Guys, guys, guys. Alot of the things brought up, I answered in my response video. Before commenting, go watch that video. I will most likely discuss your points in that video. Thank you for your time! Update: RESPONSE VIDEO IS OUT I will be doing a response video to most of these comments, so thats why I'm not replying to all of them! Im happy to see all this passion for this classic horror movie! Love the rubtles and theories i havent considered!
there's a very little known tele-film called A Cold Night's Death (1973) that I believe may have possibly inspired the atmosphere of The Thing (1982) I'm well aware that this is a very bold statement but there are shots and elements of the film that look almost identical, it's a pretty impeccable film that's far too underrated, I'd recommend checking it out.
Wouldn't the alcohol kill single cells? Not many life forms survive long in anything over 40% alcohol. That's the one logical caveat I have, other than it would change it's Lovecraftian elements too much. Scholarly, it would be applying the late 2000s-early 2010s the hero is the villain trope to the story, but I am not going to argue that here. Otherwise, this theory is a good reinterpretation of what could have happened in the film.
@@AbrasiousProductions Yeah, but that film was probably inspired by the 1957 version of The Thing (From Outer Space). There are shots in the middle of that film that were recreated in this film.
@@americanandpinay I'm aware that The Thing (1982) is inspired by the 1951 version as well as the novel but what I'm proposing is that A Cold Night's Death (1973) inspired the film's atmosphere and some of it's cinematography
What I love about the ambiguous ending is everyone gets to take whatever ending they want and no one can take that away. I like to think Mac was The Thing.
Probably top 3 horrors of all time. Alien is there too, purely for inventing suspense horror. The other is open to opinion but for me it's Halloween. Top 3, nailed on.
@@davidstanton4716 I'm sorry do you actually think alien invented "suspense horror"? I would Google Alfred Hitchcock if I were you or if you don't like something that young maybe Google Fritz Lang's M or Google the movie Nosferatu it's a silent film. Believe It or not they've been making movies for over 100 years. I do like your top three horror films list though
It makes you think. And the theories are fascinating. Remember, the thing can take on any shape which means inherently it has no shape. It’s molecular. It “infects” others, but it is not really turning into the being it assimilates. That means every person infected is actually dead. The reason it turns into amorphous globs of horror is because it cannot hold the correct molecular structure of Earth organisms very long. Could have something to do with air, or the oxygen content of air. Antarctica oxygen level is not very high. So maybe if it got to a civilized area where there are more organisms, it could survive much longer.
@@taoist32 right, it doesn’t turn into the person, the person is turned into it. However, this animal does not have an issue with the cold and it appears to simply go to sleep if there is no prey available. It isn’t weak and it isn’t suffering from any disease. It also doesn’t quickly lose the ability to mimic earth creatures, it stays in disguise for as long as it wants to. When attacked, the bodies take damage and are disfigured, but this is not a detriment to the organism. The various body parts can simple separate and attack. In fact this organism is ridiculously over powered. All it had to do was divide itself into a bunch small animals and quickly attack the entire team. They would have no defense.
Among the many problems with this theory, I think here's the biggest: The entire plot of the film makes no logical sense if MacReady is the Thing from the beginning. As evidenced by Blair's scheme at the end, the Thing (which seems to exhibit some sort of collective consciousness or at least shared memories and motives between its constituents) wants to escape the Antartic base. If MacReady, the base's chopper pilot, is assimilated long before the rest of the base is alerted to the Thing's presence, he has no reason to not just fly off. He certainly also has no reason to investigate the Norwegian base, or to be the most active character in hunting down the creature. My impression is that this is a classic case of confirmation bias; you've decided you "know" the truth and try to force all the contradictory evidence to conform with it. This is how you can take a scene as unambiguous as MacReady's "fuck you" and spin it into a cartoon conversation between him and the screeching monstrosity that just tried to kill him. EDIT: I've also just realised you misunderstood the "cheeky bitch" scene completely. MacReady's BAD at chess, he has to beat the computer by bluntly destroying it. I think the scene is to establish his character and the tension on site even before the monster, but if it foreshadows anything it's the destruction of the base to stop the Thing.
Ok, let's break this down... Unless you flipped some of the footage or didn't show the right clips, the Thing licked Bennings' left glove, and Bennings grabbed the bottle with his right hand. Even if the same glove got licked, Bennings does not touch the mouth of the bottle, but the neck, making it more difficult for someone to hypothectically come in contact with any saliva that might've been placed on the bottle. Given the flaw above, the key being picked up by MacReady is purely a hypothesis based on nothing more than the character's presence. Watching the movie from the beginning with the assumption that MacReady is the Thing, and then using any and all circumstantial evidence to prove that preconceived notion is literally confirmation bias. That said, the Smirnoff WOULD be strong evidence, if everything else said leading up to this wasn't without merit. The footage shown of the dog licking the glove opposite to the one grabbing the J&B, and the flawed assumption based on a misinterpretation of that footage, acts counter to your thesis. I'd say burning one's self to prevent them from being turned into the Thing and then turning others is as smart as Blair destroying all modes of communication and transportation to prevent the Thing from spreading. If Fuches was put into a no-win situation, I'm sure his analytical mind would rather he sacrifice himself to give the others a chance to not be turned. You make a lot of assumptions about the light in the shack, which is why you shouldn't go into the movie with assumptions and try to prove those assumptions right. Your own assumptions are forcing you to disregard MacReady saying he turned the light off. You also are willing to accept that things happen offscreen to go against was we see onscreen in the blood test scene, but automatically believe that the ripped clothes truly belonged to the avid chess player who still maintains his strategic mind even after being assimilated. There's also the possibility of MacReady maybe following Knowles' footsteps in the snow to make his way back, or any other method that also happens offscreen. Like, sure, things can happen offscreen, but in order for the movie to make sense, we need to keep our assumptions of what happens offscreen consistent with the rest of the movie. It is far more likely to assume that MacReady cut himself in front of the rest of the group for the blood test, than to assume that everyone else just buys the already suspicious MacReady totally used his own blood in that scene. Also, if "Thing MacReady" made contact with the blood from earlier, he would have assimilated that blood, which could not have been the case given what we see in the blood test scene. He would have had to use a vial or other container, which would be difficult to get everyone else who DID actually cut themselves to trust. "Why didn't Blair-Thing attack MacReady?" Because MacReady is the point-of-view character for the audience. Similar to why the xenomorph didn't kill Ripley in Alien, if Blair-Thing took MacReady, MacReady wouldn't be the main character. And assuming MacReady saying "yeah, fuck you, too!" wasn't a one-liner is again showing your confirmation bias. Why would the Things attack each other? That doesn't make as much sense as MacReady still being human. MacReady surviving a fiery explosion is actually stronger evidence of him not being the Thing, give that a heated up wire can cause such an adverse reaction to the Thing. With the J&B at the end, I refer you again to the footage we actually see in this video. We do not see Bennings grab the bottle with the same glove that was licked, therefore, we cannot assume that the bottle assimilated MacReady when you propose it did. Your entire case falls apart because the footage you show doesn't support your own conclusion. I think it's far more likely that MacReady expected a human Childs to decline drinking from the bottle out of fear of assimilation. So when "Childs" eagerly drinks, he knows Childs is the Thing trying to use the bottle to assimilate him. I commend you for being as thorough as you were, but your entire argument falls apart from the start, and only tumbles further due to confirmation bias leading you to make grander assumptions than what the film intended.
I had a similar thought when I saw the dog lick his left glove. I also feel that if fire can harm the thing, then wouldn't an alcoholic drink with a high enough alcohol content also be harmful/painful if ingested?
Honestly the biggest piece of evidence, that he wasn't a thing, is the fact that he literally had everyone else tied up and vulnerable. This was Gary, Childs, and Nauls. He literally would've had no reason to keep playing the game. It would've been a checkmate at that point.
Actually, there is much more evidence for Childs to be the Thing; namely the coat. When Mac, Nauls and Garry leave to go after Blair and they leave Childs to man the door, you see a coat on the peg next to Childs that is identical to the one he's wearing. The next time we see that same location, the coat is gone. Also, Childs ran off into the snowstorm _before_ the generator went out, meaning that Blair-Thing had to be _inside_ the building when Childs claims he saw him outside. Occam's Razor demands we conclude that: Blair-Thing ambushed Childs after the trio left, the new Childs-Thing took that identical coat off the peg and put it on before running out into the snowstorm to find somewhere to hibernate (or maybe help ambush the survivors), while Blair-Thing sabotaged the generator. If MacReady really had been the Thing, why would he leave such an obvious clue as the long johns? Isn't it more likely that Palmer-Thing snuck out and planted the long johns to sow distrust of MacReady, the only human who's shown a calm head and rational thinking to counter its moves? And if Mac and Blair both were Things, why go at each other to the death when they could just team up against Childs? We never saw Norris-Thing or Palmer-Thing sabotaging each other. Also, having the movie's theme song play over the final scene isn't the slamdunk you think it is. It's a simple movie-making technique.
The coat is a distraction. Fools the common viewer. The MacReady Thing checks out after reviewing the sequel. Sequel? You might ask. There is a video game.
I always liked the idea that neither Macready or Childs were the thing, because it feeds into the whole theme of paranoia running through the movie. Macready and Childs seemed to butt heads in almost every scene they were in together, even before the dog scene. It seems fitting for the movie that they are both human, but they trust each other so little (and each has attempted to kill the other at least once: Childs by attempting to kill Macready when he busted into the camp, Macready pointing a gun at Childs because he refused to obey him) so these two dudes that almost killed each other are stuck dying together, it's a fitting and solid end I think.
The biggest problem with the theory that is the entire base of thinking MacReady is the thing is that if you look at how Bennings grips the bottle, he essentially covers the entire top part of the bottle including a good chunk of the tip where you drink out of, his mouth essentially touches the infected gloves when he takes a drink. As we already know, Bennings isn't infected until later in the movie, so that theory is literally dead in the water. Also, about the blood test. Just because it happens off screen doesn't mean it doesn't happen. MacReady is surrounded by people who have their eyes LOCKED in on him, watching every little thing he does. There is no way that MacReady did not cut himself because if he didn't then there would be an outcry from the others that he didn't do it. Theres no possible way that if he was the thing that he could get away with a sleight of hand as well as the fact that I don't believe that the Thing could fill a pocket of human blood without it being infected mainly because of the fact its neither confirmed nor denied that it can do that. Which would still allow it to be argued but for me personally, I don't believe its a thing it can do.
Interesting points. I will look more into the bennings point. And while people had eyes on him, he was the one in control of the situation. And the uncontaminated blood was tampered with, proving that someone in the group new of a form of this test. So MacReady would have had a motive to keep some for insurance. And he would have been the only one able to 'sleight of hand' human blood into the dish being as I stated, he was in control. Maybe he already had a dish put away. He's a chess player, blood was removed, he figured out how to infect people without ever getting caught, he came up with the test himself may I add. Also very quickly. While there is no on screen proof, I believe there is enough evidence of him tampering with the plan he created. And given the scenes and evidence I put forward, the simplest answer tends to be the right one. But it is just a theory
@@2DimmMedia Well, Doc was the one who came up with the first idea of a form of blood test which is why it lead to the uncontaminated blood being tampered with. MacReady only came up with his version of the blood test after seeing how the Thing acted like a separate being trying to survive when different parts were threatened. Despite being in control during the blood test, I honestly don't think if MacReady was infected he would have been able to do anything sneaky. Every single person that isn't Palmer, were not infected. When theres that many uninfected people who have their eyes locked in on you, watching every single thing you do, even the slighest movement, theres no way he'd get away with it. He could be in as much control as he wants but he can't stop peoples eyes from seeing what he doesn't want them to see.
@@2DimmMedia "I believe there is enough evidence" is not evidence. Why would a Thing suggest a test, carry it out, and expose a fellow Thing in the process; and tell Windows to torch it before torching and blowing it up. Sorry, chess strategy does not explain every action taken contrary to what a Thing would do.
@@2DimmMedia All of that is irrelevant. You are saying Macready was the Thing at the time of the blood test, then don't you think once everyone is tied up the thing could just kill everybody? I mean they are all tied up right? Then McCready could send out a distress signal and get a rescue team to take him to civilization. There would be no need to burn the place down and then freeze he could simply wait in luxury for a rescue team. Your entire video while entertaining has been debunked.
well it does, they trust macready now, the thing feels no pity over its own parts (other things) cause its all the same and there is more of it, to suggests it wouldnt blow the coverof or wouldnt kill other thing parts is kinda weird, it totally would cause it has an endgoal@@castlew4162
Surely you can't just ignore the fact that Bennings takes a swig straight after being handed the whiskey, therefore would be infected first, except he wasn't infected.
DAMN CHILD! That is some 360 noscope right there... I tend to cling to Childs being da thang, as he not only lacks breath, but lacks the gleam in the eye, and the Benny doesnt breathe in the scene debunked here, he is yelling... The thing may not need to breathe via lungs, but if it uses the functions of the body, like making sound with mouth, it must rely on basics of the body... It cant make oral noise without relying on an inhalation to be able to yell out... You know, an empty balloon doesnt fart all over the place, you have to blow it up and let it go for it to make the funny noise and flutter about... Same with humans/thing-ed-humans... Tho, the rest of the theory does hold some water... The bottle may be aringarosa, but it aint 100% leaky, other than at mouth of the bottle, and the thing theme playing when childs takes a swig is quite the conundrum, it could be a red herring of its own, but it could also confirm that McThing is in fact the thing.. Cheers m8!
Nah, Mac was the only one that could leave at will and made it. If he wanted to infect everybody he could have easily. Of them all, he is the only one that couldn't be the thing at any given time.
Two points you didn't cover: 1. MacReady hid audio recordings explaining what had happened so that the rescue team could find them while investigating, hopefully before the bodies were recovered and thawed. There's no reason for a Thing MacReady to do this with no other characters around to know about it. But importantly, this means a hypothetical human Mac has a backup plan in case he isn't able to kill everyone who's infected. 2. If Childs wasn't the Thing, his safest play would have been to torch MacReady because hypothetically human Childs DOESN'T have a backup plan in case the Thing freezes and is thawed by the rescue team, so rather than sitting back and letting Mac freeze (either to death as human or as a Thing), he would have torched him. This would be doubly the case if your Things fighting Things theory were true, since Thing Childs would definitely kill Thing Mac with the flamethrower. Therefore the most likely endgame is Thing Childs who believes he has already won because they will both freeze and be thawed (not knowing about Mac's backup plan) and human MacReady pretending to believe that Childs is human so that Thing Childs won't suspect that Mac has a backup plan in place.
True, tho the most likely thing is Childs waits a minute (Mac hasn't slept for 2 days and will fall asleep in a few minutes, tho it doesn't matter) attacks and assimilates mac, makes 6 dogs (he needs mac's body mass and knowledge of bases--mac is a helicopter pilot) then they run and the 6 dogs eat their way down until 1 is left (or however many) and then it starts again and they build a ship in a week (Blair built the ship in one day) and leave the planet.
@@petecoogan I think even though the thing can survive in the cold it's body can't function at a certain point, I don't think it would be able to build a ship without a place to heat up..
Really like this theory, they basically both think they won. I think mac's plan could go wrong if child assimilates him though, it seems they get the memory too while copying them so the thing could dig up the recordings. But I think there is a possibility infected child really thinks mac doesn't know so he doesn't see him as a threat and doesn't care to just have both of them freeze.
@@k0lpA it would in another camp. It makes 6 dogs and runs to the next camp. Mac knows where the camps are. Dogs run 125 miles per day in -40 degree weather.
1) It could be that thing mac did not make the audio recordings for a search team but rather for anyone else in his crew suspecting him of being the thing, if they did find one of those recordings he would be seen as trustworthy and in the clear. Another possibility for the recordings is that he did make them for a search team, but only to gain trust from them when they come there to investigate. He later decides it's too risky to leave thing bodies around since people will not want to touch them. Therefore he decides to burn down every THING and the entire base, destroying all evidence of an alien creature at all. 2) This is a little hard to explain. My best bet as to why he didn't torch Mac is that he has no reason to distrust him after he did the blood test. Plus he talks to Mac while being on guard before he sits down with him. Mac convinces him fully by saying "maybe we shouldn't make it out", at first he makes childs off guard by questioning where he was, something a normal person would do; the thing may just be like "oh hey childs" according to childs thought process. Childs being a human would not think that the thing wants to be frozen. Childs never went to the extraction site so he may just assume cold will kill it. He is also guessing if Mac is a real person or not, notice how he still does not move closer to Mac to try to assimilate, even though Mac is unarmed he keeps his distance. If there is a chance that Mac is human and childs knows this, then he may not want to torch Mac Incase one of them makes it our alive.
WRONG. Go watch the special features on Big Trouble in Little China. John Carpenter and Kurt Russell talk about the Thing and the ending. According to Carpenter himself, neither Mcreedy and Childs are the thing. Sorry to burst your bubble
@@Ryan-wr8fxHe's been out there a while. Meaning his internal body temperature is closer to that of the outside than McCready's, whose breath lingers far longer and is still in the shot. So when Childs breathes out, it mixes and isn't readly visible. This can be easily tested by being outside this winter and comparing your own breath from when you just walk out, to that of being out for 20 minutes, and further still to being outdoors in the cold for an hour.
@Humongous420 That special feature was released well after all the debate and speculation of "who really is the Thing". This along with Carpenter's back-and-forth over the years makes him an unreliable narrator to his own work. Deliberately so. This was likely the answer given so people would stop bugging the man so he could get back to work.
The reason why I think Mac isn't the thing is cause he laughs. he shows emotion, everyone is very animated until they are assimilated. They all have a personality, after they are just kind of dulled down.
This has been well documented in the movie as each person has a loud or more beaming personality and once infected their personality is duller and more sedated like. They don't remain loud or boisterous. Look at Windows for example and Dr. Blair becomes very sullen and recluse.
MacReady is not the thing. My evidence is that I like MacReady therefore he cannot be the thing. I'm sure everyone can agree on this as my case is quite solid.
I think this is compelling all the way up to the blood test scene. And Not because that couldn't be Macready's blood, but because he had already won at that point. He had everyone tied up with a flamethrower on them. . . So why wouldn't he just blast them? Why would he go through the whole charade just to blow everything up anyway at the end, right in the next scene??
This correctly defeats the entire video! The fact of the matter is the film was never designed to be "figured out". The film is an allegory about paranoia no fan Theory will ever truly explain the movie because all fan theories try to prove a particular character either was or was not the thing and that answer is not knowable
Interesting theory, but you have to exclude one major detail in order for it to work: at no point in the film does a confirmed Thing physically attack another confirmed Thing. At all. Not a single one partakes in destroying another one. Not even when Palmer noticed the Norris-head Thing. MacReady was the one that killed it, and he killed all of the others. The Thing's driving desire is to spread its influence, especially once it's been discovered. Palmer literally infected Windows because he was discovered. Also, at the beginning when the dog licked Bennings's glove that saliva would have frozen near instantly before MacReady handed him the bottle. That's also assuming that MacReady had only one bottle of Scotch there, which wouldn't really make any sense given the length of time they'd be stationed out there. And as one final hitch in the theory: why would MacReady destroy the spaceship that Blair built? Why destroy Blair-Thing at the end after everyone else had been killed? Why not infect Nauls when they were both alone in Mac's cabin? No, Mac wasn't a Thing.
Was basically coming to say this. It's definitely an interesting theory but MacReady killing other Things doesn't make sense, especially when there's no one else around.
For me, it's because the blair thing planned to either escape earth in its ship or fly to a populated area. That would have likely been picked up on radar and raise alarm. Macready thing's whole strategy is stealth, blend in. So it's really a conflict of the strategies. An argument in the things mind played out via experimentation of its parts.
Your other points make sense. But the frozen saliva debunk doesn't hold up. Because the original split head body was frozen for a while and still was able to assimilate once it warmed up inside.
If Mac is the Thing then the Thing plays chess poorly and makes nonsensical moves. Why would Mac need to fool anyone with the blood test? They're already restrained so why not just infect them? Why fight and kill the Blair thing after dealing with Nauls and Palmer? It serves no purpose as only Childs remains who could be lied to or just jumped pretty easily. Side Note: I'm pretty sure the computer didn't cheat. Mac accuses it of cheating and destroys it as the movie's way of revealing an important character trait. He's a sore loser and doesn't except defeat. It comes full circle when he destroys the outpost even though it's a death sentence.
@@danielgriffith8911 I understand why he destroys the outpost. I also understand that the outpost represents a metaphorical chess board. Mac flips the board over rather than allow his opponent a win. Hed rather they both lose. This is the whole point the computer game scene sets up.
I really like the thought you've put into it. That fact that one can find details that can support you theory speaks to how much thought Carpenter put into the film, and why it's so good. However, I don't think MacReady is The Thing for one reason: Him trying to kill the Thing monster at the end serves no purpose. If MacReady is the Thing, and he believes the rest of the group is dead, he can simply walk away and let the monster freeze. Thereby ensuring an even greater chance of it spreading once a rescue party shows up. If he thinks Childs is still alive, then leaving the monster alive improves the chances of Childs stumbling across the monster and being assimilated. MacReady could simply have walked way, if he were the thing, and still run into Childs and give him the bottle. MacReady killing the monster is a useless act with no benefit if MacReady is the thing. By burning it, he is lessening the chances of survival for the thing. not improving it. At that point, there's no point to play the chess game anymore. That said, MacCready MAY have been infected in the film, but it hadn't yet affected and consumed him by the end of the film. His actions against the monster tell me that he's still the human MacCready desperately trying the destroy the thing. I've always though the gasoline bottle theory was dumb, as you see MacReady lift the bottle up to drink when Childs approaches. I believe that MacReady smiles when Childs drinks is because Childs should know not to share the bottle. MacReady thinks Childs doesn't care about assimilation because he's already the thing.
