien" start the whole team of characters being called by a single name thing (Ripley, Macready, etc) or is there a war movie precedent I'm not thinking of?

Most of Sam Fuller's war movies have single name characters. Steel Helmet from 1951 might be the first (can't remember if it has a "Griff" in it though)

bah forgot to look out for the puzzles and models by palmerthing blood (it was on telly again so i watched it again)

what i keep coming back to about this movie is weird (uncanny) contradictions inherent in the monster's m.o.

as childs says, "if i were a perfect copy of myself, how would you know?" - to which the doc replies he's thought of a "blood serum" test. but this test makes no sense - if the thing is an exact copy, surely childs' blood would be exactly the same if he's really childs or if he's been taken over by the thing.

but further, imagine that the thing comes into contact with the rest of civilisation - and the entire world becomes thingified..

how would we know?

it's uncanny valley time!

http://www.openthefuture.com/images/second%20uncanny%20valley.jpg

"radical post-human" = "never does the washing up"

'human likeness' axis figures curiously elided beyond 100%

maybe the answer is that actually it is NOT an exact copy. the dog, for instance, is preternaturally calm, and the other dogs react to it; thing-blair builds a spaceship (real blair wouldn't know how and wouldn't want to); so along with superfast body-morphing The Thing's real talent is for subterfuge. it is more, and different, and less than human but it is good at hiding it.

but maybe not perfect: i remember a scene when they're putting blair up in the shack above the camp and somebody (bearded nerd scientist dude?) plonks down a bottle of vodka in front of him - blair's favorite tipple. blair doesn't touch it. macready picks it up, takes a big swig, sets it right back down. blair ignores it..

cf. gygax upthread:

in the last scene when Childs takes a pull of whiskey, MacReady shoots him a kinda "knowing" glance, which i interpreted as "why the hell would the thing be drinking alcohol?"... the thing wants to proliferate, not impede it's spread by killing it's own cells with alcohol!

http://mlkshk.com/r/6G0G

lol

The weird thing is, in the Alan Dean Foster novelization, "Windows" is called "Sanders." >>shrug<<

is that the only difference?

I always thought Windows was an allusion to a) his role as the radio/comm guy and b) the fact that dude is always wearing shades. even inside, at night.

it was the film's one gesture in the direction of utopian science fiction: a world where Mac kills Windows ?

(i'll get me coat)

uggghhhhh

Would it be too many xposts for me to reply to mark s with "No, there was also a pred ship?"

"pred"?

don't ask

to catch a pred(ship)

so lemme get this straight, a "prequel" with the *same name* as the previous film... has this been done before?

for some (swedo-norwegian) reason i have totally got it mixed up in my head with the remake of tinker tailor soldier spy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SppG-I_Dhxw&feature=channel_video_title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgRWMbGSUec&feature=channel_video_title

The thing is an "exact copy" in that it is not visually different from the original, but clearly the thing has different motives. Hence the test. Childs may not know if he's a thing or not, but the thing that's part of him sure does. It wants to survive above all else, so that's why the test works. Now, what the alien's motives are beyond survival are never mentioned. It's like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" - they take over earth ... and then what?

Plus, really, in the end none of the characters know anything about the thing. They're just quickly adapting under stressful conditions. The Thing and us ... we are the same!

maybe it doesn't want to take over the earth but just wants to be left in peace so it can finally build that spaceship out of helicopter parts and not be INTERRUPTED all the GODDAMN TIME and get the hell off this stupid planet

I have somehow never seen this movie

i think you need to question a few things abt yr life then

The thing is an "exact copy" in that it is not visually different from the original, but clearly the thing has different motives.

ha i thought you were talking about the movie versions here

Cell by cell the Thing has different motives, but does it have its own "humanscale" consciousness? The Norris-Bennings "puppetshow" scene is interesting in the sense that the larger part of the body on the autopsy table puts on an absurd diversionary show so that the smaller part -- the NorrisHeadSpider -- can creep away under the table, and perhaps escape. So is this liKe a wolf in a trap gnawing off its own leg? No: because the leg is also conscious. It's more like Gandalf holdng off the Balrog while the others flee: one Thing self-sacrificing to save another (even though they were just one "creature" beforehand).

And then of course Palmer -- himself also a Thing, albeit a stoned Thing -- dobs the NorrisHeadSpider in, and gets it fried. Suggesting that once the Thing is in DIFFERENT hosts, it no longer operates collectively. Is the Thingmind in Palmer being canny in some to us unreadable way? Or is it at the moment overriden by Palmer's consciousness? Or are different Things indifferent to one another's Host's well-being, since one cell is actually enough? Or are they perhaps even mutually hostile? Or mutually unaware, once in host bodies which lack sensory Thing-awareness.

