The Thing

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?