The Thing prequel
- Thread starter ghostryder
- Start date
Colin Droidmilk
Sr Member
Yes, but it was a bad ass remake
And furthermore...
Since the Howard Hawks was conceptually totally different to the Campbell story, omitting the entire heart of the story, I consider Carpenter's film the first film adaptation of that story, and therefore an original piece of film-making, not a remake at all.
Colin Droidmilk
Sr Member
One aspect of both this and the new Alien movie that needs to be talked about is the influence of New Hollywood grittiness and realism (Dog Day Afternoon, The French Connection etc.) on the acting and the dialogue of the original films (in Alien, the dialogue credit for this must go to Walter Hill). This is something that, with a few exceptions, Hollywood has forgotten how to do. It'll be interesting to see if this Thing movie and Scott in his Alien movie can pull that out of the hat again...if they can't, expect added suckness compared to the originals.
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Colin Droidmilk
Sr Member
I think it might work better for me in Russian! I need a Russian or Polish - or hey, Norwegian - version with English subtitles.
Best part of the prequel so far? Starship Trooper bug legs from the creature on the autopsy table! We now can say for sure... it came from Klendathu...
CB2001
Master Member
Or, we know that it may have landed on Klendathu and absorbed one of them before being captured by the aliens who's ship ended up crashing in the Antarctic. Remember, Carpenter explained that when it comes to The Thing, when it absorbs and transform into what its absorbing, bits and pieces of previous organisms it previously absorbed crop up in the transformation.
Mola Rob
Sr Member
I think they need to rename that to "Can The Thing match John Carpenter's sense of dread? Four new clips show that the creators don't have a clue how to do anything but copy scenes from the 1982 version".
Is it me? or is cgi getting worse?
I know we only see flashes of it in that trailer but it looks awful.
Ive noticed this over the last few years or so. X men origins was on the other day so I sat down for a look. I couldnt really believe what I was seeing when his claws first came out in the barn! Really really bad.
Is it a case that where once only ILM handled cgi (and did it well), whereas now more and more companies are offering the service and studios are picking the cheapest option?
My guess is that as most films are made for a young teenage audience, the quality no longer matters?
Weequay
I know we only see flashes of it in that trailer but it looks awful.
Ive noticed this over the last few years or so. X men origins was on the other day so I sat down for a look. I couldnt really believe what I was seeing when his claws first came out in the barn! Really really bad.
Is it a case that where once only ILM handled cgi (and did it well), whereas now more and more companies are offering the service and studios are picking the cheapest option?
My guess is that as most films are made for a young teenage audience, the quality no longer matters?
Weequay
I don't think CGI is getting worse, I think video is getting better. With more resolution comes more detail, and the more you can see, the more you're able to distinguish between what's real and what's fake. I recently looked at Star Wars Episode One on BluRay, and the effects just don't mesh well with the live action elements the way it did on my standard DVD.
Still, this does look very impressive. Just don't forget. It does have a heart. <3
Colin Droidmilk
Sr Member
It's pretty impressive, but kinda floaty... which makes it not real enough for horror, to me. It's dreamlike in the way stop-motion and animation are dreamlike, but horror needs something more visceral, something which truly occupies the same space as the actors and hence the audience, which is why practical effects have traditionally been first choice for horror directors. Remember, Carpenter threw out that whole stop-mo sequence of the Blair-monster for this reason - it looked too dreamy, separate from the physical environment of the story, and therefore not horrific. For horror you need to feel you can touch the thing. I don't feel this when watching the above clip, nor that other clip of the guy's face beginning to split. Everything of Bottin's, you know you could touch, and this creates the horror.
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CB2001
Master Member
Not many people realize, Spielberg originally was going to go with stop motion animation with the dinosaurs. There's even test footage for a T-Rex that was created by the Stan Winston Studios. And when it comes to computers nowadays, one could use such a stop motion puppet and add a bit of motion blur to give that sense of movement that's natural.
But what made John Carpenter's The Thing good was the suspense. The sequences where we see a character "Thing out" (a term created by fans of the film, who came up with it when the game came out) were amazing, but it was the paranoia of who is and who isn't a Thing that added to the awesomeness of the film. Anyone could be the Thing, even the characters we find the most memorable.
ghostryder
Legendary Member
superDrool
Sr Member
According to the behind the scenes clip, it was Kurt Russell or the crew who coined the term "Thing Out". Pretty cool actually.
CB2001
Master Member
According to the behind the scenes clip, it was Kurt Russell or the crew who coined the term "Thing Out". Pretty cool actually.
Oh, okay. Well, I know that the fans of the film over at the Outpost #31 website used the term "scripted Thing out" when it came to the game and how annoying they were when they test the character's blood in one area and it be negative, only to head to another and have the character you tested thing out on you.
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