The Thing 2011

[wickednick]

Just got back from seeing it and I'll have to say I was fairly impressed by it. You can tell the Director really tried to stay true to what made the original a classic and while he doesn't succeed in all respects, he does enough to make a decent addition to the thing.

The acting and casting are very good here, Mary Elizabeth Winstead does a great job here and its quite different role for her. The rest of the class plays the roles of being trapped in the antartic with a body absorbing alien with genuine terror and realism.

Most reviews of this movie have been bad, perhaps its because its going up against one of greatest horror movies of all time, or maybe critics are just trying to find to much wrong with it. The main flaw people have with it seems to be the aliens motivations. While the aliens motivations in this movie seem to be more inspired by the Dead Space game rather than what was portrayed in John Carpenters The Thing, I don't feel that the aliens actions were completely implausible. In this movie the Thing isn't quite as shy and takes a more aggresive approch. This isn't unreasonable, as I think the alien wanted to convert them all as fast as it could, and the strategy it used in the first movie was maybe a more learned response to the situation.

The special effects are mostly decent, although not quite as slimy and gory as the first movie. The cgi works well in many parts and makes for some cool scenes. The only lacking part is when we get to the alien ship and there is a sorta alien jenga device. I don't know what this thing is but the cgi used to make it was very lacking and probably should have been cut out.

Now does this movie keep with the story line of the original? For the most part yes. The director said he was trying to recreate as much of the distruction we see from the orginal movie as possible and quite clealry he went to creat lengths to do this. The only part I see that he significantly missed was in how the alien ship was uncovered.

I would give this movie three stars for its worthy effort and because it scared the pants off my girlfriend (she thought she was so tough about horror movies. Ha!).

[Flick James]

My attitude towards this movie have been somewhat tempered. I've gone from "it's an insult to a great film by John Carpenter and I refuse to see it" to "I'll consider giving it a whirl when it goes to video." The main reason for this have been the promos that look decent and that it is not a direct remake.

However, there is one thing in your review that gives me pause, and perhaps you can give light on it without leaking a spoiler. When you said "alien motivations," it immediately brings me back to "refuse to see it." I hate it when directors do a remake or a prequel/sequel of a classic and endeavor to explain everything. I prefer that I don't know any "motivations." We didn't need to have any motivations explained in the first one, so why do we need it now? We knew that the motivations were malevolent toward us Earthlings, and that was enough. It's the type of thing that can definitely spoil the original for me to some extent, although usually I am able to watch remakes/prequels/sequels with enough detachment so as not to.

Anyway, stylistically it looks pretty cool, but that "alien motivations" part worries me.

[wickednick]

No they don't explain why the alien is here anymore than the first film. What I mean by motivations is that its more agressive in this film and is less secretive than the first one.

[JPickettIII]

No they don't explain why the alien is here anymore than the first film. What I mean by motivations is that its more agressive in this film and is less secretive than the first one.

Do they show more of the inside of the spaceship in this prequel?

Later,

John

[Nathan45]

Spoiler ahead...


They show a lot more of the inside of the spaceship.


Honestly, I thought it was ok, could have been worse, could have been better.  It does show a lot of signs of being cut down a lot, I suspect it was over 2 hours to begin with.  My biggest complaint is there are scenes that are all but shot for shot redo's of the original.  When the movie actually shows signs of originality, its pretty good.

[Robocop]

From the outset the production design was nothing short of incredible. Everything visually was hand crafted to near flawless perfection which shouldn't come as a surprise being that Matthijs obsession with collaborating his film to match simultaneity with JC's The Thing was an essential artistic component that is the driving force to making the film work, not only with JC's, but within itself as well. So with the art department under strict command, the set construction looking superb and the general cinematography looking spot on, the fundamental coverage if you will, really helps establish the right look and the right feel, especially early on .

Next we have the cast which was lead by MEW. I thought the acting was one of the films strong suits that really demonstrates just how talented this group was. They do a great job at reverting stylistically from repressed vulnerability to the paranoia urgency of JC's film without derailing the seriousness of what's to happen or what did happen. Now here comes the problem I have, whist the acting was fitting in terms of fear, panic and all the rest of emotions that range, the character writing certainly wasn't. Honestly I didn't feel any instant emotive connection with many of the characters because individually most of them seemed all but one of the same; so in other words rather one-dimensional. I know that's easy to say given on what is bound to happen, but I felt they lacked substance, personality and depth.

Now its rather clear that the story isn't exactly hard to figure out, but having said that their are some plot twists and new ideas that keep the film from being stale or predictable, because while we all hoped that the core direction would stay faithful for the sake of continuity, we also anticipate creativity. Although like previously stated the said script does suffer from weak writing that in my opinion really holds it back from its potential and instead almost seems to take "the easy way out" by either introducing plot points by retracing over material from JC's The Thing or just moving along at to fast a pace almost as if its being rushed. I also don't feel it was anywhere near as haunting or dark as JC's The Thing which has a lot to do with the direction.

The special effects were ranged from good to blatantly bad since most of the practical FX were either replaced or overlapped with too much CGI. The creature modeling was interesting to say the least, the audio which was a big part of the horrific nature of JC's monsters but didn't quite have the punch in this one, and the violence and overall destructive nature makes for some intense action set pieces. But with all that said and done, as big and complex as the creatures were with the exception of 2 action sequences, for the most part I didn't feel they captured that disgusting, gritty, dark and yes realistic nature of Rob Bottin's creature FX.

Anyway I liked it but I feel that it has its fair share of deficiencies that could have done with a lot of polishing. Sometimes it just felt like a monster movie.

[indianasmith]

I finally got to see this one this weekend and really enjoyed it.  It's been so long since I've seen the original that I couldn't really compare them very well; I just enjoyed it as a standup sci-fi/horror thriller, and in that context it worked very well indeed.  The creature CGI blended in pretty seamlessly with the scenes they used animatronics for, the only botched part was the - whatever it was - that was powering the alien ship.  It honestly looked like a flaw in the digital matrix more than a special effect.  But overall, no complaints!

[AndyC]

Finally saw it and really enjoyed it. The CGI effects were better than I expected, and not distracting at all. The story was fairly engaging. And it stayed pretty faithful to Carpenter's film, although I will say it lacked Carpenter's tongue-in-cheek humour, and did not measure up in the way of cool characters and quotable lines. I will say I was grinning quite a bit when they finally took what seemed to be an unrelated ending and brought it very neatly into line with where the previous movie begins. To me, the whole thing shows proper respect to Carpenter's film without being a ripoff. It's not as good, but it's good, and not the affront to fans I've come to expect from prequels, sequels, remakes and reboots.