Finally a bottle theory I agree with. I think everyone who says there’s gas in the bottle are clearly overthinking it as much as this guy in the video. It’s pretty clear to me Child’s should have known not to share a drink. To think The Thing wouldn’t notice or care it’s drinking gasoline is just asinine, if the organism can copy human speech and access memories then it wouldn’t be brain dead enough to not notice drinking gas
@@burn1none Childs IS the thing at the end. Not because of any stupid bottle theory but because he disappears for the last part of the movie and when he comes back he's wearing a gray/white jacket instead of the blue one he had the entire movie.
@@joshsmith9572 only problem with your theory is if he’s indisputably the Thing because of the dog spit, how does he fly the helicopter twice after that? Once to the Norwegian camp and once to the spacecraft crash site..
Why if the thing wanted to return to its ship? Also one of the things was trying to build one in a shed. They don't know how to fly helicopters. Can you fly one just off rip?
Major holes in your logic: 1. MacReady made a recording to document what really happened there. An infected MacReady would not have done so as it would want it's existence a secret, not known. 2. An infected MacReady would have contaminated the knife everyone used to cut themselves with for the blood test. The blood would have passed the test, meanwhile the now infected hosts would begin to change but without suspicion because they just passed the blood test. The rest of the movie from then on would be pointless, as he would have already won by simultaneously infecting everyone unknowingly. 3. Following your assertion that it can transmit via saliva, then MacReady would have simply LICKED the silverware, bowls, cups, coffee pot ect in the kitchen and simply waited for everyone to eat breakfast/lunch/dinner. The movie would have been over 100x faster than it played out. Hell, spit one good loogey in the water supply and doom the entire place. He could then simply sit, and play chess for a day, while everyone changed around him. Checkmate.
@@theslay66 I had more (like how he claims MacReady was already infected while he's playing chess, but the infected dog hadn't even made it to their camp yet.) I was just using the criteria he laid out to illustrate his flawed logic.
@@alexandersears8538 He didn't say he was infected while he was playing chess. He said MacReady was established to be a chess player. It's a Chekov's Gun scenario. The Thing replicates the personality of the people it assimilates, meaning it would also get the personality trait of being a chess player, and theoretically the skills to go along with that.
@@stifflered No you didnt hear him. He explicitly said he believes MacReady was already a Thing when he was playing Chess and thats why he poured his drink into the computer. Re-watch. Ill wait.
I’m not going to say you’re right or wrong. I don’t know one way or the other. The point of the movie, and one reason why I love it, is the vagueness at the end. However you raise very interesting points and I love the effort you put into this. You make me want to go back and re-watch yet again this phenomenal movie. It’s people like you doing things with movies like this that really makes me appreciate how well cinematography was done back in the day. I highly doubt we’ll be talking about The Marvels 40 years from now.
Before I see the video I should tell you that almost nothing macready does benefits the thing, why would he burn Palmer thing if he could just let him assimilate everyone else? Why would he kill Blair-Gary-nauls-thing if he was a thing? And his blood disappearing really means nothing, as it could just be a continuity error like childs coats being changed. But I think this is a nice video to watch, and you deserve a lot more views for this because it can mark a pretty good discussion
my answer wouldbbe it's playing the long game. technically ever cell of the thing is the thing so it was willing to lose a few "limbs" in the process as a diversion to ensure it makes it in the long run. i'm not saying this theory is exactly what happened, it's just a fun thought experiment to me, but that's the answer to that question.
It was never explained to the audience or the characters how 'The Thing' thinks; just how it assimilates and only that. It is entirely possible there is one 'main Thing' and the rest are just runoff/offspring of sort. Everyone it showed that blatantly got infected started to work on a more basic level of cognition, and also independent of each other. There's an old trope that the most dangerous vampire (the head one) hides in plain sight, and is the person you least suspect. Inspiration could have been drawn from that, and it would have been genius to create an army of derpy soldiers, just to inevitably help kill them and win favor with the survivors in hopes of being rescued and brought back to civilization. I'm still on the fence about this theory, but it's a fun mental exercise. The biggest thing winning me over is how the camera really focuses on MacReady giving people alcohol, like that's supposed to be important for some reason.
I like the theory. I think the same argument could be made for the final scene where Mac is testing Childs by offering the drink. When Childs accepts the bottle, Mac knows he's a Thing and chuckles nihilistically because he knows that humanity is fucked.
I have an unpopular theory: Childs was telling the truth. Neither of them are a Thing and John Carpenter only added the unexplained absence of Childs to create an ambiguous ending for people to debate forever. The Thing was defeated, Macready and Childs froze to death, end of story.
I've always thought exactly that way. With this difference that Macready and Childs will be rescued. But Mr. 2Dimm Media also has a point that is interesting.
Hmm...I don't know, Man. There's a bit of a hitch in your theory about how McCready gets infected from the bottle. Like you said, the moment the dog licks his glove and he subsequently gets shot, can't be the moment of initial infection for Bennings. Because we see Bennings get attacked and absorbed by the creature later in the film. It also couldn't have been the moment McCready got infected from the bottle. Or that the bottle got contaminated. Keep in mind that, when Bennings gets shot, the exact same glove the dog licked is the one he puts to his open bullet wound in that moment. McCready then rushes over to him, and hands him the bottle of liquor. If there weren't enough alien salivary cells on Bennings' glove to infect him when he puts it to an OPEN BULLET WOUND, then why should we think there'd be enough to left on the bottle to infect McCready when he drinks from it? The Thing wouldn't have needed to attack Bennings later in the film, if it got him when the dog licked his hand. Because it would've infected Bennings the moment he put his contaminated hand to his bleeding leg. Edit: Also, now that I think about it...Due to the creature's visceral reaction when it comes into contact with extreme heat or fire, and all of the creature's cells reacting that way no matter how far away they are from one another, there's no way McCready could've been the Thing and also been goin' around burning all the infected with the flamethrower. Hell, if he got infected that early in the movie, there's no way his body wouldn't have reacted during the blood test.
If MacCready was the thing there never would have been a blood test. There would have been a proposed blood test, then everyone tied to a chair, then McCready/Thing would have killed everyone, movie over, theory debunked!
Not going to try and dispute your theory but anytime someone’s argument is “if you think differently than what my theory supports, your stupid” kinda makes your evidence fall flat.
obviously any argument has to assume some facts. When I say 1 + 1 = 2 I am assuming 1 = 1. Obviously I do not have to preface my argument 1+1=2 with objective knowns (1=1) because it is already agreed by everyone. This is not always intuitive when forming an argument and it needed to be stated in this case for his argument to make any sense to someone not familiar with the logic of his argument.
Everytime I've heard the writers and crew get questioned about these theories, their response is always the same. "I don't know. We didn't even know when we were making it." So the true answer, is there is no answer.
It's called a sequel. It was a video game. Confirms Mac was the thing the whole time. His blood didn't wig out because he has carrier status and non of the things transformation abilities.
@@aaronpop0083 What? If I'm remembering correctly.... there is no mention of MacReady in the game aside from the beginning stuff with the tape and then he shows up at the end... nothing confirmed he was a Thing.
@@Evilshtt353 if you remember the plot of the game, they were trying to keep the transformation effects without the consciousness being lost too. Only reason they could do that was because Mac has carrier status. The game takes place 3 months later. Child's body is burnt to the bone. Mac only survived the cold because he's infected. Believe it or not they used to tell stories without having to spoon feed you all the information.
@@Evilshtt353 there's plenty of information but if your that dense you need them to spell it out for you then maybe the thing isn't the type of movie you should consider yourself a fan of.
The Childs/Macready discussion is pointless, they're both human. During the entire movie the Thing acts the same: it wastes no time in attacking someone as soon as they are alone. Keeping that in mind, for what reason would it decide to stop and have a casual conversation with a human at the end of the movie?
how is it pointless if you're wrong? lol. the scene is deliberately left open but if you use your noggin real hard you can see how macready was administering a test using the scotch, not unlike the opening scene when he gives the scotch to the "cheating bitch" computer.
@@dontcare3 How I'm wrong? I'm just pointing out what has been clearly established in the movie, instead of making stuff up. Childs has no reason to pretend to be human, according to the Thing's behavior throughout the movie and MacReady is obviously not the Thing. Both are human.
The thing needs time to assimilate. Thats why childs asks if he was the only one that made it. But when macreedy doesnt answer the question it desides to bide its time, because if someone stumbled on him while asimilataing it would be check mate.
You also forgot the whole cut scene where MacReady said "It's Thinging time!" which they took out because he didn't go on to Thing all over the place until after the movie ended.
Just to clarify the Thing replicates/assimilates other lifeforms on a Cellular level, not a molecular level, you should use "Cellular" in place of the term "Molecular"
Interesting theory however when Macready has everyone tied up there is no reason for gaining trust or trying to manipulate them. He has everyone tied up with the business end of his flamethrower pointed at them, he could've just killed and or infected all of them right then and there, u don't need to gain trust of people u have at ur mercy!
@VortechBand killing and even more so infecting is literally what the thing does! Think about it bro it's ligit purpose is to take over the human race, again if he has everyone tied up there's no reason for manipulation or gaining trust, there's no one left to fool, the mission at hand is accomplished, it wants to take over the whole camp, Macready was not the thing my guy
The problem is you have to assume that at least one of the humans are paying attention when macready cuts his hand for the blood test. Otherwise someone will call it out. Childs wouldnt of accepted that. If they can make fake make blood why didnt palmer do it to? They would of found zero things... because the test would be useless. The fact that macready blows up the final thing means there is no way he is a thing. The things only come into conflict with each other when there are organisms to imitate and trick. There are other issues with your explanations but these 3 things cannot be ignored.
I don't think McCready is the Thing either, but..... The seeds of doubt have been planted. I thought it was a stupid idea until the scene in which McCready leaves Blair's hut and the camera focuses on the vodka. This could just have been done as a cool shot. It could also have been JC telling us who the Thing was. As to the blood test, maybe that Thing was sacrificing itself as part of some plan to take suspicion away from McCready.. However, the thing which makes me still think McCready is human is the battle at the end. By the time he confronts the big one everyone else is gone, there would be no reason to continue with the deception. It's a great theory though, and I have doubts now.
My theory about this is that neither Childs nor McCreedy are the thing because they both drink the alcohol. It's established in the movie that the thing will avoid pain at all costs. As you demonstrated in the video whiskey is a very uncomfortable thing to drink; and the fact they could drink it without freaking out means they weren't assimiliated.
@@-Zer0Dark- He didn't carry a flask did he? He kept "one last drink" to go out in style, but saw his escape at the last moment, and took the drink with him.
Well thought out. I do have one significant plot hole though. Why would McReady actually perform the blood test if he was the thing? He has everyone hostage and tied up (except for windows) so why bother doing the test? If he was the thing, he would have picked Palmer to be "untied" while everyone else is captive. Then at that point, infection time. Blair is already infected at this point and the only one not in the room. The Thing is not aggressive to its own kind, so why setup a scenario to 'out' Palmer? Why even after that bother to follow through with the testing after torching Windows and Palmer? Even if cellular infection was the original plan, the Thing still goes out of its way to directly infect people even when its a risk. Its not like Windows was disinfecting the blade he used on everyone. If it was Palmer, he could have left a few cells when he cut each and every person, and not even have to perform any 'tests'.
Because it’s the perfect subterfuge to have the humans believe he is also human. Did you see how “his blood” was drawn? It’s the “weak point” of the argument, but if he was the thing he was the blood saboteur and he could have set it up. So it hold up to speculation but we need to see the unseen scene to prove or disprove.
I'm going to be honest, I don't like your style, man. You're saying things like you're 100% right and calling everybody else stupid ? You have some good theories, but overall I think you're overthinking. McReady was the typical 80's badass hero. The chess, for me symbolized, he hates losing and doesn't give a fuck. Also at the end the drink scene, just how should I put it. That was just a "I'm fucking tired, don't give a single fuck just drink" moment. Like I said, you have some good theories, but calling everybody else stupid because we have different opinion makes you the stupid one. You're not gonna make too much follower with this style.
I think the "stupid" insult was pretty clearly meant in jest. Also you say he wont get followers, but he only has 900, and this video has nearly 100k views in one week, people seem to like it.
Another point you can make regarding MacCready thing turning on Blair thing. While Blair thing is pissed and confused why he's being turned on you could see it like chess when you would sacrifice a piece in order to make sure that the king stays out of check. In both scenarios, you have to make an assumption on how to make sure your king is alive for the next move and MacCready thing would have made the right call, since had he and Blair thing teamed up, Childs, who still had a flamethrower, would have took them both out. Edit: so I went and watched the movie again with this theory in mind and found an example that supports this. Once they all suspect MacCready to be assimilated everyone wants to lock him out in the snow. That is all except for Palmer who is more than likely assimilate at this point. In fact he's the most eager to open the door and blast MacCready. What better way to draw attention away from yourself than to be so human you take out your own kind
I actually was thinking the same thing, he had to sacrifice his own kind so he could continue his ruse and as long as one thing survives then the species can easily repopulate.
It's a fun theory. My question is if he was the thing, why didn't he shoot Windows and torch everyone when they were tied up and helpless during the blood test scene.
When we see the dog jump on Bennings, he had his right arm up, but when we see the perspective of the dog’s face and see it licking him, the gloved hand being licked can easily be seen to be his left hand; you can see the fingers curl inward. And it’s not just a shot discrepancy; when it switches back to the previous perspective, Bennings now has both arms up, meaning that from the shot of the dog jumping up at him and the shot of the dog licking his glove, he raised his other arm, and the dog licked the glove of his left hand. He does not grab the bottle with the same hand that is licked; he grabs it with the other hand, the one that looks like it was the one licked because it was the only one raised when we see the dog jump on him, but not the one we actually see licked. This whole theory just fell apart.
Oh, I also forgot. The alcohol would be damaging to the cells that it touches, and Thing cells don’t stay out when hurt; they flee from damage. If MacReady were drinking alcohol as the thing in order to further spread the particles, his mouth would be changing and running away from his face every time. To say nothing of how the Thing cells on the liquor bottle would die from the alcohol itself, rendering the bottle sterile by the time someone drinks it. MacCready is just laughing at the hopelessness of the situation at the end, but taking the rest of what I just said into account, he’s also giving Childs a bottle of alcohol to see if there’s a reaction when he drinks it. Since there isn’t one, he’s probably also chuckling in relief that Child’s is human.
the bloodtest literally proves who is and isnt infected tho. therefore mcready is NOT the first infected, let alone infected at all by the time of the test. if he gets infested at all, its not until the end of the movie
But they do not show him on FILM giving blood he has the flamethrower in hand would anyone dare question him if he didn't give blood in front of them ? Why would Childs (The Thing) not just fry Mac at the end ?
I always thought the whole point of the end is that neither of them are infected, but they're still going to die out there because they each think the other is the thing. They survived the monster but it still killed them by killing their ability to trust each other.
I like this ending. But in my follow up I say that an ending where they are both the thing and still don't trust eachother is more poetic. The alien wins but the human paranoia also won
It's an interesting theory, and very well put together. 2 major issues I have with the whole thing: 1: Macready is too anti-Thing to be assimilated. He leads the charge in the battle of good vs evil too often. He could be misleading the group so that they get assimilated instead, if he was truly one of them. The Things look for the survival of themselves primarily as 2Dimm suggested, but they will help each other assimilate as long as possible before they have to burn the bridges. 2: His blood test theory doesn't hold water. It is true that many important events happen off camera, but MacReady's blood not being drawn on camera is just to prevent redundancy. I wouldn't trust Mac if my blood was drawn in the room, while he got to draw it personally on his own. I don't buy it. I also don't think anyone got infected from the dog licking Benning's glove. I think once the saliva dries it loses any contamination it had, kind of like rabies or other diseases. I do think the whole gasoline theory that a lot of people have is kinda crap, a perfect replica would be able to tell the difference between gasoline and alcohol, that and some other theories like the eye gleam I'm glad he put to rest. Personally, I'm pretty optimistic about the ending, I think the two of them are human. Buuut if one of them is, my money is on Childs. Great video though!
What I enjoy about all these comments is that it's been over 40 years since Carpenter's "The Thing" was made and we're all still thinking and discussing this sci-fi version of an Agatha Christie mystery, on multiple forums, and there is still no definite conclusion. 🙂
I think people are missing the canon events that show the most logical conclusion that fits the themes of paranoia and the breakdown of trust that John Carpenter held through the entire film. Childs and Macready are both human at the end of The Thing. The original movie purposefully leaves out all the details so that the ending is ambiguous. Childs, Macready, and even the audience are distrustful of the two survivors. This hopeful outlook of both characters surviving is the least expected of all the options considering the bleak and gritty tone set by the rest of the film. First, lets poke a couple holes into the argument that Mac got infected by drinking off of the bottle that had the dog's saliva on it. I don't think the idea that the Thing could assimilate someone off of one particle like Dr Copper states holds water. The human body is incredibly adept at fighting infection and every other infection in the film features an assimilation that involves a new body being replicated. This also assumes that Mac is infected before he leaves with Garry and Dr Copper to the Norwegian's site. The behavior we see from the wolf Thing takes advantage of any opportunity to assimilate, as soon as things calm down from the shooting at the beginning of the film it sneaks into the living quarters and assimilates the first victim. The Norwegian compound is the PERFECT opportunity to assimilate two of the most important people in the group. Yet they come back and we get the autopsy scene. If Mac Thing is that smart, why would he allow the rest of the group to find out that something isn't right? It would make more sense to keep everyone at ease and off guard. Instead Dr Copper is left to be the first one to start suspecting other people. Mac has another one of these chances with Blair and Palmer at the crash site and doesn't take it. That would mean 5 out of the 12 people would be infected. Including the one who suspected everyone else and destroyed the chopper, the one who could pilot said chopper, and the leaders of the team. The other massive hole in this theory: You admit that Bennings was not infected at this moment. The first thing Bennings does with the bottle is take a swig. If Macready gets infected by taking a swig, so does Bennings. Which makes his actual infection scene later in the film make no sense. Nether do the other assimilation scenes, if all it needs to do is get a little bit of liquid on something then why go through the assimilation process that gets two of the Things caught and destroyed? Next up: Mac's Anti-Thing Decisions Macready leaves a tape documenting their experiences battling the Things and plans to hide it. This goes completely against anything a Thing would do. There is nothing that it stands to gain from making that tape. Mac also blows up the ship that Blair-Thing was working on. He could have easily thrown the dynamite to not damage the craft but doesn't. He also destroys the only other Thing to have survived instead of leaving it to freeze like it wanted. Which is also a theory proscribed to everyone by Mac himself. After Mac made everyone get tested and outed Palmer-Thing and destroyed it along with the newly forming Windows-Thing. If he want's Childs to drink and become assimilated at the end why did he destroy all the other Thing's? Finally: Childs. I could go with the easy route and say that The Thing (2011) gave us our definitive answer when they revealed that Things cannot replicate non-organic material. This explains why clothes are destroyed and shows that Childs was human because of his earring. But John Carpenter wasn't involved and hasn't said anything good about that movie when asked about it, so I'll use info from the original. We see Childs run off when the other three come up from Blair-Thing's workshop. Its not long after that the power shuts off. Childs' story checks out if Blair-Thing is the one who turns off the power. Childs would have seen him running to the building and Blair-Thing would have tried to get him lost in the snow in order to have less people after him. On top of that Blair-Thing couldn't have assimilated Childs AND shut off the power. On the same note Childs couldn't have been assimilated AND redressed with the flamethrower in that time. He had to have stayed gone because the others went room by room torching every building and never saw him. The paranoia felt in the film is SUPPOSED to bleed to the audience in the final scene. You're left with suspicions towards Childs and the dread of Macready's words when they realize they're both dead men. The Thing's music is a fake out by John Carpenter to make you think the bottle has some significance. But Macready was about to drink from it himself before having any idea that Childs is near, so its not fuel. My opinion? He's chuckling at the fact that that damn bottle made it through the whole situation and now its gonna be the last thing to keep him warm. Its been the only constant through the entire movie. His only trustworthy friend.
First of all it's freaking amazing so many passionate opinions are still found on a 50 year old movie truly amazing and maybe the was the entire purpose to leave it open-ended a give the audience a mystery to talked about for years to come. But let me ask you this ... if Childs is The Thing at the end and has a flamethrower why not just fry Mac ? On the opposite end why would Childs take a drink from Mac so casually like there is not a fricking Alien that can infect people running around :D ( like you say the movie is revolving around paranoia but Childs is like yeah sure lemme take a sip from this potential Alien being and infect myself) Also McReady blowing things up is just him figuring out there is no way out other than freeze wait for rescue party to arrive and wait for de-thawing and back to business. That would be kinda hard to do if the rescue team find giant alien monsters laying around so 2 "humans" would be a much better option. Take my 2 cents on this good sir :D
I think child's is infected at the end, and I think he was infected at the doorway by Blaire. The generator room is the stairs running down inside the compound right next to the door child's is posted at and seen running from. That is where Blaire makes his last stand and was how he destroyed the generator. He turned child's first by sneaking up on him, then Childs-thing makes a run through the snow as a cover story while blaire-thing goes downstairs and destroys the generator.
@@shwnholroydful But how would Childs-Thing have had the time to get new clothes AND strap the flamethrower back on before he makes his run? To me the more likely move is that Blair-thing recognizes that the remaining humans are armed and lures Childs out into the snow knowing that he'll be lost once the power is out.
