The Thing

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?

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.

I will bet money that this happens

Me too, that's what I'm afraid will happen. My head is wired such that disappointment is connected to depression, so I try not to get my hopes up about genre entertainment that my geeky friends online or elsewhere are openly slathering about in anticipation.

I think the RedLetterMedia vids and reading Film Crit Hulk and whatever detritus left over from a coupla undergrad film classes have gotten me to the point of not trusting any heavily marketed entertainment aimed at geeks, shall we say.

okey, i just watched the prequel/remake. it's okay, decent if unspectacular for quite a while, then kind of off the rail ridiculous and ott towards the end. not a patch on carpenter's masterpiece, but not a complete failure, either. there is, however, one thing that puzzles me...

there's a lot of talk upthread about the film's inconsistency in handling the "can only replicate organic matter" business. i didn't notice any. the scenes involving the metal plate, the fillings and the earring all made sense to me. as in the original, it seemed pretty clear that the thing doesn't replicate clothing, but instead only copies the flesh inside. again and again we see it tear its way out of a character's garmentry to expose the boiling, pedipalpous tissue frenzy within. the clothes themselves never transform, never become monster tunics or anything. of course, this leaves us to wonder where and how the newly created thinglets keep getting fresh duds, but as they seem able to think like educated humans from the get-go, it's reasonable to suppose that they can figure out where to dig up the odd extra pair of pants when necessary. and carpenter's never provided a clear answer to this question, anyway, so the clothes mystery here is at least in keeping with the franchise.

pedipalpous eh?

uh-huh. film's biggest failure of logic is the thing's decision to reveal itself on the helicopter. this is the only moment in either film during which the thing "uncloaks" for no clear reason, and it's suicidal in a way that the creature would surely understand. while the creature's motives and actions generally make good sense in carpenter's original film, the prequel/remake leaves us to wonder why an intelligent creature that can hide out in a host body for as long as it wants (???) would attack others in such a thoughtlessly brazen fashion, with little regard for the likelihood that its victims might raise an alarm or escape to warn others.

i was also bothered by what i saw as the remake's jingoistic streak. at the outset, one of the american helicopter pilots warns the protagonist that "the last place" she wants to be during as storm is "cooped up with a dozen norwegian guys." subsequently, the film's four principal american characters are all portrayed as honest, decent, brave and rational people of the sort you'd like to have on your side in a crisis. the leaders of the norwegian team, meanwhile, turn out to be a paranoid, ego-driven cowards, and their underlings are more "inscrutable" than sympathetic or helpful.

the second half of this thread exactly replicates the first half, except for the zips and stuff

theatrical thread vs DVD

as in the original, it seemed pretty clear that the thing doesn't replicate clothing, but instead only copies the flesh inside.

fox ex, when the thing absorbs henrik in its first attack after escaping the block of ice, we see it draw him in fully dressed. yet when kate and dr. halvorsen dissect the creature afterwards, the half-replicated version of henrik they find inside the creature is apparently nude. there's no indication that the organism was making clothes for him, too.

http://i.imgur.com/HwOD6.png

There's no implication in the original that the Thing is particularly smart, or that it's got a long-term vision or anything. There's no definitive answer as to whether that's even the Thing's ship, or just some ship it hitched a ride on. The only thing we know is that it's all about immediate survival, which may explain its less than rational behavior. Like the Blob or something.

not so sure about that. in the original film, the thing is able to communicate "in character" in a way that will advance its ends*, which seems likely to require a high degree of adaptive intelligence. and we find out at the end that it was, in the guise of dr. blair, building a small spaceship, right?

* i may be misremembering this, but doesn't it talk sensibly while posing as both blair and windows?

My read on this (see several posts way above) is that it can only think as well as the brain it just mimicked: it carries a protocell-level instinctual impulse to absorb and prosper, and -- but how? -- presumably transfers its will-to-plan across to whichever body it arrives in, presumably during the non-instant transformation process: and also (presumably) it would prefer to trade up, intelligence-wise, ie not from saucerbuilder down to dog IF POSSIBLE, let alone down to spiderleg tongue-orchid, but sometimes needs must in the danger of the moment... i don't actually think the THING is that bright in itself*; it's just that sometimes (as with blair) it lucks into an excellent brain to piggyback on...

(it doesn't ever really get to "be" windows: are you thinking of palmer?) (in which case, all palmerTHING says is "you've got to be fucking kidding!", which is as sensible as you wish to take it, i guess, but not rocketscience --of course the entire norris/palmer/puppetshow sequence is incredibly pregnant with contradictory explanations)

*eg its LET'S ABSORB THE ENTIRE PLANET strategy is a bit self-defeating, since it will -- once it has eaten all the other living organisms -- have to start (a) eating itself or (b) dying

One of the possibilities the puppetshow sequence raises is that while a contiguous thing will happily sacrifice the larger part of itself (norris's body, complete with dancing hideous bennings-head) to distract from the scuttling smaller part (norris's head with legs), there is clearly no honour among separated things: palmerTHING dobs in spiderheadTHING and gets it torched... of course this does distract attention, including especially viewer attention, from HIM as THING...

