Is "The Thing" Being Undervalued?

[northeast rower]

Hey all,

I saw the new "The Thing" yesterday as a huge fan of John Carpenter's original. I had heard that it was undoubtably a massive steaming pile of shit; however, I would like to argue otherwise. To keep this concise (I have to leave in a few minutes), I'll do this in bullet points:

Though the CGI was greatly overused rather than practical effects and though the characters (with a few exceptions) were completely forgettable, I still liked the movie.

Not only does it serve as a real, clear prequel (props for all the little touches explaining parts of the first movie), but it also is pretty entertaining.

The acting is very good all around, despite the fact that almost every Norwegian speaks English, and the dialogue is only rarely stilted.

The tension manages to keep the movie entertaining, and I think that in some cases the movie actually handles the suspense better than the original- rather than find a catch-all test of the "Thing" like Macready in the original, the Norwegians find a solution that leaves several people in doubt.

Though Act III is a little lame, the movie still closes in excellent fashion, leaving open only the threads that need to be left open.

So, though it relies on jump scares way too much, "The Thing" (IMO) is a worthy follow-up... prequel... thing to the original.

Agree? Disagree?

 

[Suijen]

I thought it was great. I kinda expected Snake Plisken to bust out and throw a knife at The Thing though. Sorry Kurt, but you're the same character in every movie.

 

[JambalayaBob]

Here's the problem with this stupid prequel that, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't exist: bad CGI, barely any practical effects, TOTALLY forgettable characters, bad cinematography as a result from an over reliance on said CGI, overused CGI that turns The Thing (creature, not film) into barely anything more than a giant ball of spaghetti and random shit as you see it freaking out every 5 minutes, and on top of all that, they fuck up the original somewhat by going in the fucking space ship and showing you that it WORKED ALL ALONG! Yeah, that alien didn't crash land the ship, he PARKED it by burying it hundreds of feet into the ice. I don't understand how you can forgive a movie that holds the one undeniable taboo of any creature feature: it is boring. Yeah, okay, it's not terrible in any kind of B- or Z-movie sense, but it's bad because of its utter mediocrity and total abuse of the source material.

The only reason this movie was even called a prequel was so they could justify its existence, but it totally backfired and now they look like bigger asses for trying to say that this movie even deserves to be loosely associated with the John Carpenter movie. If it was a total remake, they could at least say that it had nothing to do with the Carpenter film.