Neither was the Thing. If every cell was alive with the thought of self preservation at any cost, it sure as hell could not drink ol' J&B as that kills all kinds of cells.
You see, what kills your whole argument is that if McReady was the thing from the very beggining he had the perfect opportunity to assimilate everyone during the bloodtest. Everyone was tied up, one of the other one was the thing already. Thing mcready wouldve just teamed up with the other thing and bam, its over. Mcready was the reason they maybe won at the end, he's the single person who most helped in figuring out tricks to beat the thing. And another thing, why would Mcready be recording a journal about the whole shit if he was the thing? He was alone, he wasnt acting for anyone.
The problem with that, is that the Thing isn't just attacking people. For the vast majority of the movie, it acts defensively. NorrisThing only turns AFTER getting defibrillated once prior, which likely really fucking hurt. With the second one incoming, it defended itself. But this defensiveness goes beyond just the physical. When the head of NorrisThing is literally homefree to escape, whom is it that outs it and gets it burned? Palmer. Which as we know in the very next scene with the blood test, turns out to be the Thing himself. Given the time for the assimilation process, Palmer absolutely had to be PalmerThing when he outed the head. There was no reason for doing so, outside of giving himself more credibility as trustworthy(why would the Thing out another Thing?). The goal for the Thing has always consistently been to assimilate the crew as safely as possible for itself. You can tell by the look that PalmerThing gives just before his own test that the Thing absolutely knows the blood test will work, because that's the most "welp, looks like this is it" face in the world. MacReadyThing would similarly know it would work if PalmerThing did, meaning that he very likely did it to solidify the entire camp's trust in him. Even though PalmerThing snitched on another Thing already and they should be suspicious of MacReady, the fact that he didn't try to turn everyone when he had them dead to rights gives the crew trust in him. This grants him the surest path to victory. This is all to say that I'm not all-in on this "MacReady is the Thing" theory, but it makes a LOT more sense than very very minimal evidence of it being Childs. This builds up a lot of circumstantial, but consistent, evidence to MacReady's assimilation, vs all the ass-pulling most people do to explain why it's Childs. The biggest compelling argument to this theory here to me is the fact that Fuchs ONLY told MacReady about the single particle thing, and he was then VERY promptly dealt with, as if someone who was using that as their assimilation method the whole movie wanted to prevent anyone else knowing at all.
@@Kraklano We will never have a definitive evidence about Childs because its made to be ambiguious. The whole point in the end is that even after all that, even after they doomed themselves to try and kill The Thing, the paranoia still lingers, both Childs and Mcready cant know if the other is themselves. I dont buy this McReady is The Thing stuff, and even if people try to make sense of it and makes it solid through these gimnastics, it very clearly was not intentional on the movie markers part. Specially since Carpenter himself went on record saying that he doesnt have a off-screen series of events defined. He focused on making the suspense as tense as possible and the ending is not supposed to have an answer.
There is an argument to be made that Blair and McCready were competing to infect the others throughout the movie and that the Smirnoff bottle was a test to confirm that Blair was the other Thing.
@@corymorse4271 Exactly what I was thinking! I think the dog was a natural leader, and the only other natural leader was McCready, and they both had opposing ideas of how to reach their end-goal, infecting the world.
Actually I can prove MacReady wasn't the thing, and it's not even hard to do. MacReady is played by Kurt Russel, Kurt Russel, is the man, and is resistant to Thingery, so there ya go, he can't be Thingy'd. He escaped L.A. and New York, He escaped Alaska too.
I mean, this theory takes a whole bunch of assumptions that all need to be correct in order to work, while Childs being the thing at the end only takes one single assumption... But anyway. MacReady could have done something to trick us with his blood off-screen, but he also could have NOT done anything to trick us off-screen. His blood passing the test is the biggest problem with this theory, and the only "evidence" there is for it is just shrugging and saying, 'Well, you can't prove something DIDN'T happen off-screen'. The rest of the points as to why you think he's the thing are pretty sound, but this one here is arguable the most important one--the one where the movie itself is showing us "Hey look here's proof he's not the thing"--and you have a complete lack of evidence against it. Also, I really do feel that our introduction to MacReady playing chess makes much more sense the other way around, with MacReady foreshadowing himself and the chess game foreshadowing the thing. MacReady isn't just playing chess, he's playing chess against a *computer*--he's playing a game where the whole point is that's impossible to win--and yet despite knowing this he'd rather just destroy the computer than let it win. This perfectly foreshadows his character in the finale, where he explicitly points out to the other remaining characters that there's no more getting out of this alive--the game they're playing is impossible to win--so the only option they have left is to blow up and burn down the entire "board". And the last scene we get, MacReady hands Childs the bottle of the same scotch he was drinking at the beginning, and Childs drinks some. Childs is the "computer" that MacReady couldn't beat and poured the scotch into.
I was with you up until the Blair-Thing fight. I'm sorry, but Mac's fuck you being a literal response to the Blair-Thing's scream is absurd. Also - if both Blair and Mac are the thing in that scene, and Mac knows everyone else is out in the snowstorm, why would they not team up (or at least just not destroy each other), ESPECIALLY if - as you say - they can communicate. Any decent chess player would see that that's clearly the best move on the board at that point. Also - John Carpenter gave his blessing for The Thing video game on ps2 being a sequel to the movie, and in that game Mac shows up in a chopper to rescue the main character. So yeah - according to Carpenter, macready ≠ the thing.
@@videosbytaz I know that. But at that point, the better move for each individual (both Mac and Blair-Thing) would have been to stick together. A single chess piece isn't as effective as two. You can pin and defend with two pieces. Like, my goal in a survival situation is my own personal survival, but I still know that my chances are astronomically improved if I work with another person.
I do think this is a compelling argument, but I feel like there's still a lot of evidence to it not being MacReady. Firstly, I do think it's great that there's so many arguments that can be made to point out how MacReady is suspicious, but, at the same time, it's important to remember that EVERY character has a lot of evidence behind their actions. The issue with this theory is, it's still never addressed *why* MacReady betrayed the other Thing forms, 'nor does it explain why it cooperated with others and strategized/kept it's cool, and why it decided to give a bottle to Childs instead of assimilating him directly; something we clearly see can happen when Dr. Blair did the funny face grab. After all, the reason why they torched the research base was *because* the humans were losing, and they wanted to stop it's spread. It doesn't make sense why MacReady Thing would go out of it's way to sabotage their efforts when the other Things were all cooperating in some way. MacReady Thing essentially turned what was a slam dunk victory into a defeat, for no discernible reason. I don't know, that just doesn't quite add up to me.
@@luxj.9451 1). Right, but that's what all the other Things were doing, too, all the way back to the Dog itself at the very beginning of the movie, so that isn't really a trait unique to MacReady himself. Every other Thing, including Blair, only got hyper aggressive once they were cornered. MacReady had numerous examples of him being cornered yet he never did anything the other Things did, which is odd, because they're all on the same page, with a similar intelligence to one another. 2). Again.... That doesn't explain why he decided to have it be JUST him. He could've assimilated other characters and had multiple bodies. He didn't have to be deceptive to the people AT the base once the Things had already won, because there was no outside communication. They're all shapeshifters after all, and they could have easily had multiple bodies play dead. They already did it in the movie during the autopsy scene that resulted in biting off the arms of that one doctor. There was numerous points where he could have assimilated other people, have them become Things, and have them all be in on it for the long con, too. That's what the Things WERE doing, but if MacReady was the Thing, he betrayed his Thing Team and gave themselves less hosts to infect the rest of the world with, killing all other Things and having himself be the only host allowed. He explicitly put him and his Thing Team at a disadvantage. (Also fun fact, there actually are animals that can be woken up from being frozen in a Tundra! The Bdelloid Rotifer is one, which was woken up after being frozen in ice for thousands of years! Tardigrades also can. Wood Frogs also hibernate by quite literally freezing through the Winter, only to wake up once the temperatures rise and the frogs thaw out!) 3). Well, remember, he was trying to escape because he had nothing else to do. Throughout the movie he tried deceiving them into letting him out of his cabin numerous times. Once they just sorta left him in the shed to die, he started formulating an escape plan and started creating a shuttle or craft to bust out of there. He WOULD have been assimilating others if he was allowed to freely roam the base, which was what he was wanting. So, to put it another way, if the MacReady Thing's end-game was to play the long con and escape, like what you thought Blair's was, he could've just froze himself near MacReady's cabin when they already thought MacReady was dead, and waited for the long con. Everyone was already going to die at that point. So there was no reason for MacReady to go back and kill everyone including the other Things through exceptional deception. All the other Things were waiting out the storm and letting all the humans die themselves, too. Like with the huge creature at the end not revealing itself until MacReady decided to kill it (for some reason). If they were prepping for the long con, MacReady literally ruined that plan. So it just doesn't make much sense to me why this would be the case.
Suspicion. If the base remained intact, would he be carefully observed, blood tested, studied closely and monitored when a rescue team arrives? What if he blends in, appears to require medical attention, and rejects the mutant versions as hostile to the ultimate goal - assimilating the world? Notice how the Things were still human in appearance. They mimic their hosts down to the heart conditions. So too, the Thing mimics the host’s attitude. “If you do not appear human, and stay human, then I will destroy you.” The Thing mimics MacReady’s ideas and rejects the mutant’s collective philosophical disposition. Thereby, hiding as a Thing without mutating. You can see this in blood test. Completely human until dead giveaway. Then transforms into a mutant.
@@shaynefowley5689 If a rescue team WAS arriving, then, yes, that would make sense, but the issue is that the communication lines were cut entirely, and the whole point of destroying the base was so that the Things couldn't escape and cause more problems. Blowing up the base actively hindered the plans of The Thing, not helped them. Especially considering he also sabotaged all the different forms of Thing Escape that were occurring. For example, why did he kill the doctor thing and prevent him from escaping by destroying his craft, instead of teaming up against one of the last humans with the Doctor in a 2v1? Also, after blowing up the base, why didn't the Thing just immediately assimilate or kill Child's? They were all alone after all, so if MacReady was the thing, there was no reason to be concealing his Thingness anymore. It just doesn't make sense as to why he would be a Thing unless he was deliberately self sabotaging. Also, I don't necessarily think they inherit the personalities and ideals of their hosts. I think they LEARN what their host thinks and the way that they talk, but they don't actually inherit their personalities. Every single character that was confirmed to be a Thing, including the Dog, was very noticeably strange and off-putting when they were a Thing. MacReady doesn't really do anything like that.
@@xweert711 what is Childs holding in his hands at the end of the movie? If The Thing survives the Norwegian camp, what are the chances a rescue team will investigate their camp? And if a team arrives, do you want them to know how the process works? This is why MacReady erases the recordings. The Thing realizes it cannot leave any clues.
Interesting theory. I don't believe MacReady was a Thing. Several times he was alone with someone & DID NOT TURN THEM. Norwegian camp with Doc Copper. Just the 2. Doc died human. Site of alien ship with Norris, who I'm sure was a Thing already, & I think Palmer too, who was probably turned by Norris. If all 3 were Things, why make the trip together without some sort of gain ? What was the advantage ? (I believe that was Norris who's room the Dog Thing entered when we saw a silhouette turn around. He got it first, quietly). The brief chat with Fuchs alone indoors. Fuchs was nervous at first, but then he seemed to relax around MacReady. Could have been the moment to attack, but he didn't. Also, in the heli, talk about Blair. No attack. Stroll with Nauls up to his shack. No attack, Nauls, still human, was later grabbed by Blair Thing. Fuchs apparently died human. Why would MacReady kill him when he could turn him ? He would increase his numbers & eliminate an enemy at the same time. A double win, but it didn't happen. The Blair chat at tool shed. "It ain't Fuchs. It ain't Fuchs". No attack, just left him there. No reason to think Blair wasn't human at that time. If they were both Things, why not let Blair out secretly & let him attack surreptitiously ? He could set up other guys to be attacked by Blair. Did not happen. Could have done it to Fuchs & Nauls. Nope. If that happened, we would've seen MacReady, Norris, Palmer, Blair, Fuchs & Nauls all Things, same time. That's 6. Half the crew. Bennings dead. That's 7 . Team up, get Clark at kennel. Get Doc Copper in medical. Get Windows in radio room. Only Garry & Childs left against 9 THINGS ! If I was an imitation, a perfect imitation, this would be my plan & it would've worked. Alas, it didn't because MacReady WAS NOT A THING, EVER ! Just saying, an intelligent alien could have pulled it off with stealth, paranoia, isolation & good timing against a dozen unwary men of Earth. Interesting theory you have, but consider what I've said. For a species with the ability to steal another species members under cover of ignorance, to perfectly imitate, to gain & retain their knowledge, attacking in extreme isolation, with paranoia on there side, it makes more sense that The Things would work together against us to increase their numbers & thereby increasing their odds of overcoming us faster & more efficiently. WE SHOULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED OR WON.
You're right. And you made a better case than this video did. This kid probably thinks that norman's dead mother in the movie "psycho" was the serial killer. Or that Michael Myers was the victim being hunted by Jamie lee curtis. Or that OJ is innocent.
@@RichWards-Wins Thanks for that. The Thing, John Carpenter, one of my all time faves. Never get tired of it. Great movie, start to finish. I was just pointing out some scenes that prove that either Mac was not a Thing, or he was, but extremely calculating by not being aggressive, which makes him look human. I believe the former. If the opportunity was there with a certain degree of success, why not turn someone ? Well planned, lose an enemy, gain an ally. The more you gain, the more the scales tip in your favor. If the Things had the numbers, no way would people have a chance. Even at 6 to 6, Things have the advantage. One grab, one good touch, it's over, they got you. They know what you know, can do what you do & much more. Without an escape, you're fugged ! I'd choose dynamite, go out with a bang. Quick & painless. Nothing to turn. Uhh, Norm's mom wasn't known to be nice, but a killer . . . Nah. Big Mikey My., a lot of childhood trauma. Big sis Laurie was after him, later on, but that was well deserved on account of his nasty disposition. Oh Jay . . . . . I don't want to get into it. There was evidence & then there was fug-up & crafty lawyer talk. You could walk through a burning house with gasoline sticky toilet paper all over your body, but a team of good lawyers will pull you out UNBURNED ! Money can save a life. Hey, maybe a Thing did it ! Who knows ?
Carpenter said the eye gleaming was only used for the blood test scene. Also, my favorite part of the movie is when the Thing says "It's Thingy time" and starts thinging all over the place
This whole debate on childs and mac is kinda missing the forest for the trees. They were at odds for the whole movie and in the end, they have to accept they’re going to die with someone they are resentful and suspicious of. It doesn’t really matter if one of them is the thing.
Good video. I like how the information is organized, and I find the arguments around the bottles really persuasive. However, the chess scene actually proves the opposite of what's stated in the video. If McCreedy was a good tactical thinker, and one that thinks ahead, he wouldn't have lost. It also reveals some details about his character: Firstly, he can't admit when he makes a mistake--instead of accepting that he made some disadvantageous moves, he claims the computer "cheated" (which a computer cannot do, unless programmed to do so...which it would not have been). Secondly, it shows that he can't accept defeat, that he'd rather destroy the game than lose. The point of the scene wasn't to show us he's smart, but to show us that if he can't win, he'll do everything in his power to make sure his opponent can't win either--that he'll choose a stalemate over defeat...foreshadowing the moment where he's sitting with Childs and gives him the bottle.
Waited for the your blood test explanation, and your whole hypothesis falls apart there. You talked bout how we don't see MacReady collect his blood and we only see 2 collect thier blood which is Windows and Nauls, which is true. But we also don't see the blood collection of Childs, Palmer and the others but they have it seen when MacReady tests his blood and Palmer's. Not only that if MacReady was Thing at this point he has everybody tied up other then Windows, wouldn't you take advantage of this point in time and take out 1 person and infected everyone tied up. They all tried their hardest to get away from Palmer without any of them getting loose. So you would have enough time to infect everyone. Also if i were tied up I would be making a big deal if i didn't see MacReady draw blood. There are also Multiple molotov cocktails used near the end which means he had Multiple bottles you think the Bennings bottle is the only 1 in the movie they are all sharing. This video is just a lot of Narrative Bias Storytelling no logic was ever taken into consideration.
No. There is a game that came out in 2002. You find Childs at the beginning. He died from Hypothermia. At the end of the game, a helicopter pilot saves Blake from the base after fighting a thing boss and reveals himself to be RJ MacReady. Neither of them were the Thing at the end of the movie. Carpenter has already said the game is canon. Cool video though and cool theory! Also want to add that The Thing is so much better without the prequel or game added in because Carpenter wanted people to think and make cool speculations. The game ruins a lot of that once you learn of Child's and MacReady's fate. There is also the comics!
The game isn't cannon , it wasn't written by Carpenter thus the story from the game and extended universe like comics are not cannon as the orginal creator did not write the material
@stormicopia endorsed doesn't mean he was there for storyline, legit watch the opening scene to macready Introduction and watch the base blowing scene to the end and tell me what you see that isn't directly stated my friend
We clearly see the empty bottles in the beginning and we clearly see them being used as molotov cocktails along with the fact Macready claims he drank all his liqour can lead one to one conclusion when viewing the end scene, Chiles drank Gas and Mac laughs at how easy that worked but is still left in a draw(chess reference) with the thing
Childs is The Thing, MacReady is not. From start to finish of the movie, The Things only purpose in existence is to survive. In the final scene, MacReady has given up &completely accepts his fate that he will not survive. Literally not a trait The Thing possesses
Things can survive being frozen. So the argument he gave in and accepted freezing makes less sense if he is a human and more sense if he is a thing thats ready to go into hibernation.
16:41 MacReady tests his own blood and it is shown that he's not a Thing, just as everyone else is tested. So you have to either dismiss the blood test or come up with some other way to claim MacReady was the Thing. Now, the whole point of the ending of the film, is for you to not know who is the Thing or if there even is still a Thing left. Carpenter is only angered when people ask who is the Thing at the end of the film, and there are certain moments in the film designed to throw you off and make you think something that isn't true. Early on, when the dog first goes into a person's room, we see a shadow, and the shadow looks similar to two different people but mainly it looks like Windows. The person actually sitting there wasn't one of the actors, it was a stage hand and was wearing a coat to make their shadow look like it might be one of the characters, even though it's not. MacReady was not a Thing at any point before the large explosion and the ending scene of the film. After that, it doesn't matter, you're left to wonder but never really know. One possible ending for the film, was a scene during the day with the camp burned down and destroyed, and then you see a dog running away from the camp, ending the film just as it began. With the Thing surviving and running through the snow, trying to find a way to escape Antarctica.
There was a video that goes over the infection timeline. It showed the shadow in detail and even if it was none of the acters it looks like Norris (the part sticking out at the neck is the most telling part).
At the beginning, the husky "tries" to lick Bennings gloved hand, but as we find out later, it needs to go through clothing and in the beginning, it looks like it only manages to lick the front of his glove - unable to get to his palm, so it doesn't connect with the bottle. The devil is in the detail. At 1::26::43, we see Childs at the door and window of the main entrance and ordered to look out for Blair. The coats are in this order from left to right: Navy blue Dark green Olive green Beige Three pairs of boots, all standing straight, first pair pointing inwards towards the wooden bench. At 1::29::34, Childs has left the room and left the door wide open. Presumably the Blair Thing took him. The coats are in this order from left to right: Olive green Dark green Dark green Beige What happened to the navy blue coat and why was the olive green switched with the dark green coat? Three pairs of boots, first pair facing outwards away from the wooden bench, middle pair has one boot knocked over. Looks like a scuffle has occurred and been hastily corrected. At 1::29::51, we see Nauls watch what looks like Childs leave the main entrance for no reason and wander into the darkness. Then the generator cuts out. Childs has definitely been infected and the Blair Thing that infected him has cut the power from the generator which was to the left of the main entrance, down a flight of stairs to a grey door. At the end of the movie, only Childs and MacReady make it out alive, but on or off set, we see no concrete evidence that MacReady is the Thing, just as there is no evidence that the scotch whiskey is petrol or that the Thing doesn't exhale hot air. We can only work with what Carpenter has shown us.
If MacReady is an imitation this is what he would have done. He would fly away in the helicopter before Blair destroyed it, based on your theory he could have flown away at anytime before Blair conducts the autopsy. He wouldn't calls for a Flamethrower when the Dog Thing is discovered. He would have let Blair Thing out of the shack, when he asks to come back inside. He wouldn't come up with the blood test and out Palmer a fellow imitation. He definitely wouldn't kill 5 out of 6 imitations we see on screen. He kills Bennings, Norris, Palmer, Windows and Blair.
Of all the people in the movie you knew MacReady was never a Thing. Never. From start to finish of the film you could be sure he was human. If he was a Thing he had multiple instances where he would have won. The blood scene where he tied everyone up except for Windows. In just that scene he could have wiped everyone out if he was a Thing. They were all tied up and he could have just grabbed Windows first.
Why would MacReady blow up both the the infected doc's "flying saucer" and the big thing, if he was infected, though? In the end of the movie he's sitting in the freezing antarctic cold...while he could have arranged the thing infecting all humanity by letting the infected doc use his ufo-thingy....doesn't make much sense to me.
MacReady says the thing isn't trying to leave it wants to go back to kill them off and go back to sleep The doc trying to make a ship could have figured out its not possible with our level of tech even with using parts of the bigger ship its a game of chess Dog was the Rook Split Face Queen Doc Bishop Norris Knight bennings Pawn palmer Pawn MacReady King In a game of Chess all the King really does is hide All of our information comes from MacReady
My thought process is The Rook Travels the farthest The Queen Kills the most The Knights surprise attack The Bishops Move back and forth long distance Pawns Die or Survive to replace missing pieces
When it assimilates someone it takes their intelligence as well so it would know what alcohol tasted like. It can speak English use our tools and act like the person who was taken. It definitely learns from each host.
