Imagine having lunch at a diner with Childs. *Childs opens up his sandwich, removes a slice of cheese and holds it up on display.* Childs: "If this was an imitation - a perfect imitation - how would you know if it was really brie?"
Another big problem was that the 2011 Thing was a stereotypical, killing machine, monster. Whereas the 1982 thing was very calculating, strategic, and precise. The 1982 thing wasn’t just trying to absorb and replicate everyone, it knew it was vulnerable and, like the men it was hunting, was trying to survive, and would only strike for necessity and in isolation.
Thats a thing I’ve seen what later incarnations of The Thing do, making it like some animal making quick decisions.It didn’t try to infect the other guys sitting next to him when it was caught in the blood test, it tried escaping its restraints and attacked windows since he was the closest and only threat for those few seconds and tried to escape out to the cold when Macready sets it on fire.I’ve seen other media like one of the comics, the game, and the 2011 movie that makes The Thing creatures less smart and some mostly untouchable creature unless harmed with fire, making them creatures that sometimes assimilates one or more people right in front of group of people and attacking the other survivors sometimes without a plan, ignoring their own safety just to get a person with a plan that’ll just get them killed instead of fleeing.Some of the other continuations I’ve seen make it look like fire is the only way to kill it but Macready was able to finish off multiple things with dynamite, after setting one on fire and finishing the possibly “last” thing without setting it on fire at the end.
Could be explained by the fact that the Thing gained experience interacting with humans after the events of the prequel, so it changed its tactics in outpost31.
@@namethis658 I like this idea a lot since it portrays the Thing as an adaptive organism just like how the 82 movie wants you to view it. It makes sense that it would have different strategies to approaching whatever alien life it was acclimatized to and would need to adjust to human behavior if it didn't want to be hunted down and killed like a big dumb monster. It doesn't redeem the 2011 film but it is interesting to think about.
I feel the 2011 film made the thing far too deadly, it was way too fast and strong for the humans to beat. The 1982 thing was vulnerable and slow, as long as it didn't get you alone you had a chance of winning and that made for a much better movie. Either side could feasibly win and that made you pay attention to what was going on.
There really was no reason the humans won against it in 2011. The second it proved able to infect people on touch- and had tentacles- AND had everyone in one room- AND ALSO had a second person in the room infected already... No, they absolutely should have lost right there.
That's the truly mind bending part. Each movie or show loves to see how far into a dangerous unwinnable fight they can put the characters in without actually having the main character(s) lose. The Thing 1982 didn't have to create an unbeatable beast. but the question is how the characters even figure out what the rules are. This is why Final Destination, Terminator, Alien, and Predator all work: it's not about beating an invincible enemy, it's about seeing if the characters can figure out the rules that the other side already knows and takes advantage of.
This is very true. It might go a long way to explaining why the original was just such a masterpiece compared to the prequel. As a prequel. Maybe "the thing" learned from its obvious behavior to be more secretive. So there are explanations that offers continuity in a very sensical way with the story. We also knew what happened to this entire camp. Just the total loss of mystery compared to the 1st film. I really enjoyed them both but ' the thing' inspired by Lovecrafts in the mountains of madness. It is legendary to me in terms of monster horror. And the slow deception is such an iconic part of it.
That was a great point about how people react in real life: if a monster is consuming people in the room, the characters’ focus is on the monster - nothing else. A lot of movies fail at this.
It's basic common sense. I guess you can't expect much from pampered protected directors and producers that have never known danger just regurgitating the same old sheltered ideas... right?....
horror movies these days tend to squeeze in that political correctness when the situation is a matter of life and death. getting chased by a monster? women empowerment!
"The camera wants you to focus on grief when survival is at stake" I've never been able to put this feeling into words and it's beautifully straight-forward here. This really has no place in the horror genre IMO unless it's to contrast different people's reactions to a dire situation. And yet it seems to happen in so many modern horrors. Thanks for the vid.
That's something I've noticed with many horror remakes especially if the characters are bitches or assholes, we as an audience are supposed to feel bad at a shitty character being brutally murdered because its brutal? That's really bad film making and it's really grimey to try to manipulate the audience Even the first Nightmare on elm Street the first person killed is Tina the most likable character, and her boyfriend was witty and sarcastic but still a likable character who was screaming for Tina to wake up who was killed in front of her, he's accused of her murder Then he gets killed , so we as the audience already are invested and traumatized because they were good people killed which makes you want the monster killed That's how you make good horror
Every movie that be like WE HAVE TO DO THE THING NOW leads directly to THE ROMANTIC PAIR wasting 2 minutes of screentime while the audience is like "hurry the fk up!"
Also note specifically the BLACK male who is the one we are supposed to cry over by exaggerating and protracting the drama as the White guy suffers a far worse fate but made less important and not tragic at all.
@@Chuck_EL The formula is if they are a male White character they are assholes, clowns or creeps, black males are heroic, alpha, self righteous and caring and women are all round perfect and boss. The value and importance of black characters must be accentuated and amplified even subtly, while White people need to be devalued, vilified and ridiculed.
Also, just on a visual note: the characters in John Carpenter’s The Thing looked like real humans and scientists: old, fat, long faced, rumpled, etc. everyone in the 2011 version looked like they stepped out of a J. Crew catalogue, and they were led by a thin, wide eyed beautiful person who never had a hair out of place. John Carpenter’s characters wore realistic clothing for the environment: bulky sweaters, parkas, etc. in the 2011 version, the petite woman( who should be freezing in that environment) is running around in a thin tight top because, you know, we have to show off her beauty and her breasts.
Your points are spot-on. Also consider that the prequel's main character is supposed to be a noted paleontologist...but the actress was like 22 years old! WTF?!?
Thank you for explaining this! It was nagging in the back of my mind why the characters are so “wrong”. The best I could think of was that they were too young
@@themorbidzoo Yes! Nothing more positive than telling people obesity is attractive and not at all related to hugely increased risk of debilitating disease. Might as well celebrate smoking.
