― mark s, Thursday, 15 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
― jel --, Thursday, 15 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
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?
― DV, Thursday, 15 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
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.
― Andrew L, Thursday, 15 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
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.
― Pete, Thursday, 15 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
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!!")
― mark s, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
Arctic circle is a grebt place to set a vampire film btw.
― Pete, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
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
― Alan Trewartha, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Ray M, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
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!!)
― Sean, Friday, 16 August 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink
― g-kit, Monday, 19 August 2002 08:45 (10 years ago) Permalink
― toby (tsg20), Monday, 19 August 2002 09:16 (10 years ago) Permalink
Any other films with absolutely no women in at all. Actually - nu thread...
― Pete, Monday, 19 August 2002 09:20 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Ray M (rdmanston), Thursday, 22 August 2002 17:22 (10 years ago) Permalink
― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 22 August 2002 22:29 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 23 August 2002 10:53 (10 years ago) Permalink
(also it stars frodo)
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:11 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Graham (graham), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:22 (10 years ago) Permalink
― vic (vicc13), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:23 (10 years ago) Permalink
(the caffeine (= coke obv) scene = brilliant loving parody of the scalpel/test-tubes scene)
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:25 (10 years ago) Permalink
― vic (vicc13), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:32 (10 years ago) Permalink
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:35 (10 years ago) Permalink
― vic (vicc13), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:41 (10 years ago) Permalink
jordana = cookiecutter brunette "looker" zzzzz
― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 8 September 2002 21:46 (10 years ago) Permalink
Hott brasilian-american with wonderful hair
and goth poseur(real goths have black hair)
― Chupa-Cabras (vicc13), Sunday, 8 September 2002 22:02 (10 years ago) Permalink
― boxcubed (boxcubed), Sunday, 8 September 2002 22:03 (10 years ago) Permalink
(Actually I only like her cos she reminds me of dreamy skate-punk princess Lois, who has way better hair)
― Graham (graham), Sunday, 8 September 2002 22:49 (10 years ago) Permalink
― Chris Barrus (xibalba), Monday, 24 February 2003 23:53 (10 years ago) Permalink
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.
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 06:21 (9 years ago) Permalink
(if true, this is the coolest thing evah btw) (best aspect: it can be totally real and totally unproveable simultaneously)
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 14:51 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 16:34 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 17:44 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 17:45 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 17:46 (9 years ago) Permalink
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 17:53 (9 years ago) Permalink
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?
― Neil Willett (Neil Willett), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 20:13 (9 years ago) Permalink
so maybe I do like this film after all.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 13 January 2004 23:21 (9 years ago) Permalink
the film THING has telepathic capability not over humans in its own vicinity, but over john carpenter, so JC didn't have to think abt all this, it was dictated by TRANS-CELLULOID THOUGHTWAVE
A+
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
so who does that make me?
fact-checking cuz
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:51 (1 year ago) Permalink
also, if the thing is true hivemind, and there's reason to think this might be so, then all its cells might function as brain cells, regardless of any other apparent purpose.
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:58 (1 year ago) Permalink
The Thing arrived on a pred ship iirc
― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Sunday, 25 March 2012 21:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yes I think "hivemind" is where my own "but that's scientifically impossible" is kicking in -- which is a factor limiting my imagination i suppose (i also feel a hivemind would behave differently, but nothing rules it out)
Yr absolutely right tho that the undecideability is part of what makes it scary: people we like (or don't dislike) improvising solutions to a threat they really haven't pinned down even by the end of the film... I actually think Carpenter did sit down with the monstermaker and think through fairly exactly what he felt the THING can and can't do (iirc there was a longish unexpected hiatus between the script and design stage and the actual shooting); he never makes it explicit but its behaviour feels to me (as someone who has watched and pondered this film FAR TOO MUCH) logically of a piece, certainly not purely BOOspectacle-led or "who cares, they'll be too busy screaming"
― mark s, Monday, 26 March 2012 07:56 (1 year ago) Permalink
otm, agree w all that, except that i'm a bit more inclined to accept hivemind as a possible & satisfactorily sci-fi plausible explanation.