I came to this video with 1 question - the final showdown between MacReady and The Thing in the generator room, why does that happen if they are both on the same team? Why would MacReady need to blow up the monster with dynamite, which WE SEE HIM DO, if they are both The Thing? So it's a nice theory, but it doesn't hold up
The point of the scene with MacReady shorting out the computer is meant to show that he does not "play by the rules". He's not a tactical genius, that's why he lost to the computer. The Thing is likely much smarter than MacReady (having assimilated multiple scientists), but MacReady thinks outside the box and can cheat.
Wait a minute, the whole point of that scene was that the computer won through an impossible move. The computer cheats and that instigates Mac's next move.
I have posted on another comment about this but it foreshadows his stubborness and competitiveness. He does like to lose and killed the pc at the cost of his own pleasure so he beat it and yes i hadnt thought of ou tof the box thinking too. At the end he without hesitation is going to sacrifice all of them to make sure he knows he has won and beaten the thing. Stubbornness and radical thinking saves the day
A lot of these rebuttals I agree with and some I don’t, but the biggest thing for me is the thing attacking itself/its own kind. That doesn’t make sense for it to do, so why would Macready be the one to come up with the blood test and then force the blood test on everyone while being infected KNOWING it would expose Palmer. In addition, why would Macready blow up the Blair Nauls thing at the end when it’s the one that infected Blair to begin with? Again, the only time we see the thing attack itself or other things is if you assume Macready is the thing, in which it flamethrowers a few of them. Even when it’s forced into a situation like Palmer was, he didn’t help kill Norris or anything, he just played along in being shocked. One other quick thing about the blood test, logically you could argue that if everyone gave blood in view of everybody then they would point out that Macready had to do so as well. And if you want to argue that the thing could retract its cells from the blood being taken or something, then you would have to say that Palmer could have and should have as well. These things in addition to other comments I feel make this theory impossible but still a fun one nonetheless. Excited to see your response!
No because Macready was talking to Fukes when Windows dropped the keys so he couldn’t have grab the keys. And I wanted to see more analysis on the scene when the dog entered the mystery room and see if there could be line ups that would prove whose room it was. Great theory but flawed. Plus John Carpenter wouldn’t make it so obvious using Macreads clothes. He would have wanted us to go straight to that idea and then prove us wrong.
VERY compelling case, but I disagree based on the narration by McReady. What purpose would it serve to make a journal of its existence and weaknesses and tactics. Especially if he planned on blowing up the place.
🤔 - an y would he blow up the final thing form w the dynamite if he was also a thing - having more than 1 infected ppl w mean better survival 4 the main organism - right ?? 🤔
Ok, in regards to your proof that McReady got infected by the whiskey bottle after Bennings glove was licked, the dog licked his LEFT hand not his right hand which is the hand that is grasping the whiskey bottle after McReady leaves it with Bennings.
All you need is the opening scene of the film, a single scene from beginning of act 2 and thr end scene to know the ending, it just people cant take in visual detail as if its not spoken they dont account for it ... MacReady literally had 1 full bottle of liqour left at beginning of film when we met him, he has a lot of empty bottles tho...... During beginning of act 2, one of the crew ask MacReady for drink of his liqour to which Macready replies "its all gone" signaling that any bottle we see going forward doesnt have liqour in it .... In Act 3 , we literally see Mac using these empty bottles to make molatov cocktails woth to burn the base. At end of the film, Macready is taking the cloth out of a molotov cocktail to use the gas in his flamer as his flamethrower is empty as the Pilot Light in the tip of the gun is not on thus no fuel is in the flamer.... Mac being defenseless knows he cant confront the thing but falls back to the worest possible ending, freezing in the snow with it . This is where the chess scene begin to make sense in the film. If you look at them frame by frame ,none of the moves make sense from the computer and mac out of frustration/drinking break the xomputer with the liqour. In the end Mac is still frustrated but since he hadnt been drinking since the 2nd Act, his sober mind finds the solution, in chess you can win lose or draw. By drawing with The Thing Mac techincally won as Mac prevents the thing from reaching civilization. That was the entire stated goal of the crew, dont let the Thing make it to where it can convert the entire population.... Mac laughs at the end as he has gained the upper hand, he knows Chiles is the Thing but without his flamer the only option is a draw
The thing is a "perfect" assimilation of the host. This isn't well explored in 1982, but the implication is how far does this go? Memories, identity, mannerisms, the assimilated host doesn't even know they are assimilated. Even if it can't remember the difference between gas and J&B, its "perfectly" replicated human taste buds would know. While they might still be in one of the remotest places from civilization, they are still at an outpost that risks being investigsted once contact is confirmed to be lost. MacCready even states this so it could be his motive as the thing, "t wants to freeze now. It knows it's got no way out of here. It just wants to go to sleep in the cold until the rescue team finds it." The possible reason why Mac thing blew up Blair-Gary-Nauls-thing is because it's motive was to hop on its new little spaceship and get off planet. Mac thing wanted to stay... Mac thing won.
@subcitizen2012 Mac achieves a draw (this is the only reason the chess scenes are in the film as again Mac playing the "cheating" chess computer mirrors the conflict with The Thing......or else your saying Carpenter needlessly shows us those scene for no narrative reason or purpose....right....) even makes reference to this situation. "Freezing in the snow isn't what he wants" saying this while still drinking in the film.... it's only when he sober that he realizes that the losing situation is actually a draw or else why decide to blow up the base and be in that situation, it's like this to leave enough narrative room to make a sequel but I think Carpenter knew any direct Sequel to the end of the narrative events of The Thing would ruin would ruin the magic the film has. Agian how does the Thing know what Gas tastes or smell like it wouldn't have a human reaction to it as it's not human it merely appears to be so drinking the gas wouldn't yield a human reaction if it was the thing......and most likely you could smell the gas as a human long before drinking.....
I always felt suspicious of Macready for the blood test scene, but disagree with the licked glove/ bottle theory. But due to the nature of the film its valid just because you belive it. The whole point of the film is paranoia and suspicion. So the ending isnt obvious on purpose, there is no concrete answer because its a film thats trying to influence that distrust long after the credits roll. Its childs because he disregards the rule of not sharing food or drink Its Macready because he shares the drink One or the other, neither or both, it doesn't really matter in the end its the paranoia that wins.
John Carpenter said in an interview that there is a definitive answer to who is the thing at the end, it's not just vague so both can be equally true and up to our interpretation, he said if you look closely you should be able to know who it is without a doubt. Granted that's easier said than done and he might be gaslighting us but I think this video has a point when it says only fuchs figured out you shouldn't share food or drink and only tells that to macReady and dies soon after.. Sure if macReady is clean, he could have told it to the others off-screen, but there is never evidence of that happening aside maybe from blair eating canned food but because he is locked in the tool shack he wouldn't have had access to a kitchen anyway so it would make sense they left him a couple cans and for him to eat directly from the cans.
...Right, so presumably taking a drink from a presumably contaminated bottle of vodka was what turned Blair into the thing, NOT performing an alien autopsy without gloves, while chewing on his pencil... I can't call this clickbait because you seem to believe what you're saying, but you certainly didn't prove anything. You've made a lot of assumptions from an admittedly biased starting point. The basis of your entire argument, in fact, rests on the belief that a bunch of guys stuck in a frozen wasteland for an extended period of time would only have one bottle of J&B. Yeah, sorry dude. I ain't buyin' it.
Yeah, at the rate MacReady is throwing them back, there’s no way he’s only got one bottle, especially if he’s got enough to pour into chess computers and pass around to other people.
Here's two things you can't debunk due to them both being a canon to the movie. One) The Thing comics from 1991 was a continuation of the 1982 movie where MacReady and Childs survives the events of the first movie but so does the thing. The Comics follows them trying to take it down with a group of soldiers in first part, second part follows the men trying take it down and finally when they landed in Chile, at some point Childs is infected and trying to frame MacReady. There was another spin off where MacReady is still hunting down the Thing down. The 2) is the Video Game, where you're playing a Special Force Soldier trying to figure out what happened at the outpost. You find the frozen body of Childs but no MacReady. I think the game was trying use this as a Red Herring in the beginning. Towards the end of game, MacReady does appear and not infected while he pilots the Helicopter while you finally kill the Thing. Either way. At point the Comics were considered the True Sequel to the movie, making both Childs and MacReady towards the end of the movie Humans. It was only later in the mini series comics was Childs turned into a Thing. The Current and Accepted Sequel even by Mr. Carpenter himself where Childs froze to death and MacReady helping the Player Character finally finish off the Thing. You either didn't do the research or you didn't want to because it'd disprove your theory but you really didn't prove anything in the end. Nice Video though.
seems feasible that this could've been the way carpenter intended it to end but the studio got involved and made him change the ending. further works of 'canon' not written by the author of the original short story nor Lancaster, but greenlit by some universal executive doesn't necessarily mean the movie wasn't shot to hint at MacReady being The Thing as alluded to in this video. if there's no Kurt Russell there's no potential for a hit sequel.
The only reason I can think of is because the Blair-thing's motive is established as escape because it built the space craft. Mac-thing wants to stay on earth and be discovered. So it's competition, it's his first presumption, self preservation, plus he's also covering up his tracks by blowing up Blair-Gary-Nauls-thing. Other comments and analysis I've seen demonstrate that it will out another to protect itself. So it's implied that Blair thing is like "what are you doing come with us were leaving," and Mac says F U.
If the Thing assimilated MacReady through the J&B bottle and molecular transfer, and not through a physical attack like it did Bennings, why would it be necessary for MacReady's clothing to be shredded and tattered? The Thing rips off the clothes during assimiliation because it can't replicate them. But if the process of assimiliation is internal and slower, why would the clothing be damaged? I actually think finding MacReady's torn jumpsuit and patch is a mark against your theory.
Blair was infected way before he got locked up. When he was dissecting what they brought back, he was poking it with his pencil. Then sticks the pencil in his mouth when hes explaining things.
The best part of these sorts of arguments is that Carpenter succeeded in creating the paranoia in his audience that the characters experienced. There's probably no right or wrong answer to who is the thing at any point. It's brilliant and we're never really going to know for certain. I've come to the opinion that all the dramatic and violent infections are misdirection on the part of the Thing. I agree that just one cell that gets past your immune system and skin can infect you. It is entirely likely that you may be it without being conscious of it since the Thing itself may not be a sentient species. It's very reasonable that Macready is infected early and all this chasing down of chimeric monsters is a distraction to keep the uninfected from destroying everything. I'll probably change my mind again in a year or two so kudos to the master story teller Carpenter for keeping us talking about his movie four decades later.
2 points against this theory though, when palmer turns into the thing and takes windows out of the picture, everyone is tied up except macready so he could of just won right there. And at the end when it's just him and the monster, its 2v1 against childs so why would he blow up the monster.
I have several of these ... He's figured out there is no way out only option left is take care of all the evidence (blow sh1t up) and wait for the resuce team to find 2 "human" bodies to be de-thawed and identified. Why would Childs (being The Thing at the end) not just fry Mac ? Why would Childs take up a drink so casually from a potential murderous Alien being that can infect him ? Are we overthinking it ? Probably ... but it's amazing we're here talking about a 50 year old ... maybe that was the whole point give the audience a good mystery to be talked about for years to come. Mission Success !
Obviously they are both human cus the all movie is about everyone not trusting each other cus of there paranoia, so it's just a poetic ending that they are both human cus they have defeated the Thing just to die from freezing to death cus they are both too paranoid about each other
I think that is not giving Carpenter enough credit. He would definitely do something like that just to further confuse his audience in a movie where uncertainty is the biggest factor. Does not mean I believe the theory, but Mac is not free of suspicion just because he is the main character.
I'm wondering if Carpenter knew. He might be the Thing at the end but pretty sure he wasn't up until that point. Chess has just become movie short hand for ' this protagonist is really clever'
Great assessment, bud! Laid out clear assumptions, sound logic, and walked us down the path to your conclusion with unquestionable evidence. I believe that your conclusion would have to assume that Carpenter betrayed the audience with the blood test. Your assumption appears too complex at that point and if accurate, it’s a cheap betrayal by the director - hard to believe as it’s such a pivotal scene. Regardless you’ve got me seriously considering Mac again after a decade! Great analysis and argument! The J&B and Smirnoff might just be the ‘tell’ that we all need - but the inconsistency of Mac not assimilating when he could have (all others were tied up)is either: he ain’t it; or sloppy on director (director isn’t sloppy)… or we are all missing something. Thanks for this assessment! Subbed!
The one weird thing that makes me agree with this is what MaCready said at the end of the movie... "Lets just wait here a while and see what happens" Well... him and Childs will freeze, which is exactly what The Thing wanted...
Maybe neither Childs nor McReady is the Thing, and that's the irony of the situation tehy find themselves in - They've survived this terrible ordeal, only to resign themselves to the knowledge that distrust and paranoia has doomed them to a slow, freezing death...
Okay. So, He gets Nolls up to his shack, alone, doesn't try to assimilate him. Didn't dispose of the evidence where as someone else might have planted it too frame him, makes a lot more sense. And of course all the trouble Mac goes through in order to prevent the thing from escaping makes no sense. Now you have this interesting theory that he was infected right from the get go? Maybe? The dog/licked gloves plunged into the snow pretty quickly, can't tell me one thing is fine and the other doesn't wash it but okay moving on.. Mac goes with Doc on a chopper flight too the Norwegian base at this time Mac is already infected right? Doesn't infect Copper whilst they are alone, instead brings back more corpses to be examined, if he did the due diligence, he'd have infected Copper at the base, came back with NO evidence of what might've happened and everyone on base would be non the wiser. - Thus guaranteeing 3 Thing monsters on base with everyone else completely unaware of them, their existence etc, waiting out the Storm nice and warm. Sorry man I appreciate the effort on this one but it doesn't hold water.
Interesting theory I've never considered. A few more points to support your theory after watching the film again: 1. The scene before Mac goes and talks with Fuchs, he makes the audio recording. You could argue that he was doing this recording to give himself credibility if someone else discovers the outpost. Typically in movies or video games, people record audio logs as their final sign-off just before doing something that may result in them getting killed (like Mac getting caught killing Fuchs). In the recording, he talks about the shredded clothes with the name missing, saying "it could be anybody. Nobody trusts anyone now". He then thinks about it and re-records the message at this part saying vaguely "i've done everything I can". Maybe him saying this is forecasting that he knows he'll be the last man standing and doesn't want to raise suspicion about everyone else being dead or missing. If he left the recording as "it could be anybody's", that means that he himself could have been the Thing and could draw suspicion to him when he realizes he may have left evidence behind, hence why he deleted it. With his sign-off, he says "RJ MacReady, Helicopter Pilot". This seems unnatural. If this is an official, government research outpost, others would know whose stationed there, and a simple "MacReady, out." would have been sufficient to identify himself in a recording. It's almost as if the Thing was taking what evidence they found to try to build rapport and read what was on the tag ("RJ MacReady") and also the equipment he had in his shack to know he was the pilot and then repeated it. 2. Right after the recording scene, Mac looks around before entering Fuch's office, making sure no one saw him enter. Fuchs clutches his flask when Mac enters and it is also shown in a close-up just before the power goes out, possibly the director's intention to emphasize how paranoid Fuchs was about sharing any drinks and why Mac had to get rid of him. OR another theory is that Fuchs was secretly working on a chemical in the flask that could kill the Thing or possibly an antidote to prevent assimilation. In which case would explain why he was so protective of it and even more reason why Mac wanted to get rid of him. 3. The scene when Nauls, Windows, and MacReady go to search for Fuchs, they are nearly back in the station when Windows notices Fuchs' dead body. You can see MacReady looking around behind them as Windows walks up to the body, probably to make sure no one else is watching. It's also at this point Mac "notices" the light is on in his station. Maybe at this point he realizes it's an opportunity to try to isolate Nauls and assimilate another. Why else would Mac draw attention to his shack and want someone to go with him if he knew his name tag or other evidence was left there? Or maybe he realized that he left the light on by mistake and by bringing someone with him to check it out raises less suspicion. He sends Windows back inside because he wouldn't be able to infect both at the same time. Obviously, the assimilation did not work, as Nauls returns with the clothing with Mac's name. It's only after this time that Mac begins acting paranoid with the dynamite and flamethrower, accusing everyone else of being the Thing, assuming because he knows he was caught. 4. This theory is reaching a bit more, but the blood test scene. They know fire will kill the Thing, but Mac seems confident that his test will work and tells everyone that the Thing will interact with a "hot needle" to survive and will reveal itself. He doesn't make it sound like it's just a wild theory, but knows that it's going to work - how would he know this unless he was the Thing? If it were just a theory, you'd think they would hold a blow torch to the blood to try to replicate it. But his confidence here with just the hot wire is telling. Also, another stretch of a theory, but maybe Mac's flamethrower wasn't really having a "malfunction" and he wanted to wait and see if the thing would quickly assimilate everyone so he held off on getting it going. When he sees that the Thing is taking a while to transform, he then decides to activate it, as if he remained idle the whole time, people would be even more suspicious of how he was quick to shoot his colleague moments earlier but then held off on killing the Thing. The reason for the test is to 1, show everyone he's "not the thing" and take attention away from him, and 2, use the opportunity to summon the Thing to take over others since they were all tied down in a closed room (remember how the dog tried to assimilate all the other dogs when they were locked in a room together?).
Another thing I noticed - when the group chases down Bennings in the snow and catches him morphing, he focuses his attention on Mac the entire time. The Thing howls and stares directly at him, almost like a cry for help from the creature towards Mac.
The computer doesn't cheat, it outplayed him. He then reacts completely irrationally... that's not the indication of the personality you think it is...
Guys, guys, guys. Alot of the things brought up, I answered in my response video. Before commenting, go watch that video. I will most likely discuss your points in that video. Thank you for your time!
Update: RESPONSE VIDEO IS OUT
I will be doing a response video to most of these comments, so thats why I'm not replying to all of them! Im happy to see all this passion for this classic horror movie! Love the rubtles and theories i havent considered!
there's a very little known tele-film called A Cold Night's Death (1973) that I believe may have possibly inspired the atmosphere of The Thing (1982) I'm well aware that this is a very bold statement but there are shots and elements of the film that look almost identical, it's a pretty impeccable film that's far too underrated, I'd recommend checking it out.
Wouldn't the alcohol kill single cells? Not many life forms survive long in anything over 40% alcohol. That's the one logical caveat I have, other than it would change it's Lovecraftian elements too much. Scholarly, it would be applying the late 2000s-early 2010s the hero is the villain trope to the story, but I am not going to argue that here. Otherwise, this theory is a good reinterpretation of what could have happened in the film.
@@AbrasiousProductions Yeah, but that film was probably inspired by the 1957 version of The Thing (From Outer Space). There are shots in the middle of that film that were recreated in this film.
@@americanandpinay I'm aware that The Thing (1982) is inspired by the 1951 version as well as the novel but what I'm proposing is that A Cold Night's Death (1973) inspired the film's atmosphere and some of it's cinematography
What I love about the ambiguous ending is everyone gets to take whatever ending they want and no one can take that away. I like to think Mac was The Thing.
The fact that people are still coming up with theories about this movie made in 1982 really shows the Brilliance of it
nah, shows how lazy people that say they love this movie actually are.
Probably top 3 horrors of all time. Alien is there too, purely for inventing suspense horror. The other is open to opinion but for me it's Halloween. Top 3, nailed on.
@@davidstanton4716 I'm sorry do you actually think alien invented "suspense horror"? I would Google Alfred Hitchcock if I were you or if you don't like something that young maybe Google Fritz Lang's M or Google the movie Nosferatu it's a silent film. Believe It or not they've been making movies for over 100 years.
I do like your top three horror films list though
It makes you think. And the theories are fascinating. Remember, the thing can take on any shape which means inherently it has no shape. It’s molecular. It “infects” others, but it is not really turning into the being it assimilates. That means every person infected is actually dead. The reason it turns into amorphous globs of horror is because it cannot hold the correct molecular structure of Earth organisms very long. Could have something to do with air, or the oxygen content of air. Antarctica oxygen level is not very high. So maybe if it got to a civilized area where there are more organisms, it could survive much longer.
@@taoist32 right, it doesn’t turn into the person, the person is turned into it.
However, this animal does not have an issue with the cold and it appears to simply go to sleep if there is no prey available. It isn’t weak and it isn’t suffering from any disease. It also doesn’t quickly lose the ability to mimic earth creatures, it stays in disguise for as long as it wants to.
When attacked, the bodies take damage and are disfigured, but this is not a detriment to the organism. The various body parts can simple separate and attack.
In fact this organism is ridiculously over powered. All it had to do was divide itself into a bunch small animals and quickly attack the entire team. They would have no defense.
A compelling theory. However I can't help but notice your entire theory is invalidated by the fact that you own funko pops. Have a nice day.
😂😂
Lmao poor guy
😅 I own a lot of funkos. Lol😢
Hater 😂
Cris Parker with 3C Film owns walls full of Funko’s. He just hit 600K subs and is an established reviewer..but you right😂
Among the many problems with this theory, I think here's the biggest:
The entire plot of the film makes no logical sense if MacReady is the Thing from the beginning. As evidenced by Blair's scheme at the end, the Thing (which seems to exhibit some sort of collective consciousness or at least shared memories and motives between its constituents) wants to escape the Antartic base. If MacReady, the base's chopper pilot, is assimilated long before the rest of the base is alerted to the Thing's presence, he has no reason to not just fly off. He certainly also has no reason to investigate the Norwegian base, or to be the most active character in hunting down the creature.