The 1982 version is better because Carpenter ramps up the tension and paranoia better than the 2011 version. The paranoia is literally palpable. The hot needle blood test scene is one of the most tension inducing scenes ever put on film. As a viewer you could feel the paranoia along with the characters. It was so bad they were killing each other. It culminates when MacReady shoots and kills Clark. The paranoia was deadlier than the monster in some scenes. That's why it's a masterpiece.
exactly. In many monster flicks, the emphasis is the monster including the original 50s version. But Carpenter's version was closer to the original short story where no one knew who they could trust and anyone could be a "thing." I think the Norris reveal especially surprised people more so than Palmer (which was also a shock) because Norris was so innocuous and wasn't trying to manipulate people like he would have been in a badly directed film. The Norris-thing said to the audience and the characters: "forget what you think, anyone could be a thing" which heightened the paranoia. As the reviewer said the characters became reduced down to the basic level of survival and not some stereotypical hollywood archetype we've seen time and time again in horror films.
"Gentlemen. I know you've been through a lot. But if its all the same with you I'd rather not spend the rest of the evening TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!"
"So Clark was human ... that makes you a murderer." I have to say MacReady acted in self-defense here, I mean, people were getting killed and Clark did come at him with a weapon in hand.
@@pvanukoff Not to mention he was very much willing to potentially let someone freeze to death outside just on a hunch. "What if we're wrong, Childs!?" "Well then we're wrong....."
Imagine your career floundering because of the poor response to a movie that is going to be considered a bedrock of the horror genre just a few years later.
I think when most people say that practical effects look "real" what they really mean to say is they look "tangible." Sure the kennel-thing and especially more than a few shots of the Palmer-thing look like puppets but you can, for lack of a better word, "tell" that it was a thing that was actually made and exists in physical space as opposed to an effect added later. This isn't a critique of you by any means by the way, just something that occurred to me when you mentioned that. This video is absolutely fantastic
Thanks so much! Yes, I think this is a failure of definitions and film discourse rather than an actual disagreement, which is the kind of thing that drives me insane. When we say "practical effects look more real than CG" what I think we're saying is more that the artistry behind the creation of the puppets and the way they're filmed makes it more effective than what is obviously ones and zeroes added later. That doesn't mean, definitionally, that puppets have more fidelity than even mediocre CG to what a Thing would really look like, it means the audience is more sophisticated than Hollywood is willing to admit. I wish THAT were the conversation instead of squabbles that often ultimately sound like appeals to nostalgia.
That effect of intuitive fidelity cuts both ways too. There are plenty of things that appear fake or unreal when we take videos or photographs of them. Space is an easy environment to replicate almost perfectly in CGI, but the problem is we have no preconception what space looks like. The harsh, uniform lighting, absence of any atmospheric haze, hard shadows, and nothing to establish depth makes any space shot, real or fake, appear fabricated to a lot of people.
There is something I came to think of while watching all the Hobbit and LoTR movies back to back. "How come the special effects feel way more real in the older movies?" I figured it came in large part down to how the effects were generally treated, rather than how they were made: If you go frame by frame, most of the orcs in LoTR are for example blatantly just dudes in cheap masks and basic costumes, or relatively basic copy-pasted CG creatures, but they are all carefully kept in the background, in the dark or slightly out of focus and always moving so you never get a good look at them. Only a handful of orcs are done with extremely elaborate prostatic effects or high quality CG, but these are only kept in plain view for a few precious moments each, again so you never have time to notice that a thick elaborate mask is only capable of a single well sculped facial expression, or that the skin on some CG creature seems to stretch in weird ways as it moves. They knew most of their effects just weren't solid enough to carry an entire scene on their own, (at least on a realistic budget), and planned accordingly. In the newer movies they were confident in their effects, and put their carefully crafted CG effects on full display for numerous very long unbroken sequences, giving the audience more than enough time to notice and examine every little flaw. (It also meant the story could get completely side-tracked for long and extremely elaborate action sequences without breaking the bank.) I suspect 2000-2015 era CG had the capacity to look significantly better than classical practical effects, if they were treated during planning, filming and editing as though they were practical effects. As though they could generally only hold their own for few previous moments at a time, and that their shortcomings needed to be carefully hidden to maintain the illusion. Although they did that too, but that's not the kind of "CG" people notice and complain about. A separate issue now is how a lot of "CG" heavy movies just end up telling poopy stories because the studio was mostly just concerned about drawing idiots with a flashy spectacle, which sadly works extremely well. They keep making Marvel movies for a reason.
@@themorbidzoo i would have to disagree with the statement that there is less artistry in cg, while i must admit i’m biased as a cg artist i think it’s more how they are implemented and treated in movies today. people still went through the process of designing and creating those effects, just in a different way. no hate it was a great video it’s just that phrase really angers me
My biggest issue of the 2011, among many issues, was the female protagonist figured out what was going on WAY to quickly- as if she had watched the earlier versions of the film and was like "Oh, it's one of those aliens that likes to absorb and imitate other forms of life". Very unbelievable.
Totally, it's like they didn't trust the audience to sit through that process, even thought that process is THE SOURCE OF ALL THE TENSION i just can't with this movie
@@Xbalanque84 It's a bastardisation of female empowerment. It feels purely performative as if they decided to put her there just for marketability. Like who gives a shit man, there's a monster ffs and they're worrying about aesthetics. Shit movie, sucks ass.
you ever think that you're just like the critics that ravaged the 1982 film? that later on people will change perspectives and say that it's actually a good film?
@@Lostcanonmedia I think your right, I think I read somewhere Hollywood was pressuring the idea for the thing to be remade. To avoid having it completely remade and take away from the old film. A prequel was made to explore a different angle. And it was ok, some creepy moments but over all it didn’t have that same alien space horror. Omg I saw it a few months ago and I felt like it was a nightmare come to life. I’m shock of how much horror they could make back then and that head struggling to crawl with its tongue? Nightmarish stuff
I don't need to apologize - I have loved The Thing 1982 since the first time I saw it. It is one of my favourite films, and the 2002 videogame (which was a masterpiece of a PS2 game and the true sequel since Carpenter himself confirmed it as canon) is also my favourite videogame. If John needs some help in paying back those critics, I would love to give him some backup...