something that's vaguely suggested by the original that i was disappointed to see the prequel/remake ignore: to become thing is not necessarily to be annihilated. one might be the thing and not know it, might have no rupture in the continuity of self. all the characters focus, naturally, on the idea that someone else must be the monster, because they know that they themselves are not. but what if this assumption were faulty? what if the monster were hidden not just in a simulacrum of your body, but in your experiencing self, in your "i am"?
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Monday, 26 March 2012 08:30 (1 year ago) Permalink
yeah, this was the central existential dread of the first movie.. i believe it's childs who voices it
it suggests a creepy rejoinder to the question of what would happen if the entire world were Thingified - if the Thing "trades up" to become every single person in the world... what would be the difference, between that world and this one? (presuming that beyond this limit-point no further trade-ups are possible/desirable)
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 26 March 2012 09:40 (1 year ago) Permalink
re Thing intelligence and what sort it is: i like to imagine that Things in their native environment are actually quite fastidious and genteel, and that back on Thingworld there is an elaborately ritualized form of Thing-on-Thing sex that Earth conditions make impossible (for whatever reason)
which explains the instinct to get the hell off our godforsaken planet, and get back to where the Thingin is good
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 26 March 2012 09:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
I prefer to imagine Thing planet as full of hilarious body horror japes - voluntary autodecapitation, head running off on spider legs, etc.
― ledge, Monday, 26 March 2012 09:57 (1 year ago) Permalink
Taking the "jacket on back of chair" to next level by having your body actually stay in work while your head is down the pub.
― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 26 March 2012 11:05 (1 year ago) Permalink
only needs one orchid-tingue head-spider to get hammered and the whole hivemind has a hangover
"there is no i in thing" <-- tagline for the high-concept horror-comedy based on this insight
― mark s, Monday, 26 March 2012 12:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think of the Thing as viral. That is, survival is paramount. It exists to exist. I'm not sure the Thing has any motivation other than survival.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 26 March 2012 13:24 (1 year ago) Permalink
Alternatively: we are all the Thing!
Makes you think. (Thingk).
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 26 March 2012 13:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
Another thingk coming.
― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 26 March 2012 14:28 (1 year ago) Permalink
what would be the difference, between that world and this one? (presuming that beyond this limit-point no further trade-ups are possible/desirable)
yeah, to my mind, that's the interesting question. greg bear asks it in his novel blood music: if everyone were infected and transformed, and happy about it, still in some sense "themselves", then would that be so bad?
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Monday, 26 March 2012 16:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
in some sense "themselves"
these four words doing a lot of work here
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 26 March 2012 16:29 (1 year ago) Permalink
troo
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Monday, 26 March 2012 16:49 (1 year ago) Permalink
but that's the question, innit? what are we but what we think we are? and aren't we always engaged in a process of transformation, anyway? you can never step into the same river twice, etc.
yes, i know, "makes u think"
― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Monday, 26 March 2012 16:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
"makes u thingk"
― PSOD (Ste), Monday, 26 March 2012 17:00 (1 year ago) Permalink
what are we but what we think we are?
it's definitely subtextual (and this is not an original take) but always took the horror of The Thing to be precisely the possibility that we aren't who we think we are, and that the movie dramatizes an ultimately futile quest to distinguish Ego from Other (or that the Ego is always already infected and inhabited by the Other), etc....the real protagonist is then the Thing itself because that's the drama we all face, having to "pass," to fake it, to have no identity but pursue one. that's what i thingk anyway.