My impression is that this is a classic case of confirmation bias; you've decided you "know" the truth and try to force all the contradictory evidence to conform with it. This is how you can take a scene as unambiguous as MacReady's "fuck you" and spin it into a cartoon conversation between him and the screeching monstrosity that just tried to kill him.
EDIT: I've also just realised you misunderstood the "cheeky bitch" scene completely. MacReady's BAD at chess, he has to beat the computer by bluntly destroying it. I think the scene is to establish his character and the tension on site even before the monster, but if it foreshadows anything it's the destruction of the base to stop the Thing.
Ok, let's break this down...
Unless you flipped some of the footage or didn't show the right clips, the Thing licked Bennings' left glove, and Bennings grabbed the bottle with his right hand. Even if the same glove got licked, Bennings does not touch the mouth of the bottle, but the neck, making it more difficult for someone to hypothectically come in contact with any saliva that might've been placed on the bottle.
Given the flaw above, the key being picked up by MacReady is purely a hypothesis based on nothing more than the character's presence.
Watching the movie from the beginning with the assumption that MacReady is the Thing, and then using any and all circumstantial evidence to prove that preconceived notion is literally confirmation bias. That said, the Smirnoff WOULD be strong evidence, if everything else said leading up to this wasn't without merit. The footage shown of the dog licking the glove opposite to the one grabbing the J&B, and the flawed assumption based on a misinterpretation of that footage, acts counter to your thesis.
I'd say burning one's self to prevent them from being turned into the Thing and then turning others is as smart as Blair destroying all modes of communication and transportation to prevent the Thing from spreading. If Fuches was put into a no-win situation, I'm sure his analytical mind would rather he sacrifice himself to give the others a chance to not be turned.
You make a lot of assumptions about the light in the shack, which is why you shouldn't go into the movie with assumptions and try to prove those assumptions right. Your own assumptions are forcing you to disregard MacReady saying he turned the light off.
You also are willing to accept that things happen offscreen to go against was we see onscreen in the blood test scene, but automatically believe that the ripped clothes truly belonged to the avid chess player who still maintains his strategic mind even after being assimilated. There's also the possibility of MacReady maybe following Knowles' footsteps in the snow to make his way back, or any other method that also happens offscreen. Like, sure, things can happen offscreen, but in order for the movie to make sense, we need to keep our assumptions of what happens offscreen consistent with the rest of the movie.
It is far more likely to assume that MacReady cut himself in front of the rest of the group for the blood test, than to assume that everyone else just buys the already suspicious MacReady totally used his own blood in that scene. Also, if "Thing MacReady" made contact with the blood from earlier, he would have assimilated that blood, which could not have been the case given what we see in the blood test scene. He would have had to use a vial or other container, which would be difficult to get everyone else who DID actually cut themselves to trust.
"Why didn't Blair-Thing attack MacReady?" Because MacReady is the point-of-view character for the audience. Similar to why the xenomorph didn't kill Ripley in Alien, if Blair-Thing took MacReady, MacReady wouldn't be the main character. And assuming MacReady saying "yeah, fuck you, too!" wasn't a one-liner is again showing your confirmation bias. Why would the Things attack each other? That doesn't make as much sense as MacReady still being human. MacReady surviving a fiery explosion is actually stronger evidence of him not being the Thing, give that a heated up wire can cause such an adverse reaction to the Thing.
With the J&B at the end, I refer you again to the footage we actually see in this video. We do not see Bennings grab the bottle with the same glove that was licked, therefore, we cannot assume that the bottle assimilated MacReady when you propose it did. Your entire case falls apart because the footage you show doesn't support your own conclusion. I think it's far more likely that MacReady expected a human Childs to decline drinking from the bottle out of fear of assimilation. So when "Childs" eagerly drinks, he knows Childs is the Thing trying to use the bottle to assimilate him.
I commend you for being as thorough as you were, but your entire argument falls apart from the start, and only tumbles further due to confirmation bias leading you to make grander assumptions than what the film intended.
I had a similar thought when I saw the dog lick his left glove. I also feel that if fire can harm the thing, then wouldn't an alcoholic drink with a high enough alcohol content also be harmful/painful if ingested?
Honestly the biggest piece of evidence, that he wasn't a thing, is the fact that he literally had everyone else tied up and vulnerable. This was Gary, Childs, and Nauls. He literally would've had no reason to keep playing the game. It would've been a checkmate at that point.
Literally
Actually, there is much more evidence for Childs to be the Thing; namely the coat. When Mac, Nauls and Garry leave to go after Blair and they leave Childs to man the door, you see a coat on the peg next to Childs that is identical to the one he's wearing. The next time we see that same location, the coat is gone.
Also, Childs ran off into the snowstorm _before_ the generator went out, meaning that Blair-Thing had to be _inside_ the building when Childs claims he saw him outside. Occam's Razor demands we conclude that: Blair-Thing ambushed Childs after the trio left, the new Childs-Thing took that identical coat off the peg and put it on before running out into the snowstorm to find somewhere to hibernate (or maybe help ambush the survivors), while Blair-Thing sabotaged the generator.
If MacReady really had been the Thing, why would he leave such an obvious clue as the long johns? Isn't it more likely that Palmer-Thing snuck out and planted the long johns to sow distrust of MacReady, the only human who's shown a calm head and rational thinking to counter its moves?
And if Mac and Blair both were Things, why go at each other to the death when they could just team up against Childs? We never saw Norris-Thing or Palmer-Thing sabotaging each other.
Also, having the movie's theme song play over the final scene isn't the slamdunk you think it is. It's a simple movie-making technique.
The coat is a distraction. Fools the common viewer. The MacReady Thing checks out after reviewing the sequel. Sequel? You might ask. There is a video game.
Ur sum kinda dummy. I feel sorry for ur lil screwy kids.@@shaynefowley5689
Child's play.
I always liked the idea that neither Macready or Childs were the thing, because it feeds into the whole theme of paranoia running through the movie. Macready and Childs seemed to butt heads in almost every scene they were in together, even before the dog scene. It seems fitting for the movie that they are both human, but they trust each other so little (and each has attempted to kill the other at least once: Childs by attempting to kill Macready when he busted into the camp, Macready pointing a gun at Childs because he refused to obey him) so these two dudes that almost killed each other are stuck dying together, it's a fitting and solid end I think.
I thing if they both were the thing but adopted the paranoia of the humans, it would be more poetic. I talk about that in the follow up video.
The biggest problem with the theory that is the entire base of thinking MacReady is the thing is that if you look at how Bennings grips the bottle, he essentially covers the entire top part of the bottle including a good chunk of the tip where you drink out of, his mouth essentially touches the infected gloves when he takes a drink. As we already know, Bennings isn't infected until later in the movie, so that theory is literally dead in the water.
Also, about the blood test. Just because it happens off screen doesn't mean it doesn't happen. MacReady is surrounded by people who have their eyes LOCKED in on him, watching every little thing he does. There is no way that MacReady did not cut himself because if he didn't then there would be an outcry from the others that he didn't do it. Theres no possible way that if he was the thing that he could get away with a sleight of hand as well as the fact that I don't believe that the Thing could fill a pocket of human blood without it being infected mainly because of the fact its neither confirmed nor denied that it can do that. Which would still allow it to be argued but for me personally, I don't believe its a thing it can do.
Interesting points. I will look more into the bennings point. And while people had eyes on him, he was the one in control of the situation. And the uncontaminated blood was tampered with, proving that someone in the group new of a form of this test. So MacReady would have had a motive to keep some for insurance. And he would have been the only one able to 'sleight of hand' human blood into the dish being as I stated, he was in control. Maybe he already had a dish put away. He's a chess player, blood was removed, he figured out how to infect people without ever getting caught, he came up with the test himself may I add. Also very quickly. While there is no on screen proof, I believe there is enough evidence of him tampering with the plan he created. And given the scenes and evidence I put forward, the simplest answer tends to be the right one. But it is just a theory
@@2DimmMedia Well, Doc was the one who came up with the first idea of a form of blood test which is why it lead to the uncontaminated blood being tampered with. MacReady only came up with his version of the blood test after seeing how the Thing acted like a separate being trying to survive when different parts were threatened.
Despite being in control during the blood test, I honestly don't think if MacReady was infected he would have been able to do anything sneaky. Every single person that isn't Palmer, were not infected. When theres that many uninfected people who have their eyes locked in on you, watching every single thing you do, even the slighest movement, theres no way he'd get away with it. He could be in as much control as he wants but he can't stop peoples eyes from seeing what he doesn't want them to see.
@@2DimmMedia "I believe there is enough evidence" is not evidence. Why would a Thing suggest a test, carry it out, and expose a fellow Thing in the process; and tell Windows to torch it before torching and blowing it up. Sorry, chess strategy does not explain every action taken contrary to what a Thing would do.
@@2DimmMedia All of that is irrelevant. You are saying Macready was the Thing at the time of the blood test, then don't you think once everyone is tied up the thing could just kill everybody? I mean they are all tied up right? Then McCready could send out a distress signal and get a rescue team to take him to civilization. There would be no need to burn the place down and then freeze he could simply wait in luxury for a rescue team. Your entire video while entertaining has been debunked.
well it does, they trust macready now, the thing feels no pity over its own parts (other things) cause its all the same and there is more of it, to suggests it wouldnt blow the coverof or wouldnt kill other thing parts is kinda weird, it totally would cause it has an endgoal@@castlew4162
Surely you can't just ignore the fact that Bennings takes a swig straight after being handed the whiskey, therefore would be infected first, except he wasn't infected.
DAMN CHILD! That is some 360 noscope right there... I tend to cling to Childs being da thang, as he not only lacks breath, but lacks the gleam in the eye, and the Benny doesnt breathe in the scene debunked here, he is yelling... The thing may not need to breathe via lungs, but if it uses the functions of the body, like making sound with mouth, it must rely on basics of the body... It cant make oral noise without relying on an inhalation to be able to yell out... You know, an empty balloon doesnt fart all over the place, you have to blow it up and let it go for it to make the funny noise and flutter about... Same with humans/thing-ed-humans...
Tho, the rest of the theory does hold some water... The bottle may be aringarosa, but it aint 100% leaky, other than at mouth of the bottle, and the thing theme playing when childs takes a swig is quite the conundrum, it could be a red herring of its own, but it could also confirm that McThing is in fact the thing..
Cheers m8!
Nah, Mac was the only one that could leave at will and made it. If he wanted to infect everybody he could have easily. Of them all, he is the only one that couldn't be the thing at any given time.
Two points you didn't cover: 1. MacReady hid audio recordings explaining what had happened so that the rescue team could find them while investigating, hopefully before the bodies were recovered and thawed. There's no reason for a Thing MacReady to do this with no other characters around to know about it. But importantly, this means a hypothetical human Mac has a backup plan in case he isn't able to kill everyone who's infected. 2. If Childs wasn't the Thing, his safest play would have been to torch MacReady because hypothetically human Childs DOESN'T have a backup plan in case the Thing freezes and is thawed by the rescue team, so rather than sitting back and letting Mac freeze (either to death as human or as a Thing), he would have torched him. This would be doubly the case if your Things fighting Things theory were true, since Thing Childs would definitely kill Thing Mac with the flamethrower. Therefore the most likely endgame is Thing Childs who believes he has already won because they will both freeze and be thawed (not knowing about Mac's backup plan) and human MacReady pretending to believe that Childs is human so that Thing Childs won't suspect that Mac has a backup plan in place.
True, tho the most likely thing is Childs waits a minute (Mac hasn't slept for 2 days and will fall asleep in a few minutes, tho it doesn't matter) attacks and assimilates mac, makes 6 dogs (he needs mac's body mass and knowledge of bases--mac is a helicopter pilot) then they run and the 6 dogs eat their way down until 1 is left (or however many) and then it starts again and they build a ship in a week (Blair built the ship in one day) and leave the planet.
@@petecoogan I think even though the thing can survive in the cold it's body can't function at a certain point, I don't think it would be able to build a ship without a place to heat up..
Really like this theory, they basically both think they won. I think mac's plan could go wrong if child assimilates him though, it seems they get the memory too while copying them so the thing could dig up the recordings. But I think there is a possibility infected child really thinks mac doesn't know so he doesn't see him as a threat and doesn't care to just have both of them freeze.
@@k0lpA it would in another camp. It makes 6 dogs and runs to the next camp. Mac knows where the camps are. Dogs run 125 miles per day in -40 degree weather.
1) It could be that thing mac did not make the audio recordings for a search team but rather for anyone else in his crew suspecting him of being the thing, if they did find one of those recordings he would be seen as trustworthy and in the clear.
Another possibility for the recordings is that he did make them for a search team, but only to gain trust from them when they come there to investigate. He later decides it's too risky to leave thing bodies around since people will not want to touch them. Therefore he decides to burn down every THING and the entire base, destroying all evidence of an alien creature at all.
2) This is a little hard to explain. My best bet as to why he didn't torch Mac is that he has no reason to distrust him after he did the blood test. Plus he talks to Mac while being on guard before he sits down with him. Mac convinces him fully by saying "maybe we shouldn't make it out", at first he makes childs off guard by questioning where he was, something a normal person would do; the thing may just be like "oh hey childs" according to childs thought process. Childs being a human would not think that the thing wants to be frozen. Childs never went to the extraction site so he may just assume cold will kill it. He is also guessing if Mac is a real person or not, notice how he still does not move closer to Mac to try to assimilate, even though Mac is unarmed he keeps his distance. If there is a chance that Mac is human and childs knows this, then he may not want to torch Mac Incase one of them makes it our alive.
WRONG. Go watch the special features on Big Trouble in Little China. John Carpenter and Kurt Russell talk about the Thing and the ending. According to Carpenter himself, neither Mcreedy and Childs are the thing. Sorry to burst your bubble
That's a fact I pull out to blow people away.
Also, Mcreedy survives canonically and goes on to have one other encounter with an alien species.
@@Ryan-wr8fxHe's been out there a while. Meaning his internal body temperature is closer to that of the outside than McCready's, whose breath lingers far longer and is still in the shot. So when Childs breathes out, it mixes and isn't readly visible.
This can be easily tested by being outside this winter and comparing your own breath from when you just walk out, to that of being out for 20 minutes, and further still to being outdoors in the cold for an hour.
@Humongous420 That special feature was released well after all the debate and speculation of "who really is the Thing". This along with Carpenter's back-and-forth over the years makes him an unreliable narrator to his own work. Deliberately so. This was likely the answer given so people would stop bugging the man so he could get back to work.
Technically the bottle infected him but idk maybe it was just a plot hole
He's gone back and forth on that for years. There's no definitive answer.
The reason why I think Mac isn't the thing is cause he laughs. he shows emotion, everyone is very animated until they are assimilated. They all have a personality, after they are just kind of dulled down.
This has been well documented in the movie as each person has a loud or more beaming personality and once infected their personality is duller and more sedated like. They don't remain loud or boisterous. Look at Windows for example and Dr. Blair becomes very sullen and recluse.
MacReady is not the thing.
My evidence is that I like MacReady therefore he cannot be the thing.
I'm sure everyone can agree on this as my case is quite solid.
I think this is compelling all the way up to the blood test scene. And Not because that couldn't be Macready's blood, but because he had already won at that point. He had everyone tied up with a flamethrower on them. . . So why wouldn't he just blast them? Why would he go through the whole charade just to blow everything up anyway at the end, right in the next scene??
Right. Why wouldn't he just lick all of their faces like a husky!?
...because he wasn't a thing, clearly.
This correctly defeats the entire video! The fact of the matter is the film was never designed to be "figured out". The film is an allegory about paranoia no fan Theory will ever truly explain the movie because all fan theories try to prove a particular character either was or was not the thing and that answer is not knowable
Interesting theory, but you have to exclude one major detail in order for it to work: at no point in the film does a confirmed Thing physically attack another confirmed Thing. At all. Not a single one partakes in destroying another one. Not even when Palmer noticed the Norris-head Thing. MacReady was the one that killed it, and he killed all of the others. The Thing's driving desire is to spread its influence, especially once it's been discovered. Palmer literally infected Windows because he was discovered. Also, at the beginning when the dog licked Bennings's glove that saliva would have frozen near instantly before MacReady handed him the bottle. That's also assuming that MacReady had only one bottle of Scotch there, which wouldn't really make any sense given the length of time they'd be stationed out there. And as one final hitch in the theory: why would MacReady destroy the spaceship that Blair built? Why destroy Blair-Thing at the end after everyone else had been killed? Why not infect Nauls when they were both alone in Mac's cabin? No, Mac wasn't a Thing.
Was basically coming to say this. It's definitely an interesting theory but MacReady killing other Things doesn't make sense, especially when there's no one else around.
For me, it's because the blair thing planned to either escape earth in its ship or fly to a populated area. That would have likely been picked up on radar and raise alarm. Macready thing's whole strategy is stealth, blend in. So it's really a conflict of the strategies. An argument in the things mind played out via experimentation of its parts.
it makes sense, since it makes no sense to esacpe to freedom with the escape team maybe and having a fleshmountain with you@@alexs1640
Your other points make sense. But the frozen saliva debunk doesn't hold up. Because the original split head body was frozen for a while and still was able to assimilate once it warmed up inside.
@@alexs1640Maybe the Mac-thing was like "there can only be one." Or "Im Dirty Dan".😅
If Mac is the Thing then the Thing plays chess poorly and makes nonsensical moves.
Why would Mac need to fool anyone with the blood test? They're already restrained so why not just infect them?
Why fight and kill the Blair thing after dealing with Nauls and Palmer? It serves no purpose as only Childs remains who could be lied to or just jumped pretty easily.
Side Note:
I'm pretty sure the computer didn't cheat. Mac accuses it of cheating and destroys it as the movie's way of revealing an important character trait. He's a sore loser and doesn't except defeat. It comes full circle when he destroys the outpost even though it's a death sentence.
you dont get that destroying the outpost was his way to make sure this creature didnt make it OUT of that outpost?
Mac CANT be the Thing at the beginning, the dog hasnt been taken in yet. So yes, character development.
@@danielgriffith8911 I understand why he destroys the outpost. I also understand that the outpost represents a metaphorical chess board. Mac flips the board over rather than allow his opponent a win. Hed rather they both lose. This is the whole point the computer game scene sets up.
I really like the thought you've put into it. That fact that one can find details that can support you theory speaks to how much thought Carpenter put into the film, and why it's so good.
However, I don't think MacReady is The Thing for one reason: Him trying to kill the Thing monster at the end serves no purpose. If MacReady is the Thing, and he believes the rest of the group is dead, he can simply walk away and let the monster freeze. Thereby ensuring an even greater chance of it spreading once a rescue party shows up. If he thinks Childs is still alive, then leaving the monster alive improves the chances of Childs stumbling across the monster and being assimilated. MacReady could simply have walked way, if he were the thing, and still run into Childs and give him the bottle. MacReady killing the monster is a useless act with no benefit if MacReady is the thing. By burning it, he is lessening the chances of survival for the thing. not improving it. At that point, there's no point to play the chess game anymore.
That said, MacCready MAY have been infected in the film, but it hadn't yet affected and consumed him by the end of the film. His actions against the monster tell me that he's still the human MacCready desperately trying the destroy the thing.
I've always though the gasoline bottle theory was dumb, as you see MacReady lift the bottle up to drink when Childs approaches. I believe that MacReady smiles when Childs drinks is because Childs should know not to share the bottle. MacReady thinks Childs doesn't care about assimilation because he's already the thing.
Finally a bottle theory I agree with. I think everyone who says there’s gas in the bottle are clearly overthinking it as much as this guy in the video. It’s pretty clear to me Child’s should have known not to share a drink. To think The Thing wouldn’t notice or care it’s drinking gasoline is just asinine, if the organism can copy human speech and access memories then it wouldn’t be brain dead enough to not notice drinking gas
@@burn1none Childs IS the thing at the end. Not because of any stupid bottle theory but because he disappears for the last part of the movie and when he comes back he's wearing a gray/white jacket instead of the blue one he had the entire movie.
@@anitaremenarova6662 yeah I agree
If the thing was Macgready, especially from the beginning, he would've taken the helicopter out ASAP to go to a more densely populated area.
He's indisputably infected from the dog spit in his bottle.
Like the Thing knows how or where to fly a helicopter across fn Antarctica lol naw
Better to create a small army first
@@joshsmith9572 only problem with your theory is if he’s indisputably the Thing because of the dog spit, how does he fly the helicopter twice after that? Once to the Norwegian camp and once to the spacecraft crash site..
Why if the thing wanted to return to its ship? Also one of the things was trying to build one in a shed. They don't know how to fly helicopters. Can you fly one just off rip?
Major holes in your logic: 1. MacReady made a recording to document what really happened there. An infected MacReady would not have done so as it would want it's existence a secret, not known. 2. An infected MacReady would have contaminated the knife everyone used to cut themselves with for the blood test. The blood would have passed the test, meanwhile the now infected hosts would begin to change but without suspicion because they just passed the blood test. The rest of the movie from then on would be pointless, as he would have already won by simultaneously infecting everyone unknowingly. 3. Following your assertion that it can transmit via saliva, then MacReady would have simply LICKED the silverware, bowls, cups, coffee pot ect in the kitchen and simply waited for everyone to eat breakfast/lunch/dinner. The movie would have been over 100x faster than it played out. Hell, spit one good loogey in the water supply and doom the entire place. He could then simply sit, and play chess for a day, while everyone changed around him. Checkmate.