The Thing is one of the greatest movies ever. I caught it on TV back in the mid 2000's, was captivated instantly. Another point about the 82 version is the men were rugged, they looked like how you'd expect people trapped in a snow storm would look. The 2011 version had people who looked like they were gonna be in a fashion magazine
that's another huge problem that keeps fucking happening in modern movies. in Black Widow, we see Natasha get fucking blown up twice, beaten to fuck, tank several story falls and she comes out the other side every time pristine. Meanwhile, John Wick. Like, come on, it's not that complicated. Sure, John Wick cartoonishly can ignore his wounds the next day but, at least they're still visible.
Also, the reason the 2011 version has no appeal is that there is no question as to who is the thing and who is not. We are even given clues as to when the characters are assimilated. And there is no surprise or twist in this regard. No ambiguity.
Agree. There is still debate even today about who the curly-haired shadow who's alone with the Dog is in the 1982 version, but there's zero mystery about the 2011 Thing (for the record, I think it's Palmer, but we'll still never know). There's a very clear path in the 2011 version where each Thing is left alone with the next person who's going to be the Thing. It's so boring.
I rewatched the 2011 film a few days ago with one of my roommates, and I could _not_ pin down when characters got infected. It felt like they'd just become infected because it was convenient to the plot. Afterwards, he and I rewatched the original and (if you know who is infected) you can pretty soundly nail down when they all being Things.
@@ChessAlbaneze The '82 version had a lot of logical problems in who turned on what order, but it's still immensely more well presented than the '011 version because it was more about not knowing who was the thing, its unpredictability, and alien animalness.
As soon as the woman tells our main character she Saw a Guy walk out of the bathroom and he might be the thing after that she inmediatly reveals herself. The thing is supposed to be smart IT would feel a lot better if they had waited for her reveal and let the distrust play out. I cant even remember these peoples names and i watched the movie last Friday.
@@prpeptv8463 To be fair she thought it was a chance to assimilate another victim caught alone. Which, by the films' historical logic, *should have happened* (because no one alone with this thing is never NOT doomed), but didn't because the attempted victim was the protagonist and the movie had to happen, so she got away, causing the awkward chase.
One thing I like about 2011 The Thing is the inorganic material test. Not everyone has had fillings in their teeth, so it makes it impossible to clear everyone, it just narrows it down a little. They should've done more back and forth between the characters trying to convince each other, but instead the thing reveals itself unnecessarily for another 10 minute action sequence. It's like the film gets bored with the distrust scenes and wants to hurry up and get to the alien revealing itself and attacking people instead.
I actually got bored by the "let's wait to show it" way of thought. That was already done in it's sequel. I was honestly expecting a lot more thing outs than Carpenter's. I need to pay $50 to go with my family to the theaters and only see five or so thing outs? Seriously?
@@BD-cv3wu And you are the reason why movies have degraded into the sorry state they're in. You demand an amusment park ride where you can sit down, throw your hands in the air , then go home; and the studio delivers. Who cares about plot, character, suspense, or anything that makes a movie good...Just show us the damn monster for an hour so we can go home!
@@austind7232 I mean, who even cares about the masterpiece of an atmosphere that the original had? who cares about the intriguing ending? who cares about the horrifying knowledge that this primal looking thing is actually as smart or even smarter than we are?
Carpenter’s version does have moments where the Thing looks and moves unrealistically, but I always felt it made sense that the alien looked and moved weird since it was so far from anything human. It never broke the immersion for me.
This is one of the things I retrospectively appreciated about stop-motion effects in movies like Clash of the Titans. As a child, I accepted the weird motion as evidence of the unknowable other-worldliness of these creatures, and it seemed all the richer and more captivating for it.
I loved the '82 THING, the spider head really unsettled me, but I have no interest in viewing the 2011 THING just as I have no interest in viewing the PSYCHO remake... what's the point.
@@robanderson473 What's the point is don't believe what everyone says. See it for yourself then judge it. Yes the 2011 Thing isn't as good as the 1982 but.. it does some things better and some things worse then the 1982 version. I actually liked the CGI effects of the 2011 thought is was good and the Thing moved more fluidly compared to the 1982 version. 2011 version was more action that Thing was more brutal in the attacks compared to the 1982 version. Either way check out the movie because it ties into the 1982 version darn well. Plus it's different then all these superhero movies we are getting now anyways at least 2011 version is somewhat a refreshing movie compared to movies now a days being released.
@@iestynne Yes motion I agree but watching the 1982 version now some parts seem outdated and at times over the top with all the blood and everything. 2011 wasn't as grotesque and didn't have the crazy amount of blood as the 1982 version had. Both are just different.
@@robanderson473 If you think the spider Thing was unsettling.. wait until you see the Splitface Thing from the prequel. Now that... was eerie and will make you same damn.... thank gosh I wasn't Adam haha. That looked painful as fock what Adam went through.
I find it so interesting how you point out that practical effects doesn't look more real than CGI, and also you provide pretty good evidence for it as well. But I actually think it's more complicated than that; when you see bad CGI you can often tell intuitively that something is off. This, as we know, is usually due to color and lighting, but the issue is that even if you can't put your finger on it, it's very clear that whatever you are seeing doesn't exist beyond the movie, it's just computer graphics, because bad/questionable CGI isn't "integrated" into our world properly. Whereas Practical effects might be off when it comes to movement and/or textures, but you can see that it actually exists in the world, OUR world, and it, as we know, actually does to the extent that the props has a physical existence beyond the movie. So I would say that in one way it looks more real and in another way it does not. At least that's how I see it. I hope that makes sense. XD
I get your point, but you wouldn’t believe how much cgi there is in movies that is literally impossible to notice. There is a lot of stuff vfx studios aren’t allowed to share that they made. Even if a studio markets how good the practical effects of their movie are, it may be cgi you see in the final movie
@@mylittleossi1234 that doesn't refute OP's point though as they made sure to mention BAD/questionable cgi not just thge use of it. Both in visual and special effects when it is done well it helps to enhance the story that is being told and aiding in suspension of disbelief. However when it is poorly done and then you add in poor scripting or direction it can hamper said suspension and bring down even an otherwise enjoyable experience . For some anyway.