The dog seemed to know the dogthing wasn't a dog. Why? Smell? Doggie racism (bloody Scando Huskies coming over here taking our Pedigree Chum...)

In Darwinian terms: How would a Thing even evolve? Would it evolve intelligence? Would it need to?

jeez i hadn't even twigged that Palmer was a Thing already in that scene.

i like those videos. quite a bit.

i had never considered that abstaining from a shared bottle of liquor could be considered an indication of human-ness, i.e. you don't want to risk infection. so maybe blair up in the shack wasn't infected (yet), but childs accepting the J&B might prove he already is infected, since he doesn't care about the possible contamination. it IS a little funny how the soundtrack starts up the ominous BUMP BUMPS the moment he takes a sip.

In the original story, the Thing has a degree of telepathic ability -- it can certainly broadcast into dreams, whether or not it can read. In this film, Blair at least leaps to various conclusions about what's going on WAY in advance of any the evidence. (Quite a lot of time passes -- it's set over several days, which isn't readily apparent -- so we obviously miss many agitated conversations, but even so, when Macready says "aliens", we have at least seen a flying saucer and encountered some very weird morphological shit; but when Blair says "this creature can imitate anything it wants, down to the cell level" -- or however he says it -- he is fronting.)

No reason to suppose the saucer-building alien is of the Thing's race: it might just be infected. The bugthing and the orchidthing presumably predate the saucerthing. Is the Thing a threat to "lower" lifeforms? There aren't any flies in the Antarctic (I seem to remember).

I actually think Carpenter sets up the final chat between Mac and Childs to be literally undecideable: I feel that formal story undecideability trumps clues here -- sometimes putting on a white fur coat is putting on a white fur coat, as Freud would say. But he's absolutely right you should be paying attention at that kind of level. (You always should: the wardrobe designer may be sending out a secret message-in-a-bottle...)

so he's either become Thing or has been thought-implanted by Thing. if it were the former, you'd think he'd keep schtum about the Thing's M.O. unless... unless Thingblair figures that if the men knew it could duplicate them, they'd turn on each other..

xpost ha you are saying that the bugthing and dogthing might have just hitched a ride on some other alien's craft?

no dogthing i am fairly confidenct came from the norwegian camp! we will have to wait for the premake to revolve that...

my "plausible" backstory is that the Thing is originally quite "primitive" organism in "great chain of being" terms: and perhaps evolved on a planet without too many -- large -- mobile animals. It can't -- or doesn't -- infect "down": otherwise bacteria in the air would carry it from person to person. So it starts as a fungus and gradually grows into a swamp-full of uglies, maybe on an isolated island. The aliens land in their nice saucer, pick some flowers and fly off -- gradually realise something is horribly amiss, and crash the saucer into Earth, but not before they're all Thingified.

The bug fits somewhere into this story. Maybe it was the ship's pet bug.

bug? orchid? I missed these...

It depends on the subtlety of Thing intelligence: I feel it is aware and hyper-driven by a local, connected sense of survival, which is also intensely situational in the sense that is articulated "through" the intelligence of the copied body. So Thingblair may reason that if the "rest of" the Thing is identified and destroyed, it gets off unnoticed.

I don't think the Thing is very bright in itself. It hitches a ride on the intelligence it has to hand. Blairthing could think "I'm also the saucerthing! It could build a saucer out of stuff in this shed. I will bodyshift back." But dogthing could not think this.

It is not as bright as people.

The bug grows out of Norris's head -- also we see someone break off a buggish-looking leg at an earlier autopsy. The "orchid" is in the dog compound -- a sort of flowerhead that pokes out at MacReady, while the big talons are smashing through the roof. It's what jumpstarts him into frying it.

ah gotcha

So many autopsies!

they're like the memories of lifeforms it's imitated in the past (on other planets?? or maybe the norwegian camp have a greener thumb than our ice jocks; in any case, those tentacles aren't native antarctic fauna)

or ARE THEY

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/science/2006/01/who-needs-europa/

omg the guy who discovered lake vostok just died three weeks ago!!

http://int.rgo.ru/news/andrey-kapitsa-dies-in-moscow/

Its MO is funny, because it alternates between hiding as well as it's possible to imagine, and going BOO as chaotically as it's possible to imagine -- and the latter, though it's when we jump most, is actually when it's at its most vulnerable in some ways. Providing you're not frozen in fear, as poor old Windows is, and let yourself be actually bitten, it's not that strategic, or even quick, when it comes to growing effective mandibles. Tendrils is a plant's trick.

The final monster is BIG, and has some kind of turbo-tendril traction for speed -- not legs, though big snakes can move fast -- but its threat is primarily weight, and strength. I assume from its size it had gobbled Nauls also.