On top of that, it doesn't make sense that he's both trying to infect everyone, but effectively fights against (and kills) the infected ones.
@@theslay66 I had more (like how he claims MacReady was already infected while he's playing chess, but the infected dog hadn't even made it to their camp yet.) I was just using the criteria he laid out to illustrate his flawed logic.
@@alexandersears8538 He didn't say he was infected while he was playing chess. He said MacReady was established to be a chess player. It's a Chekov's Gun scenario. The Thing replicates the personality of the people it assimilates, meaning it would also get the personality trait of being a chess player, and theoretically the skills to go along with that.
@@stifflered No you didnt hear him. He explicitly said he believes MacReady was already a Thing when he was playing Chess and thats why he poured his drink into the computer. Re-watch. Ill wait.
Good points
You know a movie is an all time great when someone who wasn’t born in 1982 spends 40 minutes discussing it in detail. Good work 2Dimm!
Thank you! And yes, this movie is well ahead of its time!
I’m not going to say you’re right or wrong. I don’t know one way or the other. The point of the movie, and one reason why I love it, is the vagueness at the end.
However you raise very interesting points and I love the effort you put into this. You make me want to go back and re-watch yet again this phenomenal movie.
It’s people like you doing things with movies like this that really makes me appreciate how well cinematography was done back in the day. I highly doubt we’ll be talking about The Marvels 40 years from now.
If MacReady was the thing, why would he fight the thing, especially at the end of the movie?
Before I see the video I should tell you that almost nothing macready does benefits the thing, why would he burn Palmer thing if he could just let him assimilate everyone else? Why would he kill Blair-Gary-nauls-thing if he was a thing? And his blood disappearing really means nothing, as it could just be a continuity error like childs coats being changed. But I think this is a nice video to watch, and you deserve a lot more views for this because it can mark a pretty good discussion
Thank you! I'll look into that point also. Love the idea!
my answer wouldbbe it's playing the long game. technically ever cell of the thing is the thing so it was willing to lose a few "limbs" in the process as a diversion to ensure it makes it in the long run. i'm not saying this theory is exactly what happened, it's just a fun thought experiment to me, but that's the answer to that question.
It was never explained to the audience or the characters how 'The Thing' thinks; just how it assimilates and only that. It is entirely possible there is one 'main Thing' and the rest are just runoff/offspring of sort. Everyone it showed that blatantly got infected started to work on a more basic level of cognition, and also independent of each other. There's an old trope that the most dangerous vampire (the head one) hides in plain sight, and is the person you least suspect. Inspiration could have been drawn from that, and it would have been genius to create an army of derpy soldiers, just to inevitably help kill them and win favor with the survivors in hopes of being rescued and brought back to civilization.
I'm still on the fence about this theory, but it's a fun mental exercise. The biggest thing winning me over is how the camera really focuses on MacReady giving people alcohol, like that's supposed to be important for some reason.
this, i actually think its totally what happened tho, dimm really persuaded me on that, other will believe in other theories thats fine.@@drdyer23
I like the theory. I think the same argument could be made for the final scene where Mac is testing Childs by offering the drink. When Childs accepts the bottle, Mac knows he's a Thing and chuckles nihilistically because he knows that humanity is fucked.
Carpenter himself said Mac wasn't infected....
nuff said
I have an unpopular theory: Childs was telling the truth.
Neither of them are a Thing and John Carpenter only added the unexplained absence of Childs to create an ambiguous ending for people to debate forever.
The Thing was defeated, Macready and Childs froze to death, end of story.
That’s not an unpopular theory, just don’t hear about it much cuz it’s not sexy
I've always thought exactly that way. With this difference that Macready and Childs will be rescued.
But Mr. 2Dimm Media also has a point that is interesting.
Hmm...I don't know, Man. There's a bit of a hitch in your theory about how McCready gets infected from the bottle. Like you said, the moment the dog licks his glove and he subsequently gets shot, can't be the moment of initial infection for Bennings. Because we see Bennings get attacked and absorbed by the creature later in the film. It also couldn't have been the moment McCready got infected from the bottle. Or that the bottle got contaminated. Keep in mind that, when Bennings gets shot, the exact same glove the dog licked is the one he puts to his open bullet wound in that moment. McCready then rushes over to him, and hands him the bottle of liquor. If there weren't enough alien salivary cells on Bennings' glove to infect him when he puts it to an OPEN BULLET WOUND, then why should we think there'd be enough to left on the bottle to infect McCready when he drinks from it? The Thing wouldn't have needed to attack Bennings later in the film, if it got him when the dog licked his hand. Because it would've infected Bennings the moment he put his contaminated hand to his bleeding leg.
Edit: Also, now that I think about it...Due to the creature's visceral reaction when it comes into contact with extreme heat or fire, and all of the creature's cells reacting that way no matter how far away they are from one another, there's no way McCready could've been the Thing and also been goin' around burning all the infected with the flamethrower. Hell, if he got infected that early in the movie, there's no way his body wouldn't have reacted during the blood test.
I thought that as well. Good point.
If MacCready was the thing there never would have been a blood test. There would have been a proposed blood test, then everyone tied to a chair, then McCready/Thing would have killed everyone, movie over, theory debunked!
Not going to try and dispute your theory but anytime someone’s argument is “if you think differently than what my theory supports, your stupid” kinda makes your evidence fall flat.
No it doesn't, that sounds like superstition rather than logic.
its called a joke
obviously any argument has to assume some facts. When I say 1 + 1 = 2 I am assuming 1 = 1. Obviously I do not have to preface my argument 1+1=2 with objective knowns (1=1) because it is already agreed by everyone. This is not always intuitive when forming an argument and it needed to be stated in this case for his argument to make any sense to someone not familiar with the logic of his argument.
@@sea-bass- bro what are you on about
Dude is clearly joking about the "stupid" stuff bro chill
Everytime I've heard the writers and crew get questioned about these theories, their response is always the same.
"I don't know. We didn't even know when we were making it."
So the true answer, is there is no answer.
It's called a sequel. It was a video game. Confirms Mac was the thing the whole time. His blood didn't wig out because he has carrier status and non of the things transformation abilities.
@@aaronpop0083 What? If I'm remembering correctly.... there is no mention of MacReady in the game aside from the beginning stuff with the tape and then he shows up at the end... nothing confirmed he was a Thing.
@@Evilshtt353 if you remember the plot of the game, they were trying to keep the transformation effects without the consciousness being lost too. Only reason they could do that was because Mac has carrier status. The game takes place 3 months later. Child's body is burnt to the bone. Mac only survived the cold because he's infected. Believe it or not they used to tell stories without having to spoon feed you all the information.
@@aaronpop0083 So no actual information. Got it.
@@Evilshtt353 there's plenty of information but if your that dense you need them to spell it out for you then maybe the thing isn't the type of movie you should consider yourself a fan of.
The Childs/Macready discussion is pointless, they're both human. During the entire movie the Thing acts the same: it wastes no time in attacking someone as soon as they are alone. Keeping that in mind, for what reason would it decide to stop and have a casual conversation with a human at the end of the movie?
how is it pointless if you're wrong? lol. the scene is deliberately left open but if you use your noggin real hard you can see how macready was administering a test using the scotch, not unlike the opening scene when he gives the scotch to the "cheating bitch" computer.
@@dontcare3 How I'm wrong? I'm just pointing out what has been clearly established in the movie, instead of making stuff up. Childs has no reason to pretend to be human, according to the Thing's behavior throughout the movie and MacReady is obviously not the Thing. Both are human.
Interesting observation.
The thing needs time to assimilate. Thats why childs asks if he was the only one that made it. But when macreedy doesnt answer the question it desides to bide its time, because if someone stumbled on him while asimilataing it would be check mate.
You also forgot the whole cut scene where MacReady said "It's Thinging time!" which they took out because he didn't go on to Thing all over the place until after the movie ended.
The first argument here based in reality lmao
Just to clarify the Thing replicates/assimilates other lifeforms on a Cellular level, not a molecular level, you should use "Cellular" in place of the term "Molecular"
Interesting theory however when Macready has everyone tied up there is no reason for gaining trust or trying to manipulate them. He has everyone tied up with the business end of his flamethrower pointed at them, he could've just killed and or infected all of them right then and there, u don't need to gain trust of people u have at ur mercy!
Maybe the creature doesn't want to burn (or even kill in general) bodies, because it needs them for food or for spreading around?
@VortechBand killing and even more so infecting is literally what the thing does! Think about it bro it's ligit purpose is to take over the human race, again if he has everyone tied up there's no reason for manipulation or gaining trust, there's no one left to fool, the mission at hand is accomplished, it wants to take over the whole camp, Macready was not the thing my guy
The problem is you have to assume that at least one of the humans are paying attention when macready cuts his hand for the blood test. Otherwise someone will call it out. Childs wouldnt of accepted that.
If they can make fake make blood why didnt palmer do it to? They would of found zero things... because the test would be useless.
The fact that macready blows up the final thing means there is no way he is a thing. The things only come into conflict with each other when there are organisms to imitate and trick.
There are other issues with your explanations but these 3 things cannot be ignored.
I don't think McCready is the Thing either, but..... The seeds of doubt have been planted.
I thought it was a stupid idea until the scene in which McCready leaves Blair's hut and the camera focuses on the vodka. This could just have been done as a cool shot. It could also have been JC telling us who the Thing was.
As to the blood test, maybe that Thing was sacrificing itself as part of some plan to take suspicion away from McCready..
However, the thing which makes me still think McCready is human is the battle at the end. By the time he confronts the big one everyone else is gone, there would be no reason to continue with the deception. It's a great theory though, and I have doubts now.
If MacReady was the Thing, wouldn’t he have just assimilated them all once he tied them down?
Great point. I still like the theory but this is hard to argue against. That whole sequence becomes the most unnecessary game of 4D chess ever
My theory about this is that neither Childs nor McCreedy are the thing because they both drink the alcohol. It's established in the movie that the thing will avoid pain at all costs. As you demonstrated in the video whiskey is a very uncomfortable thing to drink; and the fact they could drink it without freaking out means they weren't assimiliated.
It wasn't alcohol. It was gasoline. The bottles were molotov cocktails.
McCreedy gave it to Childs as a test.
While i agree with the base behind your theory, that neither of them are the thing, Im like 70% certain Mcreedy swapped the drinks for gasoline.
@@-Zer0Dark- gasoline would have the same effect
@@-Zer0Dark- He didn't carry a flask did he? He kept "one last drink" to go out in style, but saw his escape at the last moment, and took the drink with him.
@@-Zer0Dark- we...must...rewatch...movie....FOLLOW THE ALCOHOL!!!!!!!!
I'm still of the opinion that neither of them are the thing and they're just two dudes sitting and freezing to death together
Well thought out. I do have one significant plot hole though. Why would McReady actually perform the blood test if he was the thing? He has everyone hostage and tied up (except for windows) so why bother doing the test? If he was the thing, he would have picked Palmer to be "untied" while everyone else is captive. Then at that point, infection time. Blair is already infected at this point and the only one not in the room. The Thing is not aggressive to its own kind, so why setup a scenario to 'out' Palmer? Why even after that bother to follow through with the testing after torching Windows and Palmer? Even if cellular infection was the original plan, the Thing still goes out of its way to directly infect people even when its a risk. Its not like Windows was disinfecting the blade he used on everyone. If it was Palmer, he could have left a few cells when he cut each and every person, and not even have to perform any 'tests'.
Yes, the blood test, and how carbon-based cells can't survive in alcohol is the biggest hole in the hypotheses of this video.
@@steelcitypicturesbut the thing isn't carbon based
@@pointysidedownthe thing has to be carbon based or else it wouldn't be able to assimilate carbon based lifeforms.
Because it’s the perfect subterfuge to have the humans believe he is also human.
Did you see how “his blood” was drawn?
It’s the “weak point” of the argument, but if he was the thing he was the blood saboteur and he could have set it up. So it hold up to speculation but we need to see the unseen scene to prove or disprove.
Sacrifice your pawns first ,every other thing is a pawn and on the board!!!
I'm going to be honest, I don't like your style, man. You're saying things like you're 100% right and calling everybody else stupid ?
You have some good theories, but overall I think you're overthinking.
McReady was the typical 80's badass hero. The chess, for me symbolized, he hates losing and doesn't give a fuck. Also at the end the drink scene, just how should I put it. That was just a "I'm fucking tired, don't give a single fuck just drink" moment.
Like I said, you have some good theories, but calling everybody else stupid because we have different opinion makes you the stupid one. You're not gonna make too much follower with this style.
I think the "stupid" insult was pretty clearly meant in jest.
Also you say he wont get followers, but he only has 900, and this video has nearly 100k views in one week, people seem to like it.
@@luminousdragon People mostly don't like it lol A lot of folks, myself included, are here to disagree and prove why this theory is outright wrong.
Another point you can make regarding MacCready thing turning on Blair thing. While Blair thing is pissed and confused why he's being turned on you could see it like chess when you would sacrifice a piece in order to make sure that the king stays out of check. In both scenarios, you have to make an assumption on how to make sure your king is alive for the next move and MacCready thing would have made the right call, since had he and Blair thing teamed up, Childs, who still had a flamethrower, would have took them both out.
Edit: so I went and watched the movie again with this theory in mind and found an example that supports this. Once they all suspect MacCready to be assimilated everyone wants to lock him out in the snow. That is all except for Palmer who is more than likely assimilate at this point. In fact he's the most eager to open the door and blast MacCready. What better way to draw attention away from yourself than to be so human you take out your own kind
thats deep man.....at that point the Thing is playing chess against its own species......damn.
@@Yousaf_Yunes It has to survive, by any means. :O
I actually was thinking the same thing, he had to sacrifice his own kind so he could continue his ruse and as long as one thing survives then the species can easily repopulate.
It's a fun theory. My question is if he was the thing, why didn't he shoot Windows and torch everyone when they were tied up and helpless during the blood test scene.
or even suggest the blood test at all. it was all mccready's idea that he got when they torch fuchs
When we see the dog jump on Bennings, he had his right arm up, but when we see the perspective of the dog’s face and see it licking him, the gloved hand being licked can easily be seen to be his left hand; you can see the fingers curl inward. And it’s not just a shot discrepancy; when it switches back to the previous perspective, Bennings now has both arms up, meaning that from the shot of the dog jumping up at him and the shot of the dog licking his glove, he raised his other arm, and the dog licked the glove of his left hand. He does not grab the bottle with the same hand that is licked; he grabs it with the other hand, the one that looks like it was the one licked because it was the only one raised when we see the dog jump on him, but not the one we actually see licked. This whole theory just fell apart.
Oh, I also forgot. The alcohol would be damaging to the cells that it touches, and Thing cells don’t stay out when hurt; they flee from damage. If MacReady were drinking alcohol as the thing in order to further spread the particles, his mouth would be changing and running away from his face every time. To say nothing of how the Thing cells on the liquor bottle would die from the alcohol itself, rendering the bottle sterile by the time someone drinks it. MacCready is just laughing at the hopelessness of the situation at the end, but taking the rest of what I just said into account, he’s also giving Childs a bottle of alcohol to see if there’s a reaction when he drinks it. Since there isn’t one, he’s probably also chuckling in relief that Child’s is human.
the bloodtest literally proves who is and isnt infected tho. therefore mcready is NOT the first infected, let alone infected at all by the time of the test. if he gets infested at all, its not until the end of the movie
But they do not show him on FILM giving blood he has the flamethrower in hand would anyone dare question him if he didn't give blood in front of them ?
Why would Childs (The Thing) not just fry Mac at the end ?
I always thought the whole point of the end is that neither of them are infected, but they're still going to die out there because they each think the other is the thing. They survived the monster but it still killed them by killing their ability to trust each other.
I like this ending. But in my follow up I say that an ending where they are both the thing and still don't trust eachother is more poetic. The alien wins but the human paranoia also won
It's an interesting theory, and very well put together. 2 major issues I have with the whole thing:
1: Macready is too anti-Thing to be assimilated. He leads the charge in the battle of good vs evil too often. He could be misleading the group so that they get assimilated instead, if he was truly one of them. The Things look for the survival of themselves primarily as 2Dimm suggested, but they will help each other assimilate as long as possible before they have to burn the bridges.
2: His blood test theory doesn't hold water. It is true that many important events happen off camera, but MacReady's blood not being drawn on camera is just to prevent redundancy. I wouldn't trust Mac if my blood was drawn in the room, while he got to draw it personally on his own. I don't buy it.
I also don't think anyone got infected from the dog licking Benning's glove. I think once the saliva dries it loses any contamination it had, kind of like rabies or other diseases. I do think the whole gasoline theory that a lot of people have is kinda crap, a perfect replica would be able to tell the difference between gasoline and alcohol, that and some other theories like the eye gleam I'm glad he put to rest. Personally, I'm pretty optimistic about the ending, I think the two of them are human. Buuut if one of them is, my money is on Childs. Great video though!
John Carpenters OFFICIAL word on the ending is that ONE of them is the thing... he was recorded saying it...
If it's not in the movie, I don't take it for gospel@@killergameshit4529
What I enjoy about all these comments is that it's been over 40 years since Carpenter's "The Thing" was made and we're all still thinking and discussing this sci-fi version of an Agatha Christie mystery, on multiple forums, and there is still no definite conclusion. 🙂
I think people are missing the canon events that show the most logical conclusion that fits the themes of paranoia and the breakdown of trust that John Carpenter held through the entire film.
Childs and Macready are both human at the end of The Thing. The original movie purposefully leaves out all the details so that the ending is ambiguous. Childs, Macready, and even the audience are distrustful of the two survivors. This hopeful outlook of both characters surviving is the least expected of all the options considering the bleak and gritty tone set by the rest of the film.
First, lets poke a couple holes into the argument that Mac got infected by drinking off of the bottle that had the dog's saliva on it. I don't think the idea that the Thing could assimilate someone off of one particle like Dr Copper states holds water. The human body is incredibly adept at fighting infection and every other infection in the film features an assimilation that involves a new body being replicated. This also assumes that Mac is infected before he leaves with Garry and Dr Copper to the Norwegian's site. The behavior we see from the wolf Thing takes advantage of any opportunity to assimilate, as soon as things calm down from the shooting at the beginning of the film it sneaks into the living quarters and assimilates the first victim. The Norwegian compound is the PERFECT opportunity to assimilate two of the most important people in the group. Yet they come back and we get the autopsy scene. If Mac Thing is that smart, why would he allow the rest of the group to find out that something isn't right? It would make more sense to keep everyone at ease and off guard. Instead Dr Copper is left to be the first one to start suspecting other people. Mac has another one of these chances with Blair and Palmer at the crash site and doesn't take it. That would mean 5 out of the 12 people would be infected. Including the one who suspected everyone else and destroyed the chopper, the one who could pilot said chopper, and the leaders of the team.
The other massive hole in this theory: You admit that Bennings was not infected at this moment. The first thing Bennings does with the bottle is take a swig. If Macready gets infected by taking a swig, so does Bennings. Which makes his actual infection scene later in the film make no sense. Nether do the other assimilation scenes, if all it needs to do is get a little bit of liquid on something then why go through the assimilation process that gets two of the Things caught and destroyed?
Next up: Mac's Anti-Thing Decisions
Macready leaves a tape documenting their experiences battling the Things and plans to hide it. This goes completely against anything a Thing would do. There is nothing that it stands to gain from making that tape. Mac also blows up the ship that Blair-Thing was working on. He could have easily thrown the dynamite to not damage the craft but doesn't. He also destroys the only other Thing to have survived instead of leaving it to freeze like it wanted. Which is also a theory proscribed to everyone by Mac himself. After Mac made everyone get tested and outed Palmer-Thing and destroyed it along with the newly forming Windows-Thing. If he want's Childs to drink and become assimilated at the end why did he destroy all the other Thing's?
Finally: Childs. I could go with the easy route and say that The Thing (2011) gave us our definitive answer when they revealed that Things cannot replicate non-organic material. This explains why clothes are destroyed and shows that Childs was human because of his earring. But John Carpenter wasn't involved and hasn't said anything good about that movie when asked about it, so I'll use info from the original. We see Childs run off when the other three come up from Blair-Thing's workshop. Its not long after that the power shuts off. Childs' story checks out if Blair-Thing is the one who turns off the power. Childs would have seen him running to the building and Blair-Thing would have tried to get him lost in the snow in order to have less people after him. On top of that Blair-Thing couldn't have assimilated Childs AND shut off the power. On the same note Childs couldn't have been assimilated AND redressed with the flamethrower in that time. He had to have stayed gone because the others went room by room torching every building and never saw him.
The paranoia felt in the film is SUPPOSED to bleed to the audience in the final scene. You're left with suspicions towards Childs and the dread of Macready's words when they realize they're both dead men. The Thing's music is a fake out by John Carpenter to make you think the bottle has some significance. But Macready was about to drink from it himself before having any idea that Childs is near, so its not fuel. My opinion? He's chuckling at the fact that that damn bottle made it through the whole situation and now its gonna be the last thing to keep him warm. Its been the only constant through the entire movie. His only trustworthy friend.
💯
First of all it's freaking amazing so many passionate opinions are still found on a 50 year old movie truly amazing and maybe the was the entire purpose to leave it open-ended a give the audience a mystery to talked about for years to come.
But let me ask you this ... if Childs is The Thing at the end and has a flamethrower why not just fry Mac ?
On the opposite end why would Childs take a drink from Mac so casually like there is not a fricking Alien that can infect people running around :D ( like you say the movie is revolving around paranoia but Childs is like yeah sure lemme take a sip from this potential Alien being and infect myself)
Also McReady blowing things up is just him figuring out there is no way out other than freeze wait for rescue party to arrive and wait for de-thawing and back to business.