There's another thing in this - possibly overlooked in the debate: Gravity. We have an innate sense of how things move in the world around us, and cgi too frequently doesn't quite get that right (eg, in one of the clips here, the creature is standing on two legs, but most of it's mass is to one side, and we don't see it shifting it's legs to compensate - subliminal, possibly, but enough to rankle). Practical effects are forced to work just as we do. Plus, with practicals, you can spot a problem on set or in rushes and do another take. CGI only comes along months later (or is already done, fait accompli) and tweaking it is a lot harder, time-consuming and expensive. Still, as pretty much everyone says here, it ultimately depends on how much care you put into it. John Carpenter is one of those master directors who know exactly what they want to see, and make sure it's what we get.
Practical effects fall into the uncanny valley of creepy or frightening. Bad CGI often falls on the other side of the valley, looking or feeling so unrealistic as to be comical.
I think something else to consider is that CGI is probably considered to be "easier." I don't say that to discredit the remarkable work that animators and visual effects artists do, but with CGI I think filmmakers fall into the trap of just assuming that they can make the CGI do whatever they want and that takes away from the art of cinematography. I think Jaws is the perfect example. If the shark was CGI, then we would have seen tons of shots of the shark from the beginning of the film. But because it was practical, and because Spielberg was not a huge fan of how the animatronic looked, he instead chose to shoot around the shark, creating more suspenseful scenes as a result. I think practical effects can ultimately end up leading to more creativity on the part of the filmmakers since they can't just "fix it in post" with CGI.
I saw 'The Thing' in the theater, in 1982, at Ft Bragg, and it instantly ranked and will always rank right up there with 'Alien', as a sci-fi/horror masterpiece. How it could've taken others so many years to fully appreciate it is incomprehensible to me.
Some people are allways ahead rhe curve. Ever since i 've seen it, nothing even came close to it on how visceral the effects felt mostly because of the fact they were half obscured, limited on screen time, and supporting the very claustrophobic paranoia driven scenario perfectly acted by the cast instead of expecting the cast to be the support and having the effects shown face front with long well lit shots. Point is in most well made horror movies you as part of the audience are trying to catch glimpses of it in the limited shots you get with very carefully limited lighting and while The Thing went more graphic than most, it maintained largely the formula and had a plot that sold it well. I would compare the difference to a sensual erotic film where you see a woman's body allways dressed in a risque classy provocative dress helped by the right shots, music, conversation delivered well and not wooden and falling flat... And then you see a remake with first shot if that particular woman being sitting with nothing on crotch fully exposed and lit front view legs wide open in a long shot. Kills the whole mystery and interest early on.
Agreed! I saw Alien on its first run through the theaters. I went by myself, at night, and the theater was almost empty. I knew almost nothing about the plot except that it science fiction and then, as an adolescent, I loved anything sci-fi (and still do). I was wrong. It wasn't sci-fi. Not the way I knew it and expected it. It was horror, plain and simple. It was my first experience with a movie that was so terrifying that I literally almost had to walk out because it was just too stressful. I didn't walk out and I'm so glad I did. It's interesting that two of the most terrifying movies I've ever seen, Alien and The Thing, both of which feature alien xenomorphs (shape-changers), are of an age that they relied entirely on practical effects and what the effects couldn't accomplish they relied on directorial brilliance. Best example is that when I watch the movies now -- I couldn't count the number of times I've watched both -- it surprises me just how little you see of the creature in both films. With modern CGI they can put icky scary monsters in every scene if they want, and in The Thing (2011) they don't do that exactly but the creature(s) have a hell of a lot more screen time than in the original. And that made them much less scary to me. Likewise with James Cameron's juvenile, butt-stupid shoot-em-up Aliens where he threw entire platoons of xenomorphs at the characters and didn't evoke one tenth of the stress and fear the original did, the fact that the creatures had so much screen time made it easy to start yawning every time they appear. In Cameron's simple, ham-fisted directorial technique anything that's worth showing you once or twice is worth shoving down your throat. CGI doesn't automatically make a bad movie. In both Cloverfield and the 2014 Godzilla the monsters were visually spectacular and extremely realistic, but had less then ten minutes on screen throughout both entire movies. So much else is implied and suggested rather than beating you in the face with it that it forces your imagination to work and in a sense it sort of customizes the 's horror to the individual viewer's psyche. Its the essence of great writing and directing. Incidentally, for those who play computer games, the 2014 game Alien:Isolation is a real treat. If you consider something that will make you sh!t yourself a treat. Unlike other Alien-franchise games that seek to replicate the stupidity of the Cameron shoot-em-up sequel, A:I is slavishly loyal to Ridley Scott's 1979 original in spirit, look, and for the sense of helpless fragility it instills in the player in the face of the xenomorph. And it's an ironic acronym of the title of the game (A:I) because the AI (artificial intelligence) controlling the xenomorph is relentless, unpredictable, and utterly diabolical in its ability to out-guess and out-outmaneuver the player at almost every turn. It's the greatest AI I've ever seen in dozens of otherwise really good game titles I've played over the past 30 years. And it tops the movie in one respect: instead of you watching the creature hunt down down the characters as in the movie, in the game the creature is hunting YOU and believe me, you ain't ready for it. It's the most terrifying game I've ever played. So frightening that it's used in university experiments to study the physiological and psychological effects of extreme stress and terror. And unlike the movie, which I just barely withstood without fleeing, I have never been able to finish the game. For me the terror and the stress are so extreme that I literally was paralyzed and couldn't move, and hid in the closest cabinet or locker until the xenomorph eventually found me, tore the door off, and killed me. I havent played the game from The Thing, but I suspect it would be a disappointment compared to the original movie, especially if as I suspect it's primarily an action game rather than a horror game like A:I. And just sayin' the 2011 The Thing is not at all a bad movie. I enjoyed it. Had it been an original rather than a sequel/prequel to Carpenter's brilliant original I suspect it would have gotten much better reviews. Of course it sort of sucks by comparison. But then almost every horror movie I've ever seen sucks in comparison to The Thing, in my opinion the only other two that are its peers are Alien (1979) and of course The Exorcist, a movie which still makes me sleep with my light on for a couple of nights after after watching (the novel is even worse). And hell, I'm an atheist.