...also tho the THING that mimicked him inherited a total dopehead's brain, so may be really not that quick

My read on this (see several posts way above) is that it can only think as well as the brain it just mimicked:

that's an interesting theory. i don't think there's any direct, on-screen support for the idea that the most recent brain absorbed and/or form taken are the only determining factors wr2 thing-intelligence, so i'm dubious about that part. the idea that the thing is a fundamentally simple creature that merely uses the intelligence of its victims to accomplish its fundamentally simple ends does, however, make reasonable sense of the creature's behavior relative to its structure (treating carpenter's original as the only canon). if we accept that, then we only have to attribute a few basic motives to the thing itself: blend in, absorb other creatures, seek new prey, escape confinement, attack/defend/flee as necessary. as you suggest, this would justify the "escape pod" that thing-blair was building as a combination of real-blair's intelligence and the thing's instinctive desire to escape and find new prey.

no matter how smart we think the thing is, we almost certainly have to accept that its intelligence will be limited by its cellular complexity. at the most basic level, it seems to be a colony of independent, singled-celled, virus-like organisms. as such, any information that could be carried by a single thing-cell would likely have to be rather basic. i.e., a cell probably couldn't pass along a specific language or instructions on how to build machinery.

this limitation doesn't necessarily preclude A) the existence of fairly sophisticated intelligence among "things" of sufficient size. like, even if they are just cell clusters, as large blobs they could well have developed long-term, continuous intelligence & culture similar to that of humans. a smaller blob cut off the larger organism would probably lose this, especially if it weren't the brain-part (assuming thing-intelligence isn't holistic), becoming a simple, prey-seeking animal.

*eg its LET'S ABSORB THE ENTIRE PLANET strategy is a bit self-defeating, since it will -- once it has eaten all the other living organisms -- have to start (a) eating itself or (b) dying

that's OK, though, as a lot of sound biological "strategies" would ultimately be self-defeating if they faced no environmental opposition. can't imagine that a think could eat itself. wouldn't find any foreign cells to convert.

i don't assume carpenter thought about this as much as y'all are tbh

being a sci-fi geek means never having to worry about that

true true

the reason i don;t think it has any capacity to think out the box of its most recent host -- once it's achieved proper mimicry -- is that it doesn't have anything to do this extra over-arching thinking with: it's an exact copy, with all the host's memories and capabilities, and no more

what it might have is

i: a primal built-in cellular impulse
ii: transferred former-host memories (but eg no one begins to speak norwegian)
iii: transferred "original thing" memories (but i think this is actually the same as i: the original thing is not going to be a highly evolved creature; it doesn't need to be and nothing can make it be, so there isn't much "cultural" to pass on)
iv: holistic consciousness -- i think the palmer episode tends to speak again this, but as i say that whole sequence is capable of generating various explanatory theories (in the original story the THING had a degree of telepathic ability; it gets into blair's dreams and somewhat reveals its being -- but there's no real in-film evidence beyond the fact that blair guesses what's going on strangely quickly)

the fact of the self-defeating overall absorbtion strategy tends to support the argument that the THING hasn't achieved much by way of insightful social foresight (though easter island trees/global warming blah blah, so maybe we haven't either...) (or we have but we continue to behave this way anyway)

xp no one has thought about this as much as me

alternative theory i just thought of: 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

there it is

so who does that make me?

merely another branch of the wider slimey consciousness i guess, an internal checking mechanism or summat

the reason i don;t think it has any capacity to think out the box of its most recent host -- once it's achieved proper mimicry -- is that it doesn't have anything to do this extra over-arching thinking with: it's an exact copy, with all the host's memories and capabilities, and no more

i don't know that this is true, either. it constructs an exact external semblance of its prey (and probably an internal one, too, for the most part), but i don't know that this precludes its maintenance of the structures necessary to support independent intelligence, at least to the best of its ability. i mean, it can repurpose its mass at will to suit whatever ends it might desire, so this doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. could thing blair speak norwegian? i don't think there's any way to know for sure. it probably wouldn't even if it could, except under certain circumstances, as this wouldn't help it "blend in".

just speculating, but i think the story leaves lots of room for interpretation on this score. it's maybe most reasonable to assume that the thing is just a simple but dangerous space-disease that arrived on spaceship it didn't build, but we don't really know for sure.

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+

so who does that make me?

fact-checking cuz

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.

The Thing arrived on a pred ship iirc

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"

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"?

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)

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

I prefer to imagine Thing planet as full of hilarious body horror japes - voluntary autodecapitation, head running off on spider legs, etc.

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.

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

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.

Alternatively: we are all the Thing!

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/2/Open/Starz/That%20Thing%20You%20Do!/_derived_jpg_q90_444x444_m0/ThatThingYouDo-Poster.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Makes you think. (Thingk).

Another thingk coming.

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?

in some sense "themselves"

these four words doing a lot of work here