Grenades don't entirely strike me as a lasting solution: but maybe I have watched T2 too often.

PROF. ANDREI KAPITSA (Moscow State University): The best way to warm yourself up you eat butter. A pound of butter goes in you and suddenly you are warm again and everything is nice and it's like drinking a glass of vodka but much better.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/vostok_transcript.shtml

it's almost like at the moment of transformation it has to recapitulate all its prior transformations, sort of a "greatest hits" (play the old stuff first, then play the new stuff)

like the T-1000 in the molten steel at the end of Terminator 2

During transformation its "brain" is presumably quite basic: I think it's like a workman shuffling through all its tools to see which one will work, waiting for a kind of muscle-memory instinct to kick in: "It's slimy pistil time" -- but it only knows this when a bit of the pistil sort of quivers in readiness as it forms...

I am off to the pub now.

The "orchid" is in the dog compound -- a sort of flowerhead that pokes out at MacReady, while the big talons are smashing through the roof. It's what jumpstarts him into frying it.

An "orchid" made out of dog tongues with teeth running down the middle, no less:

http://thing.popapostle.com/images/episodes/The-Thing/flower-of-dog-tongues.JPG

that moment above was one of the 'HOLY FUCK' ones in this film - but i think the 'orchid thing' (itself in the same bracket) is just a wee bit earlier than that ?
it's when the dogthing's head first splits open, but the main body is still intact (albeit quickly punctured by spiny bug/crustacean legs)
- the head kind of 'peels back' into 4 flesh-petals, and a tentacle/tongue comes thrashing out from the neck cavity - the whole thing looks like a giant horrible orchid...

ref. the 'intelligence' - love the idea of it being a low-level lifeform 'hijacking' whatever is to hand - but i like how the dog, before we know it is a dogthing, is already acting in a sinisterly 'deliberate' way - e.g. that moment when it is peering intently through the window, as they return from the saucer investigation - and it gave me the impression that it was much cleverer than a normal dog.
('saucer-building activities hampered by lack of opposable thumbs - must temporarily grow some when no-one is looking')

oops not 'saucer investigation' - 'visit to the norwegian camp'

I actually always read the dog as being sort of confused and uncomfortable, like it knows something is wrong with it but can't articulate it ... because it's a dog. Sort of the way dogs bark at the weather.

it's almost like at the moment of transformation it has to recapitulate all its prior transformations, sort of a "greatest hits" (play the old stuff first, then play the new stuff)

In the making of documentary included on DVD, I recall Bottin mentioning that the final Thing incorporated elements of it's previous incarnations: dog parts, Blair head, etc.

Trivia from Bottin's Wikipedia page...

From there, Bottin's reputation grew when he again worked with Carpenter on The Thing. Bottin worked on The Thing seven days a week (including late nights) for a year and five weeks straight, making himself so ill in the process that John Carpenter had him admitted to a hospital when production was complete.[4]

Bottin also worked on the Star Wars cantina scene creatures.[5] He was, in fact, the tallest player in the Cantina band. He kept some of the masks from that scene in his private collection.

amazing thing abt bottin is how young he was when he did the howling and the thing, like 19 or 20

iirc the dvd documentary is pretty interesting - carpenter smoking a cigarette - but v v static, just endless headshots speaking direct to camera.

Trivia from Bottin's Wikipedia page...

From there, Bottin's reputation grew when he again worked with Carpenter on The Thing. Bottin worked on The Thing seven days a week (including late nights) for a year and five weeks straight, making himself so ill in the process that John Carpenter had him admitted to a hospital when production was complete.[4]
Bottin also worked on the Star Wars cantina scene creatures.[5] He was, in fact, the tallest player in the Cantina band. He kept some of the masks from that scene in his private collection.

― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Thursday, August 25, 2011 2:25 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, im positive this is why bottin is semi-retired, along with the industry seachanges wrt practical effects. he put so much energy into every movie, and he's not so young anymore!

pete baran's theory -- which i love but cannot endorse -- is that the Thing is an Actual Real Elder Shoggoth already on ancient Earth when the alien saucer crashed in the ice beside it, thawing it out. The alien/s were thrown clear and then Thingified. And etc. Hence why the bugs and the flowers are earth-ish, I guess.

Want to say that Bottin is, like Savini, sort of in a behind the scenes advisor capacity. Greg Nicotero, however, flies the banner high for practical gore effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS6Rs3NgxiM

Wow, Bottin did "The Howling,'' "The Thing," "Robocop," "Total Recall," "Se7en" and "Fight Club." Looks like he built up quite the relationship with Joe Dante (with whom he did five or so movies, plus Verhoeven. No credits on IMDB past, um, "Mr. Deeds," in 2002. What's up with that?

like i said, he's basically retired

you dont work on Serving Sara and get away clean

http://static2.aintitcool.com/images2009/ThingRobFace.jpg

Reading a couple of related interviews he seems more than retired. Like he totally dropped off the map.