@@patrickscalia5088 Excellent review, and I'm not even a gamer! I've never seen 'Exorcist', but I always rank 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'(1978) as a distant third, in my personal trilogy of horror. I suspect if you watch all three, alone, in the dark, you won't sleep well. I'll need to get around to actually watching 'Exorcist', one of these days, but I was too young to see it in the theater; my Catholic parents would've rather sent me to a sleeper-over at Anton Lavey's house than drop me off at any theater playing that movie. By the time I could've seen it on video, it had been parodied so much that I didn't bother. Timing issue. I know that those who saw it in the theater literally freaked out. I recall the mass hysteria.
After repeat viewings the aspect I find the scariest about the Thing is that it's not a villain, not really all that calculating, or even hell bent on taking over the world as Blair assumes, simply because it chose not to infect Clark despite having ample opportunities to do so. It's just afraid and trying to survive and decided not to eliminate a person that was nice to it, possibly the first human that ever was. The entire situation is a huge misunderstanding, and one day it could be a similar misunderstanding that eliminates us all.
On one hand i've always thought of the Thing as a virus that just goes wherever, which explains this away as just random "luck", on the other hand it's building a space ship so it's definitely sentient.
@@cikame More particularly, it's obviously sapient, which isn't the same thing as sentient. Even a frog is sentient. The two words mean different things.
There's a short story called "The Things" by Peter Watts that writes the story from the perspective of the Thing and I highly recommend it to everyone here who has an hour to spare.
Can we please also touch on the fact that actors in movies are getting to be way to good looking and clean? It’s ok for characters to have some physical flaws. It makes them more recognizable, and real. And I don’t believe researchers working out in the middle of Antarctica would all look so well kept. Or look like super models.
The problem with that is that you just end up with only 10-15 actors playing every mayor character in every movie, but it would be hard to get new actors that doesn't look attractive now a days because everything orbits around that, even in the case of men, I definitely can't remember any men or women in the last 25 years in a major role, that wasn't attractive in any physical way
@@RC-go2kl yeah that it how it was back then, bad teeth wasn't that common since sugar in the diet was rare, so a 50 year old farmer in the medieval probably had better teeth than you at 20 even with the dentist
@@dannore8077 1. a 50 year old farmer in the middle ages would probably be dead at 40. 2. sugar was rare but so was dental hygiene....they didn't had any fillings and for a serf to loose their teeth that meant they would chew food the rest of their miserable lives on the other side of the jaw.... 3. lost your front teeth in a tavern brawl ? tough luck mate , good luck sporting the hillbilly smile the rest of your life since dental implants were pretty much inexistent for the peasants in the middle ages.... 4. I get what you mean to say but I'm pretty sure modern 20 year olds have way better teeth than even kings during the middle ages , lol
@@surenot4362 1- Not true. Infant mortality was pretty high, but if you survived your early years you still had a good chance of reaching your 50s or 60s. 2- Toothbrushes were not a thing, but they had the notion that taking the gunk out of their teeth helped preserve them and they had methods of doing so. Other than that, I agree and it also bothers me the obsession with having everyone in modern movies be always well kept and pretty. It's really hard to buy into whatever sense of verisimilitude they wanna sell when I can smell the actor's hairspray from this side of the screen.
I had never known that John was treated this unfairly after the film released. It boggles my mind, how could this happen. Were people blind? Were they stupid? I have and still am considering this film to be the greatest horror ever created.
I totally agree with you but there is an explanation: E.T came right before this movie. People at the time loved imagining aliens to be these fluffy, mesmerizing yet somehow gullible creatures who teach humankind a unique lesson sent straight from the stars. Watching a masterpiece in horror, isolation and dread featuring aliens during such a time period was a fatal coincidence
Indeed.. although I profoundly disagree with the statement that the 1982 movie's FX "clearly looked fake". For the most part they look incredibly REAL. And it wasn't just the models and animatronix, it was the expert lighting and cinematography combined that created a compelling illusion. The dog kennel scene is just so realistic and utterly intense; there are moments when I can't tell if they are using models or real dog corpses, it's that good!
I remember the first time I saw this movie and thought to myself wow, this was amazing....The practical effects, the score, the cinematography, the feeling of isolation, distrust, and pure paranoia was something I had not seen in a horror movie before, or for that matter in ANY movie to such a great effect! So naturally I also thought to myself....how many Oscars did this win? Surely it got best visual effects, cinematography, maybe best score too? Nope, NOTHING! And to my utter surprise....it was a box office bomb?! WHAT?! It just goes to show you how certain pieces of media were simply NOT appreciated in it's time for the masterpieces they really were. The Thing is not only an amazing Horror movie, it's an amazing movie in general with it's complex themes and just how everything was put together.
Historically, critics have mostly been biased, ultra-conservative, reactionary idiots. Take Hanslick, for instance. He hated Wagner and Brahms and idolized Brahms because he was closer to the classical style of Beethoven and especially Mozart. Or, to take a less controversial and even more idiotic view, Stravinsky said Berlioz didn't know how to compose... because he didn't compose on the neoclassical style Stravinsky valued.