― ryan, Monday, 26 March 2012 17:06 (1 year ago) Permalink
someone should write an academic treatise on this very phenomenon: on "thingking"
― ryan, Monday, 26 March 2012 17:07 (1 year ago) Permalink
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 26 March 2012 19:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
See also the original novel and the first 2 film versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers--once the pod people take over, they just go about their normal lives, 'happy' to be emotionally dialled-down group-thinkers
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Monday, 26 March 2012 23:47 (1 year ago) Permalink
saw this tonight...first half hour I was like, "eh, maybe it won't be as bad as I thought" and then it just turned into SCREE!alien!flamethrower!SCREE!alien!grenade!flamethrower-flamethrower!SCREEEEEEEE for like, ever.
jjjusten pretty much nailed it upthread. My feeling is that the whole point of the original Carpenter movie was the characters' reactions TO the alien. Like, actually developing some of the characters to show their personalities under stress etc etc. In the remake they had like, what, TEN plus people in that research station and I didn't give a hoot about any of them, including fake Uncle Owen. I think that's what bugged me the most, is that it was like the worst kind of sci-fi to me, where whoever's making it thinks it's all about the creatures and the spaceships and for the most part it's the people in these movies and stories that make the creatures/spaceships memorable. I'd be curious to see Ronald D Moore's version of the screenplay.
and it made the same stupid mistake that Super 8 made in its shonky ending. I DON'T WANT TO SEE INSIDE THE SHIP if you don't know how to end the bloody movie. That's not an exciting thing that needs to happen if the story's pretty much over with. It's like, "uh guys we've still got 20 minutes of movie left to fill in, whaddya wanna do? I dunno. Show em inside the ship maybe?" So dumb.
The only thing I liked was the closing credits where they recreated the helicopter scene from the Carpenter original. And the music was pretty good I thought.
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 9 April 2012 07:25 (1 year ago) Permalink
agree on all counts, except that i didn't really hate it. just half dug it for a while, then started to roll my eyes and tune out as it slid off the ledge into SCREE!alien!flamethrower!SCREE! all of the characters were dull, two-diminesional and poorly motivated, including the creature itself. disagree abt the music, though. found it very distracting and inappropriate. especially jarring when they switched to carpenter-style minimalist thingmusic for the end credit linking scenes. i mean, i liked that music, but it made me wonder why they'd gone for the orchestral glop earlier.
― preternatural concepts concerning variances in sound and texture (contenderizer), Monday, 9 April 2012 07:52 (1 year ago) Permalink
I'm not sure the Thing has any motivation other than survival.
As opposed to all the other species out there...
― L'ennui, cette maladie de tous les (Michael White), Monday, 9 April 2012 15:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
I keep wondering if the Thing reproduces sexually or by some kind of parasitic host takeover or are the taken-over hosts just programmed to destroy/self-destruct?
― L'ennui, cette maladie de tous les (Michael White), Monday, 9 April 2012 15:35 (1 year ago) Permalink
xpost yeah contenderizer despite my ranting I didn't really HATE it, but it got really boring really quickly.
but I also don't want to be placated by the fact that it didn't out-and-out suck. Mediocrity is still unacceptable, lol.
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 9 April 2012 15:39 (1 year ago) Permalink
Problem with genre entertainment as a whole; too easy to focus on the genre trappings as those are the lowest hanging fruit and either miss or not care about characters or dialogue or plot or anything you can have an actual emotional connection to.
It's one of the reasons why I get irritated over friends online or elsewhere gushing about some upcoming flick cuz its got spaceships or superheroes or some shit in it.
Not that I'm substantially less gullible or susceptible to genre stuff(I'd get a kick out of someone doing a cyberpunk genre exercise or something), but by only going off the most superficial details means you can't tell the difference between, say, Brett Ratner's Xmen 3 and First Class, or even the 2nd Xmen flick.
― Spleen of Hearts (kingfish), Monday, 9 April 2012 15:50 (1 year ago) Permalink
you are so otm with all of what you just said, kingfish
I will *double* otm you :)
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 9 April 2012 16:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
"uh guys we've still got 20 minutes of movie left to fill in, whaddya wanna do? I dunno. Show em inside the ship maybe?" So dumb.