Actually, last semi-reliable mention I found was that he's in real estate!

The doc on the Thing DVD is great. Lotsa interviews with the actors and Carpenter and Bottin.

Wow, Bottin did "The Howling,'' "The Thing," "Robocop," "Total Recall," "Se7en" and "Fight Club." Looks like he built up quite the relationship with Joe Dante (with whom he did five or so movies, plus Verhoeven. No credits on IMDB past, um, "Mr. Deeds," in 2002. What's up with that?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, August 26, 2011 1:13 AM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like i said, he's basically retired

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Friday, August 26, 2011 1:19 AM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you dont work on Serving Sara and get away clean

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Friday, August 26, 2011 1:20 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol^

Antarctic scientist finds creature. Gory horror remake. Power-of-suggestion original was much better. Read the review
NY Times

If it's the most vividly guesome monster ever to stalk the screen that audiences crave, then The Thing is the thing. On all other levels, however, John Carpenter's remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 sci-fi classic comes as a letdown. full review
Variety Staff, Variety

Because this material has been done before, and better, especially in the original The Thing and Alien, there's no need to see this version. full review
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19820101/REVIEWS/201010349

One of the aspects the Billson book discusses over several early pages is the reviewer response when Carpenter's film came out: which really was was 99% negative, when not actively hostile then baffled (pretty sure she includes a bad-review quote from Ebert). She was a young critic, I think at Time Out, and loved it: the NME critic Richard Cook had good stuff to say (also very shrewd, iirc, he was a great critic); but mainstream and genre comment was not positive, across the board. She says it only gathered its rep via video and cult word-of-mouth: and even in 1997, when her book came out, it was still seen as an outsider film, and a daring one to be writing a BFI modern classic about.

But more about my remake Scando-fusion: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, THING. They are of course THE SAME FILM ANYWAY: "am i standing next to an inhuman monster/am i standing next to the MOLE" -- "in the bleakly inhospitable, icy and distant reaches of Whitehall, a group of men are turned inside out by their own paranoias..."

wtf i could swear i read somewhere that Bottin died in the 80's. pretty cool that I'm wrong.

He was the pirate captain in the Fog too, which is just aces

http://www.411mania.com/siteimages/the-fog-movie_73989.jpg

gah why haven't i ever seen the fog?? must correct this immediately!

it is literally impossible to post images from the fog on the internet: the film is cursed

http://www.411mania.com/siteimages/the-fog-movie_73989.jpg

curse lifted by switching on brane

The Fog is scary as shit, and totally slept on by fans and director alike. Carpenter considers is a failure!

it's kinda hokey imo

Fog missing something ... like the action is spread too wide. Carpenter works better in closed quarters.

pink poop!

gah why haven't i ever seen the fog?? must correct this immediately!

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, August 26, 2011 8:18 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

same

The Fog is awesome! It was on all of the time when our family first got cable and it seemed so completely terrifying.

And it's on Netflix instant view. Housebound due to hurricane movie watching weekend material - yes!

I think it lends itself to stormy weather watching.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too.

I like the Fog but it's no Thing.

Back in the 80s when I shared a flat with my sister and this French dude, we had gone off to Shropshire for xmas with mum and dad, and Philippe was watching The Fog alone in the TV room. He went to bed already quite scared, and as he was dropping off the ceiling fell in on the sofa he's been sitting on, like half a ton of bricks!

He told us he lay in bed staring into the dark for about three hours before he plucked up courage to investigate.

watched the Fog recently actually - there's good stuff in it but the pacing is very strange, probably due to the brutal last-minute re-editing

Oh, yeah. I admire it despite its flaws. Carpenter originally wanted it to be more of a spooky ghost story, which it is, but they made him add some shocks and grue.

Personal Life

Carpenter is a Godzilla fan.[citation needed]

What's his actual worse film? I've never got very far with "In the Mouth of Madness" or whatever its called.

Worst film he's been in is "Silence of the Hams", which may actually be the worst film I ever had to sit to the end of, ftb reviewing it.

Carpenter? He's made a lot of shot lately. "Ghosts of Mars?" Never seen "Memoirs of an Invisible Man." I thought "Mouth of Madness" was OK.

Shit, not shot.

carpenter's most recent flick, the ward, is p bad, sadly :-(

his contrib to the portmanteau 'Body Bags' flick is also the weakest segment, imho

b-but i was actually coming here to say that 'In the Mouth of Madness' is his most underrated movie, so...