I remember Leonard Maltin absolutely BUTCHERING it in his review. Of course, I already knew that Maltin hated anything newer than 1960, unless it was saccharine kid-type fare. He gave "E.T." a 10. "Firefox" got a 4. "The Thing" got a 2. So I made a point of watching "Thing" first chance I got. 😁
The Thing is my all-time favorite horror flick and the fact that it wasn't appreciated at the time is all the more reason for me to simply not give a shit about what other people think is "good" or "bad". It's really fucking sad that this masterpiece of horror cinema wasn't appreciated in its time, but I am glad that I'm not the only one who thinks it's one of the all-time greats.
Great insights here - can I just address the special effects in 2011’s The Thing - the designs may be excellent and the CGI passable; but the reason they have none of the impact on audiences, the way Carpenter’s film does, is the total lack of fluids - 2011’s victims tear apart like bread, completely dry, whilst Rob Botin’s victims explode; spraying, dripping, leaking and oozing all manner of splatter everywhere.
great point! I also loved that the original designs had body parts that look useless or perhaps we don't really know the function of. Like ok some vestigial arms and legs could have been the thing is "trying out" these weird new features it's learnt, but then there are those creepy clusters of tentacles and stalks. I like to think the latter are from other lifeforms that the thing assimilated
How was the 82 version of the Thing considered bad by... anyone? This was one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Constant suspense, not knowing what the hell is going on, not knowing who to trust... it was fantastic. The only downside of the movie is that you only ever really get to "experience" it one time.
It failed back then since it came out like 2 weeks after ET came out + a lot of people were too stupid to understand the themes of The thing and it called the movie an excuse to do excessive gore and body horror.
I’ll also say this. From personal experience, if you go into something great but it’s nothing like you were expecting it to be, you might not like it the first time you see it. But, one of the ways you might realize it was actually great is if you can’t stop thinking about it afterwards, and a rewatch can make it completely click. I loved this movie from the first time, but I’ve gone through that with other ones.
You'd be amazed at how quickly culture has shifted. Remember that Tipper Gore and the PMRC were from that era; Dee Snider's famous stand against censorship was in 1985.
The film critics of the 1980s told us flat-out why they didn't like the movie, and their reasons are pointed out in 2:34, 7:47, and 10:42. Remember, at this point "arts critic" was a formal profession, which *required* at least some kind of formal training in Criticism-with-a-capital-C. If you don't have those credentials, you don't get hired. And that training primed you to believe in a fixed set of aesthetic rules which a work of art -- in this case a film -- must obey to be considered "great". The degree of "greatness" depended purely on the finesse displayed in obeying one or more of these rules. The horror genre largely ignores these rules, and Carpenter broke them completely. So I don't think we need to speculate about late-20th-Century malaise. The critics were simply doing the same job they'd been doing for the past 200 years.
I was down near the South Pole in the winter of 1982, and watched Carpenter's movie. The head-spider is one of the most breathtakingly horrific pieces of practical effects of it's era. It has no parallels.
For me a lot of it was the monster designs. In the Carpenter film there were unique designs that not only had recognizable silhouettes but also showed traits of the original form that mutated. In the prequel with the exception of the maw chest, it was just a mass of flesh and tentacles
The critics chose E.T, and Poltergeist over the THING because they chose Steven Spielberg over John Carpenter, it's that simple. Neither the directed or produced Spielberg movies were better than Carpenter's "THING".
ET is one of the single most overrated films in the history of cinema. Yeah it's cute, and there is that one scene in the school room with the frogs that is artistically impressive; the rest is a cloying saccharine crowd pleaser that over stayed it's welcome.
The thing you mentioned at 9:16 is one of my biggest movie pet peeves. The long reaction shot to someone dying in the middle of a life or death situation. Not only is it frustrating and kills any tension in the scene, but it also is treating the audience like we are too stupid to realize that a character dying is sad without a hint.
The best way to handle death scenes is to always show the aftermath *after*. The thing moves on, then suddenly "Oh god.. Hes dead" in the background.. pan over to them and bam.. holy shitballs. They died so fast in all that that it was so insignificant that no one noticed until now. Theres a bit of a chill with this method. It plucks at the strings of our mortality, reminding us.. atleast in that dark.. tiny little spot in the back of our minds, that at any moment the same could happen to us. Barely even a footnote, and everything is over, ending the sentence and entire tale with a simple 'And then they died.' Its why stupid reaction shots like this suck ass in horror films when youre trying to make it a big thing. Dont get me wrong, they do have their place, like if it happens in an action movie, and the event rallies the rest to overcome their odds.. but in this its supposed to inflict dread and despair. Another has died. What will we do?
like in "Saving Private Ryan" where while their comrades are horribly wounded, dead, or dying on the beach, the soldiers are taking weapons and ammo off of them, not stopping just doing what they have to do to survive. They don't have time to stop in sympathy. That must be hell
This! So much this! Horror is about OBJECTIFICATION. It's about stripping away the layers of psychology and environment that give us the privilege to be human. When you inject that kind of emotional slop into a scene, you rob it of that potential. And you rob the movie of potential down the road when the characters, who in a realistical scenario would have been running away from their loved ones, now have to contend with the guilt of having behaved like animals.
A couple better ways to do that... . 1 have a character react during a wide shot.....cry/scream/rush the enemy whatever while everyone else acts normally.... 2 do the typical hollywood closeups of tending to the recently deceased...then have one of mourners be murdered as well to prove to the audience it's not going to be that kind of film
As a life long fan of The Thing, I must have seen hundreds of essays like this one dissecting the deeper themes, metaphores, reasons why it bombed, reasons why it's so revered now, and many of them are very good, but this has to be my favorite.
Yup, excellent analysis of the deeper themes of the '82 version vs the shallow exploration of the '011 one, especially in relation to people's mentality in '82.