That would be kinda hard to do if the rescue team find giant alien monsters laying around so 2 "humans" would be a much better option.
Take my 2 cents on this good sir :D
I think child's is infected at the end, and I think he was infected at the doorway by Blaire. The generator room is the stairs running down inside the compound right next to the door child's is posted at and seen running from. That is where Blaire makes his last stand and was how he destroyed the generator. He turned child's first by sneaking up on him, then Childs-thing makes a run through the snow as a cover story while blaire-thing goes downstairs and destroys the generator.
@@shwnholroydful But how would Childs-Thing have had the time to get new clothes AND strap the flamethrower back on before he makes his run?
To me the more likely move is that Blair-thing recognizes that the remaining humans are armed and lures Childs out into the snow knowing that he'll be lost once the power is out.
Neither was the Thing. If every cell was alive with the thought of self preservation at any cost, it sure as hell could not drink ol' J&B as that kills all kinds of cells.
Didn't the director confirm that at least 1 of them was the Thing at the end?
You see, what kills your whole argument is that if McReady was the thing from the very beggining he had the perfect opportunity to assimilate everyone during the bloodtest. Everyone was tied up, one of the other one was the thing already. Thing mcready wouldve just teamed up with the other thing and bam, its over. Mcready was the reason they maybe won at the end, he's the single person who most helped in figuring out tricks to beat the thing. And another thing, why would Mcready be recording a journal about the whole shit if he was the thing? He was alone, he wasnt acting for anyone.
Your second point is a point I left out of the video for length purposes but I'll bring that up in the response
The problem with that, is that the Thing isn't just attacking people. For the vast majority of the movie, it acts defensively. NorrisThing only turns AFTER getting defibrillated once prior, which likely really fucking hurt. With the second one incoming, it defended itself. But this defensiveness goes beyond just the physical. When the head of NorrisThing is literally homefree to escape, whom is it that outs it and gets it burned? Palmer. Which as we know in the very next scene with the blood test, turns out to be the Thing himself. Given the time for the assimilation process, Palmer absolutely had to be PalmerThing when he outed the head. There was no reason for doing so, outside of giving himself more credibility as trustworthy(why would the Thing out another Thing?).
The goal for the Thing has always consistently been to assimilate the crew as safely as possible for itself. You can tell by the look that PalmerThing gives just before his own test that the Thing absolutely knows the blood test will work, because that's the most "welp, looks like this is it" face in the world. MacReadyThing would similarly know it would work if PalmerThing did, meaning that he very likely did it to solidify the entire camp's trust in him. Even though PalmerThing snitched on another Thing already and they should be suspicious of MacReady, the fact that he didn't try to turn everyone when he had them dead to rights gives the crew trust in him. This grants him the surest path to victory.
This is all to say that I'm not all-in on this "MacReady is the Thing" theory, but it makes a LOT more sense than very very minimal evidence of it being Childs. This builds up a lot of circumstantial, but consistent, evidence to MacReady's assimilation, vs all the ass-pulling most people do to explain why it's Childs. The biggest compelling argument to this theory here to me is the fact that Fuchs ONLY told MacReady about the single particle thing, and he was then VERY promptly dealt with, as if someone who was using that as their assimilation method the whole movie wanted to prevent anyone else knowing at all.
@@Kraklano We will never have a definitive evidence about Childs because its made to be ambiguious. The whole point in the end is that even after all that, even after they doomed themselves to try and kill The Thing, the paranoia still lingers, both Childs and Mcready cant know if the other is themselves. I dont buy this McReady is The Thing stuff, and even if people try to make sense of it and makes it solid through these gimnastics, it very clearly was not intentional on the movie markers part. Specially since Carpenter himself went on record saying that he doesnt have a off-screen series of events defined. He focused on making the suspense as tense as possible and the ending is not supposed to have an answer.
Blair infected himself on camera while investigating the alien corpse. He touched it with a pencil then touched that same pencil to his mouth.
There is an argument to be made that Blair and McCready were competing to infect the others throughout the movie and that the Smirnoff bottle was a test to confirm that Blair was the other Thing.
@@corymorse4271 Exactly what I was thinking! I think the dog was a natural leader, and the only other natural leader was McCready, and they both had opposing ideas of how to reach their end-goal, infecting the world.
Actually I can prove MacReady wasn't the thing, and it's not even hard to do. MacReady is played by Kurt Russel, Kurt Russel, is the man, and is resistant to Thingery, so there ya go, he can't be Thingy'd. He escaped L.A. and New York, He escaped Alaska too.
not to mention he also escaped Gilligan's Island 😛 when he was young.
Me and Kurt Russell were both Born on March 17th. So next time you celebrate St. Patrick's day, think of Kurt Russell.
I mean, this theory takes a whole bunch of assumptions that all need to be correct in order to work, while Childs being the thing at the end only takes one single assumption... But anyway.
MacReady could have done something to trick us with his blood off-screen, but he also could have NOT done anything to trick us off-screen. His blood passing the test is the biggest problem with this theory, and the only "evidence" there is for it is just shrugging and saying, 'Well, you can't prove something DIDN'T happen off-screen'. The rest of the points as to why you think he's the thing are pretty sound, but this one here is arguable the most important one--the one where the movie itself is showing us "Hey look here's proof he's not the thing"--and you have a complete lack of evidence against it.
Also, I really do feel that our introduction to MacReady playing chess makes much more sense the other way around, with MacReady foreshadowing himself and the chess game foreshadowing the thing. MacReady isn't just playing chess, he's playing chess against a *computer*--he's playing a game where the whole point is that's impossible to win--and yet despite knowing this he'd rather just destroy the computer than let it win. This perfectly foreshadows his character in the finale, where he explicitly points out to the other remaining characters that there's no more getting out of this alive--the game they're playing is impossible to win--so the only option they have left is to blow up and burn down the entire "board". And the last scene we get, MacReady hands Childs the bottle of the same scotch he was drinking at the beginning, and Childs drinks some. Childs is the "computer" that MacReady couldn't beat and poured the scotch into.
I was with you up until the Blair-Thing fight. I'm sorry, but Mac's fuck you being a literal response to the Blair-Thing's scream is absurd. Also - if both Blair and Mac are the thing in that scene, and Mac knows everyone else is out in the snowstorm, why would they not team up (or at least just not destroy each other), ESPECIALLY if - as you say - they can communicate.
Any decent chess player would see that that's clearly the best move on the board at that point.
Also - John Carpenter gave his blessing for The Thing video game on ps2 being a sequel to the movie, and in that game Mac shows up in a chopper to rescue the main character. So yeah - according to Carpenter, macready ≠ the thing.
He did speak on each individual entity of the thing having fighting towards its own survival
@@videosbytaz I know that. But at that point, the better move for each individual (both Mac and Blair-Thing) would have been to stick together. A single chess piece isn't as effective as two. You can pin and defend with two pieces.
Like, my goal in a survival situation is my own personal survival, but I still know that my chances are astronomically improved if I work with another person.
I do think this is a compelling argument, but I feel like there's still a lot of evidence to it not being MacReady.
Firstly, I do think it's great that there's so many arguments that can be made to point out how MacReady is suspicious, but, at the same time, it's important to remember that EVERY character has a lot of evidence behind their actions. The issue with this theory is, it's still never addressed *why* MacReady betrayed the other Thing forms, 'nor does it explain why it cooperated with others and strategized/kept it's cool, and why it decided to give a bottle to Childs instead of assimilating him directly; something we clearly see can happen when Dr. Blair did the funny face grab.
After all, the reason why they torched the research base was *because* the humans were losing, and they wanted to stop it's spread. It doesn't make sense why MacReady Thing would go out of it's way to sabotage their efforts when the other Things were all cooperating in some way. MacReady Thing essentially turned what was a slam dunk victory into a defeat, for no discernible reason.
I don't know, that just doesn't quite add up to me.
I was about to say this but you have done a great job so yee I feel the same
@@luxj.9451 1). Right, but that's what all the other Things were doing, too, all the way back to the Dog itself at the very beginning of the movie, so that isn't really a trait unique to MacReady himself. Every other Thing, including Blair, only got hyper aggressive once they were cornered. MacReady had numerous examples of him being cornered yet he never did anything the other Things did, which is odd, because they're all on the same page, with a similar intelligence to one another.
2). Again.... That doesn't explain why he decided to have it be JUST him. He could've assimilated other characters and had multiple bodies. He didn't have to be deceptive to the people AT the base once the Things had already won, because there was no outside communication. They're all shapeshifters after all, and they could have easily had multiple bodies play dead. They already did it in the movie during the autopsy scene that resulted in biting off the arms of that one doctor. There was numerous points where he could have assimilated other people, have them become Things, and have them all be in on it for the long con, too. That's what the Things WERE doing, but if MacReady was the Thing, he betrayed his Thing Team and gave themselves less hosts to infect the rest of the world with, killing all other Things and having himself be the only host allowed. He explicitly put him and his Thing Team at a disadvantage.
(Also fun fact, there actually are animals that can be woken up from being frozen in a Tundra! The Bdelloid Rotifer is one, which was woken up after being frozen in ice for thousands of years! Tardigrades also can. Wood Frogs also hibernate by quite literally freezing through the Winter, only to wake up once the temperatures rise and the frogs thaw out!)
3). Well, remember, he was trying to escape because he had nothing else to do. Throughout the movie he tried deceiving them into letting him out of his cabin numerous times. Once they just sorta left him in the shed to die, he started formulating an escape plan and started creating a shuttle or craft to bust out of there. He WOULD have been assimilating others if he was allowed to freely roam the base, which was what he was wanting.
So, to put it another way, if the MacReady Thing's end-game was to play the long con and escape, like what you thought Blair's was, he could've just froze himself near MacReady's cabin when they already thought MacReady was dead, and waited for the long con. Everyone was already going to die at that point. So there was no reason for MacReady to go back and kill everyone including the other Things through exceptional deception. All the other Things were waiting out the storm and letting all the humans die themselves, too. Like with the huge creature at the end not revealing itself until MacReady decided to kill it (for some reason). If they were prepping for the long con, MacReady literally ruined that plan. So it just doesn't make much sense to me why this would be the case.
Suspicion. If the base remained intact, would he be carefully observed, blood tested, studied closely and monitored when a rescue team arrives? What if he blends in, appears to require medical attention, and rejects the mutant versions as hostile to the ultimate goal - assimilating the world? Notice how the Things were still human in appearance. They mimic their hosts down to the heart conditions. So too, the Thing mimics the host’s attitude. “If you do not appear human, and stay human, then I will destroy you.” The Thing mimics MacReady’s ideas and rejects the mutant’s collective philosophical disposition. Thereby, hiding as a Thing without mutating. You can see this in blood test. Completely human until dead giveaway. Then transforms into a mutant.
@@shaynefowley5689 If a rescue team WAS arriving, then, yes, that would make sense, but the issue is that the communication lines were cut entirely, and the whole point of destroying the base was so that the Things couldn't escape and cause more problems. Blowing up the base actively hindered the plans of The Thing, not helped them. Especially considering he also sabotaged all the different forms of Thing Escape that were occurring. For example, why did he kill the doctor thing and prevent him from escaping by destroying his craft, instead of teaming up against one of the last humans with the Doctor in a 2v1? Also, after blowing up the base, why didn't the Thing just immediately assimilate or kill Child's? They were all alone after all, so if MacReady was the thing, there was no reason to be concealing his Thingness anymore. It just doesn't make sense as to why he would be a Thing unless he was deliberately self sabotaging.
Also, I don't necessarily think they inherit the personalities and ideals of their hosts. I think they LEARN what their host thinks and the way that they talk, but they don't actually inherit their personalities. Every single character that was confirmed to be a Thing, including the Dog, was very noticeably strange and off-putting when they were a Thing. MacReady doesn't really do anything like that.
@@xweert711 what is Childs holding in his hands at the end of the movie? If The Thing survives the Norwegian camp, what are the chances a rescue team will investigate their camp? And if a team arrives, do you want them to know how the process works? This is why MacReady erases the recordings. The Thing realizes it cannot leave any clues.
Interesting theory. I don't believe MacReady was a Thing. Several times he was alone with someone & DID NOT TURN THEM.
Norwegian camp with Doc Copper. Just the 2. Doc died human.
Site of alien ship with Norris, who I'm sure was a Thing already, & I think Palmer too, who was probably turned by Norris. If all 3 were Things, why make the trip together without some sort of gain ? What was the advantage ? (I believe that was Norris who's room the Dog Thing entered when we saw a silhouette turn around. He got it first, quietly).
The brief chat with Fuchs alone indoors. Fuchs was nervous at first, but then he seemed to relax around MacReady. Could have been the moment to attack, but he didn't. Also, in the heli, talk about Blair. No attack.
Stroll with Nauls up to his shack. No attack, Nauls, still human, was later grabbed by Blair Thing.
Fuchs apparently died human. Why would MacReady kill him when he could turn him ? He would increase his numbers & eliminate an enemy at the same time. A double win, but it didn't happen.
The Blair chat at tool shed. "It ain't Fuchs. It ain't Fuchs". No attack, just left him there. No reason to think Blair wasn't human at that time. If they were both Things, why not let Blair out secretly & let him attack surreptitiously ? He could set up other guys to be attacked by Blair. Did not happen.
Could have done it to Fuchs & Nauls. Nope.
If that happened, we would've seen MacReady, Norris, Palmer, Blair, Fuchs & Nauls all Things, same time. That's 6. Half the crew.
Bennings dead. That's 7 .
Team up, get Clark at kennel.
Get Doc Copper in medical.
Get Windows in radio room.
Only Garry & Childs left against 9 THINGS !
If I was an imitation, a perfect imitation, this would be my plan & it would've worked. Alas, it didn't because MacReady WAS NOT A THING, EVER !
Just saying, an intelligent alien could have pulled it off with stealth, paranoia, isolation & good timing against a dozen unwary men of Earth.
Interesting theory you have, but consider what I've said. For a species with the ability to steal another species members under cover of ignorance, to perfectly imitate, to gain & retain their knowledge, attacking in extreme isolation, with paranoia on there side, it makes more sense that The Things would work together against us to increase their numbers & thereby increasing their odds of overcoming us faster & more efficiently. WE SHOULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED OR WON.
You're right. And you made a better case than this video did.
This kid probably thinks that norman's dead mother in the movie "psycho" was the serial killer.
Or that Michael Myers was the victim being hunted by Jamie lee curtis.
Or that OJ is innocent.
@@RichWards-Wins Thanks for that. The Thing, John Carpenter, one of my all time faves. Never get tired of it. Great movie, start to finish.
I was just pointing out some scenes that prove that either Mac was not a Thing, or he was, but extremely calculating by not being aggressive, which makes him look human. I believe the former.
If the opportunity was there with a certain degree of success, why not turn someone ? Well planned, lose an enemy, gain an ally. The more you gain, the more the scales tip in your favor. If the Things had the numbers, no way would people have a chance. Even at 6 to 6, Things have the advantage. One grab, one good touch, it's over, they got you. They know what you know, can do what you do & much more. Without an escape, you're fugged ! I'd choose dynamite, go out with a bang. Quick & painless. Nothing to turn.
Uhh, Norm's mom wasn't known to be nice, but a killer . . . Nah.
Big Mikey My., a lot of childhood trauma. Big sis Laurie was after him, later on, but that was well deserved on account of his nasty disposition.
Oh Jay . . . . . I don't want to get into it. There was evidence & then there was fug-up & crafty lawyer talk. You could walk through a burning house with gasoline sticky toilet paper all over your body, but a team of good lawyers will pull you out UNBURNED ! Money can save a life.
Hey, maybe a Thing did it ! Who knows ?
@@levitaggart5943 🤣
Carpenter said the eye gleaming was only used for the blood test scene. Also, my favorite part of the movie is when the Thing says "It's Thingy time" and starts thinging all over the place
“It’s clobbering time!”
Different Thing.
This whole debate on childs and mac is kinda missing the forest for the trees. They were at odds for the whole movie and in the end, they have to accept they’re going to die with someone they are resentful and suspicious of. It doesn’t really matter if one of them is the thing.
the heart of the matter. you get it.
Good video. I like how the information is organized, and I find the arguments around the bottles really persuasive. However, the chess scene actually proves the opposite of what's stated in the video. If McCreedy was a good tactical thinker, and one that thinks ahead, he wouldn't have lost. It also reveals some details about his character: Firstly, he can't admit when he makes a mistake--instead of accepting that he made some disadvantageous moves, he claims the computer "cheated" (which a computer cannot do, unless programmed to do so...which it would not have been). Secondly, it shows that he can't accept defeat, that he'd rather destroy the game than lose. The point of the scene wasn't to show us he's smart, but to show us that if he can't win, he'll do everything in his power to make sure his opponent can't win either--that he'll choose a stalemate over defeat...foreshadowing the moment where he's sitting with Childs and gives him the bottle.
Yea baby!!!!!!
Waited for the your blood test explanation, and your whole hypothesis falls apart there. You talked bout how we don't see MacReady collect his blood and we only see 2 collect thier blood which is Windows and Nauls, which is true. But we also don't see the blood collection of Childs, Palmer and the others but they have it seen when MacReady tests his blood and Palmer's. Not only that if MacReady was Thing at this point he has everybody tied up other then Windows, wouldn't you take advantage of this point in time and take out 1 person and infected everyone tied up. They all tried their hardest to get away from Palmer without any of them getting loose. So you would have enough time to infect everyone. Also if i were tied up I would be making a big deal if i didn't see MacReady draw blood. There are also Multiple molotov cocktails used near the end which means he had Multiple bottles you think the Bennings bottle is the only 1 in the movie they are all sharing. This video is just a lot of Narrative Bias Storytelling no logic was ever taken into consideration.
No. There is a game that came out in 2002. You find Childs at the beginning. He died from Hypothermia. At the end of the game, a helicopter pilot saves Blake from the base after fighting a thing boss and reveals himself to be RJ MacReady. Neither of them were the Thing at the end of the movie.
Carpenter has already said the game is canon.
Cool video though and cool theory!
Also want to add that The Thing is so much better without the prequel or game added in because Carpenter wanted people to think and make cool speculations. The game ruins a lot of that once you learn of Child's and MacReady's fate.
There is also the comics!
The game isn't cannon , it wasn't written by Carpenter thus the story from the game and extended universe like comics are not cannon as the orginal creator did not write the material
@@Souleman561 it is endorsed by Carpenter
@stormicopia endorsed doesn't mean he was there for storyline, legit watch the opening scene to macready Introduction and watch the base blowing scene to the end and tell me what you see that isn't directly stated my friend
We clearly see the empty bottles in the beginning and we clearly see them being used as molotov cocktails along with the fact Macready claims he drank all his liqour can lead one to one conclusion when viewing the end scene, Chiles drank Gas and Mac laughs at how easy that worked but is still left in a draw(chess reference) with the thing
Retconned. Let's re-retcon it back. I prefer not knowing and everything being plausible.
The problem is you have a belief that drives your interpretation rather than working fron the evidence
Childs is The Thing, MacReady is not. From start to finish of the movie, The Things only purpose in existence is to survive. In the final scene, MacReady has given up &completely accepts his fate that he will not survive. Literally not a trait The Thing possesses
Childs isnt the thing
i agree its not mac but childs is questionable for me
Things can survive being frozen. So the argument he gave in and accepted freezing makes less sense if he is a human and more sense if he is a thing thats ready to go into hibernation.
16:41 MacReady tests his own blood and it is shown that he's not a Thing, just as everyone else is tested. So you have to either dismiss the blood test or come up with some other way to claim MacReady was the Thing. Now, the whole point of the ending of the film, is for you to not know who is the Thing or if there even is still a Thing left. Carpenter is only angered when people ask who is the Thing at the end of the film, and there are certain moments in the film designed to throw you off and make you think something that isn't true.
Early on, when the dog first goes into a person's room, we see a shadow, and the shadow looks similar to two different people but mainly it looks like Windows. The person actually sitting there wasn't one of the actors, it was a stage hand and was wearing a coat to make their shadow look like it might be one of the characters, even though it's not. MacReady was not a Thing at any point before the large explosion and the ending scene of the film. After that, it doesn't matter, you're left to wonder but never really know.
One possible ending for the film, was a scene during the day with the camp burned down and destroyed, and then you see a dog running away from the camp, ending the film just as it began. With the Thing surviving and running through the snow, trying to find a way to escape Antarctica.
There was a video that goes over the infection timeline. It showed the shadow in detail and even if it was none of the acters it looks like Norris (the part sticking out at the neck is the most telling part).
I am the outlier, i was scrolling really fast and caught a glimpse of the thumbnail and was like “was that The Thing?” and by God i was right
At the beginning, the husky "tries" to lick Bennings gloved hand, but as we find out later, it needs to go through clothing and in the beginning, it looks like it only manages to lick the front of his glove - unable to get to his palm, so it doesn't connect with the bottle. The devil is in the detail.
At 1::26::43, we see Childs at the door and window of the main entrance and ordered to look out for Blair. The coats are in this order from left to right:
Navy blue
Dark green
Olive green
Beige
Three pairs of boots, all standing straight, first pair pointing inwards towards the wooden bench.
At 1::29::34, Childs has left the room and left the door wide open. Presumably the Blair Thing took him.
The coats are in this order from left to right:
Olive green
Dark green
Dark green
Beige
What happened to the navy blue coat and why was the olive green switched with the dark green coat?
Three pairs of boots, first pair facing outwards away from the wooden bench, middle pair has one boot knocked over. Looks like a scuffle has occurred and been hastily corrected.