Village of the Damned is similar to The Fog (sleepy village horror) but I think is a notch better.

Cigarette Burns is totally over-the-top creepy and gruesome.

I think that I quite liked Ghosts of Mars -- on the nothing-Nastassia-does-is-non-excellent principle -- but I actually can't remember much about it: I saw it on TV and probably skipped over to CSI in the middle.

Natasha not Nastassia. My typing is gone to shot today.

his vampires movie with James Woods was AWFUL. there's a few of his I still haven't seen (Ghosts of Mars - which reads like a retread of Assault on Precinct 13, and Mouth of Madness which was on TV the other day and looked pretty terrible). but the vampire movie... ugh

bah i am going to have start 'refining' my 'all horror movies w sam neil in them are grate' theory eg possession, in the mouth of madness, dead calm, the omen 3 (hang on...)

you watched the Omen 3

I mean, that's REAL dedication

dedication to ART

vampires is awful, yes -- hadn't even twigged that was him

haha the only halloween i have seen is "III: Season of the Witch" <-- it is p silly but quite watchable

that's the non-Mike Meyers one right? v odd entry.

WATCH HALLOWEEN MARK S

yeah the first one is unfuckwithable

Yes, Halloween is wonderful.

Vampires is probably the worst movie I have ever seen at a theater.

Halloween 3 was originally written by Nigel Kneale, who take his name off the credits once Carpenter and his producers started tinkering with the script. It still has its moments.

Vampires is probably the worst movie I have ever seen at a theater.

ugh I saw this in the theater too. was actively angry/irritated when it was over

I remember feeling aggravated when it was done as well. It was just so aggressively dumb and terrible.

Vampires and Ghost of Mars were both total shit, and each time they underperformed and got terrible reviews, Carpenter started whoa is me-ing. Oh, my budget was too small, oh they were mismarketed, oh we didn't get the cut we wanted, oh, you should have seen the original script. Romero pulls the same shit, too. And then they inevitably make a come-back low-budget return to roots movie that sucks, too. At least Carpenter doesn't pretend to be anything other than totally burnt out.

Carpenter slagging off Cronenberg as being too high-falutin for his own good these days is lolzy

Also, Carpenter in particular seems very happy to accept checks after people remake his films. Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Precinct 13. Even an Escape from New York remake has been in the works for a while.

xpost To be fair, Cronenberg is totally in I Want an Oscar mode these days.

well whatever, Cronenberg has also continued to make decent movies, unlike Carpenter.

No contest! Cronenberg in Oscar mode has been great!

But unlike Carpenter, he totally bristles at being pegged a horror director. Which Carpenter reads as an implicit slight.

yeah, Carpenter gives him shit for considering himself an "artiste"

first viewing of mouth of madness left me flat, but i recall i was all 'ooh a new carpenter film it will be great'. then of course second viewing was more of a neutral position and i actually enjoyed it.

can't say the same for mars and vampire, they are awful.

The whole spooky recorded sections in Prince of Darkness still crop up in my mind as one of the creepiest things i've seen in movies ever.

Ghosts Of Mars isn't *bad* per se - it's just a rewrite of Precinct 13 with a little bit of Outland thrown in. Vampires is still the bottom point.

but there was no ice cream van scene!

In Darwinian terms: How would a Thing even evolve? Would it evolve intelligence? Would it need to?

Interesting exploration of this by excellent biologist and sci-fi author Peter Watts in his story 'The THings', which won all sorts of awards/nominations last year. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

vampires has some cool gore effects and a fun james woods performance going for it, but the second half is awful. ghosts of mars doesnt have a single creative or interesting moment in it, and to me signals the moment where he was no longer capable of making energetic movies on low budgets. then again, i thought his masters of horror ep was pretty good. memoirs is pretty bad all the way through. christine isnt very good by the standards of his early stuff. havent seen The Ward yet but i havent heard anything good.

bah i am going to have start 'refining' my 'all horror movies w sam neil in them are grate' theory eg possession, in the mouth of madness, dead calm, the omen 3 (hang on...)

― Ward Fowler, Friday, August 26, 2011 11:54 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

EVENT HORIZON explodes that theory :(

the omen 3 does rule though

Cronenberg always watchably entertaining and interesting, even when he's committing an "honorable failure" (filming unfilmable novels! the clue is in the word "unfilmable"!)*, but -- big caveat: existenZ was the last i saw -- he's NEVER made a film as flawless as The Thing.

*Even as failures, Crash and Naked Lunch aren't remotely down in a league with Vampires: I'm glad they were made, and both have excellent individual scenes, they just don't really gel, in themselves or as translations of the source material. With NL this is as much as anything an allergy on my part to the RoboCop guy, actually.