Didn't this start with the re-release/re-edited Close Encounters: The Special Edition?
― Reality Check Cashing Services (Elvis Telecom), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 01:41 (1 year ago) Permalink
I haven't seen that version. Tell me they did not do that.
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 01:42 (1 year ago) Permalink
They did, but I want to say Spielberg considers it a mistake, like the walkie-talkie for guns swap and CGI E.T. in "E.T." He still did it, though.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 10 April 2012 01:59 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah, he did it under studio pressure because he was never happy with the film as released, and wanted to do some additional editing. His preferred cut is kind of a weird hybrid of the original and "special edition" edits minus the inside-the-ship stuff.
― Frank Youngenstein (Phil D.), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 02:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
yuk
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 02:18 (1 year ago) Permalink
it's weird that he dissatisfied with the original cut/version/whatever. it was critically lauded and hugely popular at the time, certainly one of my favorite spielberg films.
― preternatural concepts concerning variances in sound and texture (contenderizer), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:13 (1 year ago) Permalink
I know, mine too!
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:17 (1 year ago) Permalink
the dvd/blu-ray has all of the various cuts btw so it's not like a star wars scenario
― I cannot host as my wife hates Walker (latebloomer), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
Yeah, ET, too, has both versions on it.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
I think we have an old dvd editon, never upgraded to a blu-version
― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:23 (1 year ago) Permalink
if you have the older dvd, then it's probably Spielberg's hybrid cut, which is pretty close to the original cut with some of the special edition scenes spliced in (minus the "inside the ship" scene).
iirc before the movie was on dvd the only version available for many years was the special edition.
― I cannot host as my wife hates Walker (latebloomer), Tuesday, 10 April 2012 03:32 (1 year ago) Permalink
I don't quite get this...? Super 8 never showed us the inside of the ship (since SPOILER! SPOILER! it literally ended with the ship being put together and flying away). The alien itself was only properly shown in the finale though, but that was necessary to establish the connection between it and the kid (since SPOILER! the big theme in the movie was forgiveness, and the connection between helped the alien to forgive the human race and move on), because in the end Super 8 wasn't a horror movie but an E.T. variation. I agree with your point in general, but I don't see how Super 8 is an example.
― Tuomas, Tuesday, 10 April 2012 07:21 (1 year ago) Permalink
the most unrealistic part of this movie is that MacReady would waste both good liquor and his only friend/source of entertainment in the opening. although maybe he has a huge stockpile of booze and back-up Chess Wizard computers in his shack, wouldn't put it past him.
― have a sandwich or ice cream sandwich (Jordan), Thursday, 1 November 2012 15:34 (6 months ago) Permalink
childs is such a fascinating and singular character. definitely holding the place of the "#2" in the film and meant to be on par w/macready in strength and conviction and technically an ally in the "action film" sense but also spending much of the film diametrically opposed to macready and his theories. i recognize this stems from the crushing paranoia of the film but in probably most other hands childs would be macready's bff and would stand fast with him every step of the way, and also he'd probably die 2/3rds of the way in.
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:16 (4 months ago) Permalink
in most other movies childs would be the first guy killed why because he's black
― Welcome to my world of proses (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:24 (4 months ago) Permalink
Both black guys in this movie last until the final reel, which is kind of amazing. Not to mention that there are two black guys to begin with.
― Gollum: "Hot, Ready and Smeagol!" (Phil D.), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:25 (4 months ago) Permalink
also two jittery dudes two assholestwo paranoid scientists
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:27 (4 months ago) Permalink
which is kind of amazing
it's def anamolous for the time
― Welcome to my world of proses (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:35 (4 months ago) Permalink
John Carpenter was always pretty good about giving prominent roles to women and non-white actors.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 8 January 2013 23:35 (4 months ago) Permalink