In retrospect, I think one of the reasons it might have bombed was that, at the time, it was so ungodly scary. I saw it first run in the drive in with my cousin- we parked the car sideways and rolled down the windows so we could watch while lounging- me in the front seat, my cousin In the back. At the end of the movie, I was afraid to move. Literally. I lay there for fifteen minutes afraid to sit up to drive home because I didn't know what was outside that open window.
One big advantage that John Carpenter had was he had 1 year to prep, assemble the cast, shoot and direct the film. Whereas the director and producer of Thing '11 were given barely 5 months to do the same.
This video has highlighted my love for this movie, I especially missed the theme of man being reduced to its bare components. In that sense, it’s also so interesting to see the group use every tool known that ‘separates’ humans from animals (weapons, buildings, science, reasoning, intelligence) only to fall just short and be exterminated to the last regardless. In the end you can’t outrun your own nature
I was favorably impressed by The Thing(1982) in its theatrical release. I was unaware of the negative reaction by critics and some moviegoers, or that it harmed John Carpenter's career.
@@agriosbr No they're not actual lines. They're humorous criticisms the video creator edited over top of the visuals in this video to tie off a point they were making with a joke.
"A group of people who've settled into being alone together." "Populated not so much by people as by people shaped objects who we come to know by names that aren't really names." You're describing the internet.
@@Razumen Worse than alone. We are fundamentally tribal creatures, and we tend to see people we don't know (not our tribe) as potential rivals. After all, for thousands of centuries, the only people you were likely to see were your tribe, unless you were fighting outsiders over a water source or something. So you're constantly suppressing that instinct to run or fight every time you walk down the street in a city. No wonder there's so much paranoia.
My biggest issue with it is that in the original you can find the moment every person became infected, if you pay close enough attention. But in the sequel, people just kinda get infected with seemingly no indication on when.
Wow, that had some seriously insightful moments about the hierarchy of needs and the camera's disregard of survival breaking the monster's tension. Excellent content, thank you.
@@themorbidzoo yep, I was thinking that too. This video made me want to sit through the movie again without any distraction at all, but I'll go watch some of your other videos first.
It would have been cool if they made the other characters aproach this character to help him get saved only to unexpectedly die themselves to show the audience that the monster is a REAL threat
This! This is what I learned in this video. The camera doesn't simply show what is goin on. It tells you what is important and what isn't in these ways. I never considered it like that before.
This shits me so much in so many movies. Characters caring about or focussing on things that wouldn’t matter in a particular situation. Like the world is literally ending, everyone on the planet is about to die horribly, but some woman is still mad at her boyfriend for cheating on her.
I think part of the reason practical effects look better to most people is the design of the thing has to be changed to work in reality therefore making it more realistic, possible and less goofey by nature.
I kinda liked certain effects in the remake too. Felt far less real than the original even though graphically speaking it of course was far more impressive; the movements were more fluent and facial expressions were based on muscle structures rather than a few robotic motors. Still, seeing a REAL thing doing all these things in front of a camera, like the head ripping off the body and slowly sliding down the table had much more impact than any CGI moment in the remake. The remake indeed was very forgettable. Just by having seen this video I remember bits and pieces of it and now I realise that there is some movie on Netflix that is quite similar; some alien crashed on earth and its precense transforms the DNA of everybody who gets closeby, resulting in all sorts of horrible hybrid monsters. It's so forgettable that I can't even remember the title, just like how the remake of The Thing is forgettable.
Given the year 1982, there must surely also be an HIV angle to the paranoia of a collection of lonely, isolated men - particularly exemplified by the incredible 'blood test' scene, which I still think is one of the most tense sequences ever put to film. Great analysis and dissection of the armchair-level editing of 2011. Carpenter really was on fire with the 1982 film, forever in my top 10.
Great point! I'm suddenly seeing a waiting room full of terrified men waiting for the results of a blood test that will decide if they live or die. Holy shit. Suddenly that conceptualization is growing into an emotionally powerful understanding of what horror those first AIDS sufferers were going through. Thank you so much for your perspective - it is a powerful tool I will use to continue to try to improve myself. Wow! How cool is that! Click on a random vid about The Thing that turns out to be the best analysis I've seen of it, and THEN in the comments this old greybeard receives an awesome lesson from a fellow human! Thanks again!
This video even points out more reasons why the first movie was way better like we needed them anyway you can tell from 10 minutes of either movie JCs version rules
While of course possible from a foreboding sense (a sense maybe among some people in the 70s that something was happening) it just barely matches up with the timeline of the epidemic as it wasn't that well known yet so early in the 80s. When filming begun it had just become known as an unusual outbreak in medical literature and among afflicted gay patients. Particularly the blood tests were not used yet at the time. I like the idea of stories being able to capture unintended fears at the time of their creation but I wouldn't say they are this prophetic.
@@Dr0dd I see your point, and I wouldn't pin the inspiration as being 100% conscious, any sort of unconscious inkling, or early article read, or influence of the miasma of the time could be a factor. I do think it's interesting how they lack meaningful friendships or relationships between themselves or outside - there's no wives or girlfriends mentioned; yet none of the usual 'not-gay' inserts of them oogling playboy or putting pinups all over their bunks, which was par for the course in any male-orientated 80s film. The film seems set on isolating its fear of other men. Its thematic commitment to this to the point of forgoing filmic convention of the time is part of why it has aged so brilliantly I think.
While it's an interesting analogue, I think you're overthinking it, the 1982 move is a (mostly) faithful adaptation of a 1930s novel and the blood test scene was already in it.
I saw this movie on its release back in the day and emerged absolutely mesmerised and quite deeply disturbed, but there was no doubt in my mind that I'd seen something of unparalleled quality in every aspect of production. Before it ceased to be shown, I went to the cinema 5 times more, fascinated by Bottin's monstrosities, Morriconi's music, the claustrophobic intensity and Carpenter's nihilistic finale. I made a bit of a bore out of myself at work, at the pub, with the family - where not..? Only a complete philistine would not wax lyrical about Carpenter's masterpiece.