Cronenberg's films always too studiedly "illustrational" for my tastes: he's making a politico-philosophical DO-YOU-SEE point, albeit often quite an unusual one, at least the the time, before the point became a much-borrowed cliche. So yes, he's grossing people out, but with a (Perverse) Moral Nostrum embedded; he too often fails to goose-cum-creep those who are already onside with his idea, maybe. He's not as bad as Clive Barker in this regard.

Ugh/LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qhqQ6F0l1o

lol'ing right off the bat at use of Friday the 13th trademark sound effect

da thing

this movie does not look very good.

you can use that for the pull quote

http://www.revelinnewyork.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/gallery_main/recommendations/photos/thething.jpg

really couldn't care less about the cgi but this looks so tragically BRIGHT and high-key and bland

no one knows how to shoot movies anymore

tell it to Christian Nyby

fuck off, Carpenter version's better than the Hawks movie.

^^^realness

nothing i've seen so far here is a deal-breaker; i mean yes i complained upthread about the look - it is all gleaming and contrasty and teal and orange and people's hair looks great - but that's just what movies look like these days. i mean regardless i am going to see the fuck out of this.

The final scene in the Carpenter version totally makes the movie for me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8faq5amdK30

a+

amazing! i thought it was a real Sinatra song for a good 30 seconds.

The prequel opens tonight at midnight...

this really isn't all that good.

but on the other hand it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWPx-fw0mI8

jed u talkin about the remake.... right???

which remake?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToCq_c3wOM8

oh boo

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/82164665/

omg lol

^ remake stakes were impossibly high

Best scene in v minor (tho v beguiling) Thing-remake* "The Faculty": when Alien Jon Stewart -- for it is he -- is stopped in his tracks with a pen-case full of crystal meth stabbed into his eye

(The kids who defeat the alien render themselves inviolable by DOING DRUGS THEY MAKE THEMSELVES:
there's some script flummery that the drug is "caffeine and other household shit", but the guy saying it is TOTALLY LYING obviously)

This is the film that Reality Bites should have been: with Selma Hayek in the Winona role. There's even actually a Gen X ref in the tidy-up montage, alongside Elijah's mugg on a mag cover you only spot for a moment...

*They very carefully cheerfully and geekily lampshade-hang all the OTHER films/stories it remakes: viz Bodysnatchers, Puppetmasters etc. There's a whole Whedon-esque scene where they gameplan their fightback by discussing science-fiction plot cliches. But (TELLINGLY) they don't mention The Thing.

only beguiling thing in The Faculty was the bit where attractive woman from 'Defying Gravity' chases the 'hero' for extended period of time while nude

The Faculty was probably the best movie Robert Rodriguez has ever been involved in imho

i'm not arguing with that

beguiling in the sense that if it's ever on TV, i always think "not that again" but if by chance i flick onto it i end up watching it to the end: ie descriptive not evaluative

also: better than reality bites

A crowbar to the back of the head is better than Reality Bites.

only a beguiling crowbar

Mm.

Just saw the remake/prequel/whatever and while it was complete horseshit, it wasnt for the reasons you might expect - betraying the originals steez or whatever, it was because vast amounts of screentime were devoted to IDEAS THAT MADE NO SENSE. most tellingly the central conceit of the movie that the thing cant reproduce non-organic material so thats how people can be ided except uhoh what about the zippers on peoples parkas you stupid fucking sons of bitches, also just flamethrowers and grenades conveniently hanging out on an arctic research station and goddamnit fuck this movie in the eye

The Thing was just a really, really good seamstress.

the parkas probably aren't organic either!

when i saw it, i just figured the thing takes the parka prior to killing the victim - but then i found the movie "beguiling" so ...

haven't seen the remake, but in the original, it only duplicates tissue, right? not clothing and dog collars and such.

i thought it duplicated everything in the original?

well, it's always mutating and exposing tissue and organs and whatever. it never exposes bits of jackets and shoes from within. it's always just this fleshy ooze. i always assumed it just inhabited the clothes of whoever it duplicated/replaced, or found some others.

this "issue" is elided in the original because it doesn't fucking matter

The only thing that still makes me at all want to see the newest remake is this (quote is from an interview with its composer Marco Beltrami in Film Score Monthly):

And, like Morricone had his heartbeat, you wrote a motif to represent an organism breathing?

MB: There’s that homage to the original Morricone score but the real identity to this score is from three elements. One of them is this notion of treating the orchestra like a living organism itself that breathes. The way I envisioned it was to expand and contract down to a single note then outwards to a wider spectrum. Then it bends in and out, sort of like the billows on an accordion or a human breath. That was the impetus because in the movie you don’t really know who is a thing or is human. There is constantly a play on suspicion and fear that your friend or someone that you trust will be turning against you.