At 1::29::51, we see Nauls watch what looks like Childs leave the main entrance for no reason and wander into the darkness. Then the generator cuts out. Childs has definitely been infected and the Blair Thing that infected him has cut the power from the generator which was to the left of the main entrance, down a flight of stairs to a grey door.
At the end of the movie, only Childs and MacReady make it out alive, but on or off set, we see no concrete evidence that MacReady is the Thing, just as there is no evidence that the scotch whiskey is petrol or that the Thing doesn't exhale hot air. We can only work with what Carpenter has shown us.
If the PS2 game is cannon McCready is human ,child's died
If MacReady is an imitation this is what he would have done.
He would fly away in the helicopter before Blair destroyed it, based on your theory he could have flown away at anytime before Blair conducts the autopsy.
He wouldn't calls for a Flamethrower when the Dog Thing is discovered.
He would have let Blair Thing out of the shack, when he asks to come back inside.
He wouldn't come up with the blood test and out Palmer a fellow imitation.
He definitely wouldn't kill 5 out of 6 imitations we see on screen. He kills Bennings, Norris, Palmer, Windows and Blair.
Except flying a helicopter across Antarctica isn't at all plausible for the Thing
Of all the people in the movie you knew MacReady was never a Thing. Never. From start to finish of the film you could be sure he was human. If he was a Thing he had multiple instances where he would have won. The blood scene where he tied everyone up except for Windows. In just that scene he could have wiped everyone out if he was a Thing. They were all tied up and he could have just grabbed Windows first.
It's a game of chess bro
@@UniuleExactly a game of chess & bros explanation of everyone being tied up would have been a check-mate 🤙
Why would MacReady blow up both the the infected doc's "flying saucer" and the big thing, if he was infected, though? In the end of the movie he's sitting in the freezing antarctic cold...while he could have arranged the thing infecting all humanity by letting the infected doc use his ufo-thingy....doesn't make much sense to me.
Exactly, he would have only one human left to take out at the end, but he kills the big thing instead.
MacReady says the thing isn't trying to leave it wants to go back to kill them off and go back to sleep
The doc trying to make a ship could have figured out its not possible with our level of tech even with using parts of the bigger ship
its a game of chess
Dog was the Rook
Split Face Queen
Doc Bishop
Norris Knight
bennings Pawn
palmer Pawn
MacReady King
In a game of Chess all the King really does is hide
All of our information comes from MacReady
My thought process is
The Rook Travels the farthest
The Queen Kills the most
The Knights surprise attack
The Bishops Move back and forth long distance
Pawns Die or Survive to replace missing pieces
John Carpenter stated that McCready isn't the thing.
Bah....What does John Carpenter know!?!?! 😉
When it assimilates someone it takes their intelligence as well so it would know what alcohol tasted like. It can speak English use our tools and act like the person who was taken. It definitely learns from each host.
All true, what is your point?
I came to this video with 1 question - the final showdown between MacReady and The Thing in the generator room, why does that happen if they are both on the same team? Why would MacReady need to blow up the monster with dynamite, which WE SEE HIM DO, if they are both The Thing?
So it's a nice theory, but it doesn't hold up
The point of the scene with MacReady shorting out the computer is meant to show that he does not "play by the rules". He's not a tactical genius, that's why he lost to the computer. The Thing is likely much smarter than MacReady (having assimilated multiple scientists), but MacReady thinks outside the box and can cheat.
Wait a minute, the whole point of that scene was that the computer won through an impossible move. The computer cheats and that instigates Mac's next move.
I have posted on another comment about this but it foreshadows his stubborness and competitiveness. He does like to lose and killed the pc at the cost of his own pleasure so he beat it and yes i hadnt thought of ou tof the box thinking too.
At the end he without hesitation is going to sacrifice all of them to make sure he knows he has won and beaten the thing. Stubbornness and radical thinking saves the day
A lot of these rebuttals I agree with and some I don’t, but the biggest thing for me is the thing attacking itself/its own kind. That doesn’t make sense for it to do, so why would Macready be the one to come up with the blood test and then force the blood test on everyone while being infected KNOWING it would expose Palmer. In addition, why would Macready blow up the Blair Nauls thing at the end when it’s the one that infected Blair to begin with? Again, the only time we see the thing attack itself or other things is if you assume Macready is the thing, in which it flamethrowers a few of them. Even when it’s forced into a situation like Palmer was, he didn’t help kill Norris or anything, he just played along in being shocked.
One other quick thing about the blood test, logically you could argue that if everyone gave blood in view of everybody then they would point out that Macready had to do so as well. And if you want to argue that the thing could retract its cells from the blood being taken or something, then you would have to say that Palmer could have and should have as well. These things in addition to other comments I feel make this theory impossible but still a fun one nonetheless. Excited to see your response!
If MacReady was the thing, he wouldn't have blown up the big Thing monster at the end.
Course he would. That monster was never going to blend in.
Not true, Things betray each other. Palmer betrayed Norris by pointing at the spider head.
No because Macready was talking to Fukes when Windows dropped the keys so he couldn’t have grab the keys. And I wanted to see more analysis on the scene when the dog entered the mystery room and see if there could be line ups that would prove whose room it was. Great theory but flawed. Plus John Carpenter wouldn’t make it so obvious using Macreads clothes. He would have wanted us to go straight to that idea and then prove us wrong.
VERY compelling case, but I disagree based on the narration by McReady. What purpose would it serve to make a journal of its existence and weaknesses and tactics. Especially if he planned on blowing up the place.
🤔 - an y would he blow up the final thing form w the dynamite if he was also a thing - having more than 1 infected ppl w mean better survival 4 the main organism - right ?? 🤔
Ok, in regards to your proof that McReady got infected by the whiskey bottle after Bennings glove was licked, the dog licked his LEFT hand not his right hand which is the hand that is grasping the whiskey bottle after McReady leaves it with Bennings.
All you need is the opening scene of the film, a single scene from beginning of act 2 and thr end scene to know the ending, it just people cant take in visual detail as if its not spoken they dont account for it ...
MacReady literally had 1 full bottle of liqour left at beginning of film when we met him, he has a lot of empty bottles tho......
During beginning of act 2, one of the crew ask MacReady for drink of his liqour to which Macready replies "its all gone" signaling that any bottle we see going forward doesnt have liqour in it ....
In Act 3 , we literally see Mac using these empty bottles to make molatov cocktails woth to burn the base.
At end of the film, Macready is taking the cloth out of a molotov cocktail to use the gas in his flamer as his flamethrower is empty as the Pilot Light in the tip of the gun is not on thus no fuel is in the flamer....
Mac being defenseless knows he cant confront the thing but falls back to the worest possible ending, freezing in the snow with it .
This is where the chess scene begin to make sense in the film. If you look at them frame by frame ,none of the moves make sense from the computer and mac out of frustration/drinking break the xomputer with the liqour.
In the end Mac is still frustrated but since he hadnt been drinking since the 2nd Act, his sober mind finds the solution, in chess you can win lose or draw. By drawing with The Thing Mac techincally won as Mac prevents the thing from reaching civilization.
That was the entire stated goal of the crew, dont let the Thing make it to where it can convert the entire population....
Mac laughs at the end as he has gained the upper hand, he knows Chiles is the Thing but without his flamer the only option is a draw
The thing is a "perfect" assimilation of the host. This isn't well explored in 1982, but the implication is how far does this go? Memories, identity, mannerisms, the assimilated host doesn't even know they are assimilated. Even if it can't remember the difference between gas and J&B, its "perfectly" replicated human taste buds would know.
While they might still be in one of the remotest places from civilization, they are still at an outpost that risks being investigsted once contact is confirmed to be lost. MacCready even states this so it could be his motive as the thing, "t wants to freeze now. It knows it's got no way out of here. It just wants to go to sleep in the cold until the rescue team finds it." The possible reason why Mac thing blew up Blair-Gary-Nauls-thing is because it's motive was to hop on its new little spaceship and get off planet. Mac thing wanted to stay... Mac thing won.
@subcitizen2012 Mac achieves a draw (this is the only reason the chess scenes are in the film as again Mac playing the "cheating" chess computer mirrors the conflict with The Thing......or else your saying Carpenter needlessly shows us those scene for no narrative reason or purpose....right....) even makes reference to this situation. "Freezing in the snow isn't what he wants" saying this while still drinking in the film.... it's only when he sober that he realizes that the losing situation is actually a draw or else why decide to blow up the base and be in that situation, it's like this to leave enough narrative room to make a sequel but I think Carpenter knew any direct Sequel to the end of the narrative events of The Thing would ruin would ruin the magic the film has.
Agian how does the Thing know what Gas tastes or smell like it wouldn't have a human reaction to it as it's not human it merely appears to be so drinking the gas wouldn't yield a human reaction if it was the thing......and most likely you could smell the gas as a human long before drinking.....
I always felt suspicious of Macready for the blood test scene, but disagree with the licked glove/ bottle theory.
But due to the nature of the film its valid just because you belive it.
The whole point of the film is paranoia and suspicion. So the ending isnt obvious on purpose, there is no concrete answer because its a film thats trying to influence that distrust long after the credits roll.
Its childs because he disregards the rule of not sharing food or drink
Its Macready because he shares the drink
One or the other, neither or both, it doesn't really matter in the end its the paranoia that wins.
John Carpenter said in an interview that there is a definitive answer to who is the thing at the end, it's not just vague so both can be equally true and up to our interpretation, he said if you look closely you should be able to know who it is without a doubt. Granted that's easier said than done and he might be gaslighting us but I think this video has a point when it says only fuchs figured out you shouldn't share food or drink and only tells that to macReady and dies soon after.. Sure if macReady is clean, he could have told it to the others off-screen, but there is never evidence of that happening aside maybe from blair eating canned food but because he is locked in the tool shack he wouldn't have had access to a kitchen anyway so it would make sense they left him a couple cans and for him to eat directly from the cans.
...Right, so presumably taking a drink from a presumably contaminated bottle of vodka was what turned Blair into the thing, NOT performing an alien autopsy without gloves, while chewing on his pencil...
I can't call this clickbait because you seem to believe what you're saying, but you certainly didn't prove anything. You've made a lot of assumptions from an admittedly biased starting point.
The basis of your entire argument, in fact, rests on the belief that a bunch of guys stuck in a frozen wasteland for an extended period of time would only have one bottle of J&B. Yeah, sorry dude. I ain't buyin' it.
Yeah, at the rate MacReady is throwing them back, there’s no way he’s only got one bottle, especially if he’s got enough to pour into chess computers and pass around to other people.
Here's two things you can't debunk due to them both being a canon to the movie. One) The Thing comics from 1991 was a continuation of the 1982 movie where MacReady and Childs survives the events of the first movie but so does the thing. The Comics follows them trying to take it down with a group of soldiers in first part, second part follows the men trying take it down and finally when they landed in Chile, at some point Childs is infected and trying to frame MacReady. There was another spin off where MacReady is still hunting down the Thing down. The 2) is the Video Game, where you're playing a Special Force Soldier trying to figure out what happened at the outpost. You find the frozen body of Childs but no MacReady. I think the game was trying use this as a Red Herring in the beginning. Towards the end of game, MacReady does appear and not infected while he pilots the Helicopter while you finally kill the Thing. Either way. At point the Comics were considered the True Sequel to the movie, making both Childs and MacReady towards the end of the movie Humans. It was only later in the mini series comics was Childs turned into a Thing. The Current and Accepted Sequel even by Mr. Carpenter himself where Childs froze to death and MacReady helping the Player Character finally finish off the Thing. You either didn't do the research or you didn't want to because it'd disprove your theory but you really didn't prove anything in the end. Nice Video though.
seems feasible that this could've been the way carpenter intended it to end but the studio got involved and made him change the ending. further works of 'canon' not written by the author of the original short story nor Lancaster, but greenlit by some universal executive doesn't necessarily mean the movie wasn't shot to hint at MacReady being The Thing as alluded to in this video. if there's no Kurt Russell there's no potential for a hit sequel.
Dude.....the climax of the movie is Macready and the thing doing Battle....why would the thing be fighting itself
Exactly what I was going to say!
The only reason I can think of is because the Blair-thing's motive is established as escape because it built the space craft. Mac-thing wants to stay on earth and be discovered. So it's competition, it's his first presumption, self preservation, plus he's also covering up his tracks by blowing up Blair-Gary-Nauls-thing. Other comments and analysis I've seen demonstrate that it will out another to protect itself. So it's implied that Blair thing is like "what are you doing come with us were leaving," and Mac says F U.
I was not MacReady for this
Why did this kill me 🤣
(*≧▽≦)ﾉｼ))
Wakka Wakka
You win the internet today
Sigh.
OK that was kinda funny.
If the Thing assimilated MacReady through the J&B bottle and molecular transfer, and not through a physical attack like it did Bennings, why would it be necessary for MacReady's clothing to be shredded and tattered? The Thing rips off the clothes during assimiliation because it can't replicate them. But if the process of assimiliation is internal and slower, why would the clothing be damaged? I actually think finding MacReady's torn jumpsuit and patch is a mark against your theory.
Blair was infected way before he got locked up. When he was dissecting what they brought back, he was poking it with his pencil. Then sticks the pencil in his mouth when hes explaining things.
Debunked by carpenter. He said the actor did this but wasn't asked to
It was left in the movie so it cant be debunked @@Jaklas1979
The best part of these sorts of arguments is that Carpenter succeeded in creating the paranoia in his audience that the characters experienced. There's probably no right or wrong answer to who is the thing at any point. It's brilliant and we're never really going to know for certain. I've come to the opinion that all the dramatic and violent infections are misdirection on the part of the Thing. I agree that just one cell that gets past your immune system and skin can infect you. It is entirely likely that you may be it without being conscious of it since the Thing itself may not be a sentient species. It's very reasonable that Macready is infected early and all this chasing down of chimeric monsters is a distraction to keep the uninfected from destroying everything. I'll probably change my mind again in a year or two so kudos to the master story teller Carpenter for keeping us talking about his movie four decades later.
2 points against this theory though, when palmer turns into the thing and takes windows out of the picture, everyone is tied up except macready so he could of just won right there. And at the end when it's just him and the monster, its 2v1 against childs so why would he blow up the monster.
I have several of these ...
He's figured out there is no way out only option left is take care of all the evidence (blow sh1t up) and wait for the resuce team to find 2 "human" bodies to be de-thawed and identified.
Why would Childs (being The Thing at the end) not just fry Mac ?
Why would Childs take up a drink so casually from a potential murderous Alien being that can infect him ?
Are we overthinking it ? Probably ... but it's amazing we're here talking about a 50 year old ... maybe that was the whole point give the audience a good mystery to be talked about for years to come.
Mission Success !
You're entitled to your opinion no matter how wrong it is
Obviously they are both human cus the all movie is about everyone not trusting each other cus of there paranoia, so it's just a poetic ending that they are both human cus they have defeated the Thing just to die from freezing to death cus they are both too paranoid about each other
I noticed the possible symbolism of the bottles but never articulated it like you have here. Good job.
MacReady was never the Thing, that's why the audience sees the film from his point of view
I think that is not giving Carpenter enough credit. He would definitely do something like that just to further confuse his audience in a movie where uncertainty is the biggest factor. Does not mean I believe the theory, but Mac is not free of suspicion just because he is the main character.
Check out The Thing video game. You will be shocked as the video game is considered cannon. Guess who is dead and who is alive surviving hibernation.
I'm wondering if Carpenter knew. He might be the Thing at the end but pretty sure he wasn't up until that point.
Chess has just become movie short hand for ' this protagonist is really clever'
Great assessment, bud! Laid out clear assumptions, sound logic, and walked us down the path to your conclusion with unquestionable evidence. I believe that your conclusion would have to assume that Carpenter betrayed the audience with the blood test. Your assumption appears too complex at that point and if accurate, it’s a cheap betrayal by the director - hard to believe as it’s such a pivotal scene. Regardless you’ve got me seriously considering Mac again after a decade! Great analysis and argument! The J&B and Smirnoff might just be the ‘tell’ that we all need - but the inconsistency of Mac not assimilating when he could have (all others were tied up)is either: he ain’t it; or sloppy on director (director isn’t sloppy)… or we are all missing something. Thanks for this assessment! Subbed!
Why would he throw the dynamite at the Thing at the end when he was the only one left?
Sometimes things don't get along.
The one weird thing that makes me agree with this is what MaCready said at the end of the movie...
"Lets just wait here a while and see what happens"
Well... him and Childs will freeze, which is exactly what The Thing wanted...
Maybe neither Childs nor McReady is the Thing, and that's the irony of the situation tehy find themselves in - They've survived this terrible ordeal, only to resign themselves to the knowledge that distrust and paranoia has doomed them to a slow, freezing death...
Okay. So, He gets Nolls up to his shack, alone, doesn't try to assimilate him. Didn't dispose of the evidence where as someone else might have planted it too frame him, makes a lot more sense.
And of course all the trouble Mac goes through in order to prevent the thing from escaping makes no sense. Now you have this interesting theory that he was infected right from the get go? Maybe? The dog/licked gloves plunged into the snow pretty quickly, can't tell me one thing is fine and the other doesn't wash it but okay moving on..
Mac goes with Doc on a chopper flight too the Norwegian base at this time Mac is already infected right? Doesn't infect Copper whilst they are alone, instead brings back more corpses to be examined, if he did the due diligence, he'd have infected Copper at the base, came back with NO evidence of what might've happened and everyone on base would be non the wiser. - Thus guaranteeing 3 Thing monsters on base with everyone else completely unaware of them, their existence etc, waiting out the Storm nice and warm.
Sorry man I appreciate the effort on this one but it doesn't hold water.
Interesting theory I've never considered. A few more points to support your theory after watching the film again:
1. The scene before Mac goes and talks with Fuchs, he makes the audio recording. You could argue that he was doing this recording to give himself credibility if someone else discovers the outpost. Typically in movies or video games, people record audio logs as their final sign-off just before doing something that may result in them getting killed (like Mac getting caught killing Fuchs). In the recording, he talks about the shredded clothes with the name missing, saying "it could be anybody. Nobody trusts anyone now". He then thinks about it and re-records the message at this part saying vaguely "i've done everything I can". Maybe him saying this is forecasting that he knows he'll be the last man standing and doesn't want to raise suspicion about everyone else being dead or missing. If he left the recording as "it could be anybody's", that means that he himself could have been the Thing and could draw suspicion to him when he realizes he may have left evidence behind, hence why he deleted it. With his sign-off, he says "RJ MacReady, Helicopter Pilot". This seems unnatural. If this is an official, government research outpost, others would know whose stationed there, and a simple "MacReady, out." would have been sufficient to identify himself in a recording. It's almost as if the Thing was taking what evidence they found to try to build rapport and read what was on the tag ("RJ MacReady") and also the equipment he had in his shack to know he was the pilot and then repeated it.
2. Right after the recording scene, Mac looks around before entering Fuch's office, making sure no one saw him enter. Fuchs clutches his flask when Mac enters and it is also shown in a close-up just before the power goes out, possibly the director's intention to emphasize how paranoid Fuchs was about sharing any drinks and why Mac had to get rid of him. OR another theory is that Fuchs was secretly working on a chemical in the flask that could kill the Thing or possibly an antidote to prevent assimilation. In which case would explain why he was so protective of it and even more reason why Mac wanted to get rid of him.
3. The scene when Nauls, Windows, and MacReady go to search for Fuchs, they are nearly back in the station when Windows notices Fuchs' dead body. You can see MacReady looking around behind them as Windows walks up to the body, probably to make sure no one else is watching. It's also at this point Mac "notices" the light is on in his station. Maybe at this point he realizes it's an opportunity to try to isolate Nauls and assimilate another. Why else would Mac draw attention to his shack and want someone to go with him if he knew his name tag or other evidence was left there? Or maybe he realized that he left the light on by mistake and by bringing someone with him to check it out raises less suspicion. He sends Windows back inside because he wouldn't be able to infect both at the same time. Obviously, the assimilation did not work, as Nauls returns with the clothing with Mac's name. It's only after this time that Mac begins acting paranoid with the dynamite and flamethrower, accusing everyone else of being the Thing, assuming because he knows he was caught.
4. This theory is reaching a bit more, but the blood test scene. They know fire will kill the Thing, but Mac seems confident that his test will work and tells everyone that the Thing will interact with a "hot needle" to survive and will reveal itself. He doesn't make it sound like it's just a wild theory, but knows that it's going to work - how would he know this unless he was the Thing? If it were just a theory, you'd think they would hold a blow torch to the blood to try to replicate it. But his confidence here with just the hot wire is telling. Also, another stretch of a theory, but maybe Mac's flamethrower wasn't really having a "malfunction" and he wanted to wait and see if the thing would quickly assimilate everyone so he held off on getting it going. When he sees that the Thing is taking a while to transform, he then decides to activate it, as if he remained idle the whole time, people would be even more suspicious of how he was quick to shoot his colleague moments earlier but then held off on killing the Thing. The reason for the test is to 1, show everyone he's "not the thing" and take attention away from him, and 2, use the opportunity to summon the Thing to take over others since they were all tied down in a closed room (remember how the dog tried to assimilate all the other dogs when they were locked in a room together?).
Another thing I noticed - when the group chases down Bennings in the snow and catches him morphing, he focuses his attention on Mac the entire time. The Thing howls and stares directly at him, almost like a cry for help from the creature towards Mac.
The computer doesn't cheat, it outplayed him. He then reacts completely irrationally... that's not the indication of the personality you think it is...
and back then that was posably the computer on the hole ice base, wouldn't been personal computer