The next theme or idea I incorporated is the idea of being alone and isolated, which is what this movie is ultimately about. It’s set in Antarctica. Even though these people go as a team they really can’t rely on anybody. The main character is this girl Kate [Mary Elizabeth Winstead] and she has to deal with her increasing ostracism in the group and her loneliness. So there’s a theme for that. This is more of a melodic idea, very simple melodic idea. These two themes work hand in hand.

Also related is a third idea, which is an ever-present wind. The movie starts with it and plays throughout it. Rather than have it be a constant aural, audio presence, we decided to treat the wind as a musical identity as well. So we actually tuned it to the pitches of the organism, which was the first idea, so that the wind itself would subtly bend in and out one pitch center to this chordal, minor triad thing. Actually the movie starts out this way over the old Universal logo. It starts out with the sound of the wind and in the sound of the wind is the bending motif.

We achieved that in a couple of ways. Up here in the studio we get some strong Santa Ana winds. We put some bottles outside of the studio. We put microphones in the bottles to pick up the pitches then we were able to process those pitches. We also got the sound that the sound guys were doing and treated that. And we even had a glass wind player come in and perform some wind effects for us.

a monster that can sprout spider legs from someone's decapitated head needs to be scientifically realistic, yup

it may not matter narratively, but it does matter as a scientific technicality of the sort that sci-fi thrives on. in the original, under a microscope, we see the thing reproduce itself by attacking, destroying and then copying host cells. this suggests to me that thing can only duplicate living tissue, and i think this is a reasonable, common-sense conclusion. it raises questions about dead tissue like hair and fingernails, but that i'm willing to let slide on "doesn't fucking matter" grounds.

a monster that can sprout spider legs from someone's decapitated head needs to be scientifically realistic, yup

everything that happens in a story needs some sort of rationale, unless it's art for art's sake or deliberate dream logic or something.

the thing is a creature that can control the organization of its cells at will. that's a stretch, perhaps, but the fact that it's an alien lifeform does give us a good deal of wiggle room wr2 the seemingly fantastical. though we don't really know, it seems that the thing can't make itself into just anything. in reshaping itself it has to work with the patterns it's "learned" in the process of absorbing and copying other creatures, even if it's riffing more than faithfully duplicating. this is a nice touch, imo, as it sets some limits and implies a process.

this "issue" is elided in the original because it doesn't fucking matter

It's not elided. It's made clear that it destroys your clothes when you get taken over. Made clear more than once. It's a plot point and everything.

MacReady: [talking into tape recorder] I'm going to hide this tape when I'm finished. If none of us make it, at least there'll be some kind of record. The storm's been hitting us hard now for 48 hours. We still have nothing to go on.
[MacReady briefly turns of tape recorder and takes a drink of whisky. He looks at the torn longjohns and turns it back on]
MacReady: One other thing: I think it rips through your clothes when it takes you over. Windows found Bennings' torn and bloody clothes in the storage room after he was taken over. Earlier, Nauls found a pair of shredded and dirty longjohns in the kitchen trash can, but the nametag was missing. They could be anybody's. Nobody... nobody trusts anybody now, and we're all very tired..

it destroys the clothes because of the violent nature of the transformation, not because of any inherent relationship to dead tissue

also, the sprouting spider legs tell us something interesting: that the thing has probably absorbed not only humans and dogs, but other types of creatures.

you are just now realizing this

Maybe spider legs are part of its "natural form" xp

it destroys the clothes because of the violent nature of the transformation

just to elaborate - it needs to physically contact/get to the living tissue to copy it, the clothes are just in the way.

it destroys the clothes because of the violent nature of the transformation, not because of any inherent relationship to dead tissue

yeah, this is how i've always taken it. just assumed that once the duplication was complete, the creature found more clothes. i mean, we never see the clothes any of the infected characters are wearing transform. they always change from within.

It doesn't have to go under your clothes, your face will work as well as anything, as Windows finds out to his peril.

And that's why Fuchs recommends they all prepare their own meals.

you are just now realizing this

uh, no. that's always been clear. but it's interesting in watching the movie to speculate about what the thing might have copied. dogs and humans we know about. spiders/insects seem likely. but beyond that? are the other things we see, like the weird "flower" that erupts from inside the dog, elaborations on the internal structures of those creatures, or are they deliberate indications of other creatures absorbed? or are they more or less meaningless special effects designed only to look cool?

You guys are terrible at watching movies.

or are they more or less meaningless special effects designed only to look cool?

― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Wednesday, March 21, 2012 1:44 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

I think you just answered your own question

I like how with a simple line of dialogue you can bring a hokey and unbelievable effect back into the realm of believability with a realistic and honest reaction. I always helped that the fact that an onscreen character voice what's in your head.

You have the scene where the detached heads sprouts legs and we're treated to this massively absurd thing, so Windows(dude from the Warriors, I think) actually says "You gotta be fucking killing me."

This is one of the bits that make me love the film, where you have believable character reactions in an unbelievable situation. The first thing Mac does when he spots something bad-weird in the dog kennels is to grab a shotgun and hit the fire alarm. Real people do that. Most horror films do not feature real people.

are the other things we see, like the weird "flower" that erupts from inside the dog, elaborations on the internal structures of those creatures, or are they deliberate indications of other creatures absorbed?

as Blair notes, who knows how many lifeforms from how many planets it's copied

"You gotta be fucking killing me."

I think it's "kidding" actually

Have we posted that short story on here, the one from the pov of the thing?

BTW the flower things is made of dog tongues lined with teeth. Really.

http://thing.popapostle.com/images/episodes/The-Thing/flower-of-dog-tongues_med.JPG

That said, I don't think it enhances anyone's enjoyment of or understanding of the movie to know that? Would it be a better movie if we cut away to a planet full of flower-headed creatures that might have been absorbed by the Thing?

You're right, it is kidding. I'm tapping this out on a phone with predictable autocorrect fuckery.

I think you just answered your own question

yeah, of course. that was my implication. but it's still fun to speculate. another possibility might be that these strange structures reflect the thing's "actual form", though i prefer to think that it has none, that it's basically just a collection of single-celled organisms.

thanks for the info on the flower, phil! never caught that.

as Blair notes, who knows how many lifeforms from how many planets it's copied

yeah, i remember that, but it's weird that we never see much but dogs, people and the spider head - especially given phil's explanation of the flower. maybe the other stuff the thing has copied wouldn't be viable on earth (temperature, gravity, atmosphere, etc)?

idk man, down that road lies midichlorians

Maybe we can get Lucas to digitally add Darth Maul into the giant monstrosity we see at the end of the movie.

idk man, down that road lies midichlorians

or mitochondria! tiny little cell mice!

to the peeps that are getting all "oh who gives a shit" re: this whole organic tissue deal im bitching abt can i be clear that i am complaining about the prequel whatever, not the carpenter one because in the prequel the organic vs non-organic is the central driver of the plot so it is a big deal when its mismanaged

That said, I don't think it enhances anyone's enjoyment of or understanding of the movie to know that? Would it be a better movie if we cut away to a planet full of flower-headed creatures that might have been absorbed by the Thing?

― bring back the dream of buzz bin (Phil D.), Wednesday, March 21, 2012 5:53 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the flower headed creature is actually dog teeth!

how do you like my poetry

I'll say this - being able to replicate non-organic material would go a long way towards explaining how the Blair-thing builds the spaceship in the first movie

wondering how the thing went from fully copying humans to being three dogmutants to being a spiderhead and all that kinda jarred me a little, i kept trying to work out how it worked. still awesome though (carpenter)

jjjusten ot bloody m

carpenter thing didn't matter because it was never brought into the front of the picture. The stupid prequel went and made a big deal about it, but failed to handle it with consistency. and thus it became a noticeable mistake.

carpenter thing didn't matter because it was never brought into the front of the picture.

right - this is what I was getting at upthread. original works without bothering to address this distinction

sigh, so sad that lucas could have done all three prequels without addressing midichlorians

Got this (Carpenter's) for $9 on Blu-ray last week. Glorious.

and still fucking Gross.

BTW the flower things is made of dog tongues lined with teeth. Really.

This is also referenced in either the commentary track or the "Terror Takes Shape" documentary on the DVD.

As much as I love the "you gotta be fucking kidding" line, Clark's "I dunno what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off, whatever it is" is just as terrific.

This is one of my main apprehensions about Prometheus: that they'll succumb to idiot studio or fanboy pressure or something and do the medichlorian thing. Where they feel the need to over explain some thing irrelevant to the actual story and in doing so fuck up and ruin some of the core mystique or vibe that helped made the franchise interesting in the first place.

They're already treading on dangerous ground by having an entire flick dealing with the Derelict and the Space Jockey, two things that still have some coolness because of the awesome design mixed with us knowing fuckall about it.

So how do you thread that needle where you show a little to scratch the itch of necessary backstory or exposition to make the flick compelling without going overboard and over-explanatory? Hell, John Carpenter couldnt do this nowadays, can Ridley Scott? Hell, can any major 21st-C American summer blockbuster do this?