3:42="This is very obviously a puppet." Yes, but the CGI is very obviously CGI in the 2011 film. So, the artifice is apparent in both examples. As mentioned previously, it was the quality of filmmaking that set the 1982 version far ahead of the other.
Indeed. (Not the case for these movies, since 2011 had practical effects on set, but:) Even a puppet is grounded in reality, and actors react to it far more organically - CGI often comes off as a superimposed image, nullifying a lot of the threat it can offer. CGI has a slew of issues beyond just 'not looking good' - its floor of quality is generally a LOT lower than practical effects.
I’m an architect student. Recently I rewatched 1979’s Alien, wondering why it’s so damn good it’s still the best of the saga. And then I started checking the interior design and found some photos of the sets on internet, and it blew my mind how amazing they are. Some of them really beautiful, warm and cozy, contrasting with others dark, sharp and unsettling. And it is that contrast what gives me that uncertainty feeling of not knowing what is going to happened next.
Yes, the set design was what sold me on the film in the first five minutes and gave me a lot of respect for Ridley Scott. Very few directors pan over the set to establish a sense of place. It's almost like they want to hide the background (i.e. make it blurry) to cover up the fact that it's not well built.
some artists try to make the scene as close as what they envision, to sell the feels to the audience while some just to complete a daily quota, that's the different
I love how you start with “I’m an architect student.” This information is literally irrelevant and is both useless and totally meaningless. Only a pretentious fool thinks being an architect student gives them an extra ability to evaluate whether a movie set is high quality or not. Apparently just watching the movie was too confusing for you. I guess the movie didn’t show you the movie sets of which that movie was literally composed of, so you had to look up images on the internet of the movie you were watching, because watching it provided no info about the quality of the set pieces used
Something I love about the Carpenter thing is the Monster has demonstrated that it can communicate. It CHOOSES not to. The Monster does not care about anything but killing you. That is scary shit.
Whats scary is its based off of parasites...the thing is a parasite...same thing killing you and most of humanity off in the name of diseases...parasites...
@@sonofacheron There are numerous scenes. We know either Norris or Palmer were the first to be infected be the dog. Norris refuses to take over leadership from Gary "sorry guys Im not up to it". Also Palmer when MacReady has been cut loose by Nauls. Whether Thing-Palmer KNOWS Mac isnt a Thing and wants a shot at taking him out or simply doesnt care he is eager to go on the offensive despite clearly already being an imitation at this point. The Thing is a perfect imitation. It has the intelligence and social skills of a human while it is one. Finally we have Blairs pleading to be let back in when he has clearly been turned. We know because of his earlier attitude its obviously not him anymore but the imitation is doing its best to plead in a meek and apologetic manner. Another thing watch Palmers face when Mac is about to test his blood with the hot needle. He does this amazing resigned facial expression almost like "oh boy here we go" in anticipation that he is about to be exposed.
@@jmlaw8888 another interpretation is palmer and Norris things act independently if not competitively. I like the idea that they are trying to get the superior amount of body mass or the jump on the other. Like competing Hive minds
The part about the hierarchy of needs and the focus on grief is a problem with a lot of modern movies and TV shows where characters will just stop everything they're doing to have a heart to heart while in a warzone or surrounded by dozens of imminently approaching zombies. The later seasons of The Walking Dead is really guilty of this and it just completely takes you out of the suspense and shatters immersion while you wince in disbelief that THIS is the moment they decide to talk about their feelings and dreams? THIS is their concern right now?!
What I love about the 1982 one is the real horror is fear and paranoia. They've all gone from being close friends/colleagues to being shit scared (and not trusting ) of each other where as the 2011 one was more of a gory kill craze.
That is true, however in the 1982 one the thing really never seemed... dangerous.. Whenever it was discovered it just kinda.. sat there and screamed. The dog, the defib thing, and the very final one. They just kinda transformed and screamed at the humans, not really doing anything. The 2011 ones actually seemed terrifying once they transformed.
You’re mostly wrong about the Thing just standing there and screaming. The Dog-Thing was about to attack before it was destroyed; the Bennings-Thing was too weak to attack at that moment because it was just assimilated minutes ago; and the Norris-Thing killed Dr. Cooper when it revealed itself. I agree with you about the Blair-Thing though, it just stood there and waited to be blown up. The original script was going to have the dog jump out of the Blair-Thing and attack MacReady, but they didn’t have enough money for the effects. Regardless, the 1982 movie is vastly superior to the 2011 prequel.
@@mbattalionenjoyer5162 The dog thing was just making weird noises and the most it moved was like a foot in the air, the norris thing just spouted a head in the center and screamed at everyone else, it was just a coincidence it killed dr cooper. I 100% agree that the atmosphere, writing, and score is far better in the 1982 movie, but the actual thing was just scarier in the prequel for me.
@@aletron4750 The Dog-Thing was about to attack Childs with some sort of appendage before getting torched. It probably wasn’t as aggressive as you’d expect it to be because it was in the process of assimilating the dogs. I’m pretty sure everyone was standing far away from the Norris-Thing so it couldn’t immediately attack anyone other than Dr. Cooper. I think the Thing in the 1982 version is scarier because it is a silent killer. It waits for the right moment to strike unless it is discovered. The 2011 Thing just feels like a generic monster to me. It displays little intelligence and attacks everyone in sight.
I think another way that the Carpenter film really sticks with you as memorable is that, while there isn't a lot of depth with the characters, they're very clearly not stupid. They ask the kinds of questions people would in this situation, come to conclusions like "If you were all these things, you'd just attack me, so some of you are still human"; and they come up with solutions based on what they learn about the creature, the most famous being the hot needle in the blood test. There's some bad decisions in there, the worst probably being Clarke trying to shank MacReady and Mac shooting him dead, but it's done out of a genuine sense of fear and paranoia. They're all on edge and have no idea who to trust, but still trying their hardest to work together. The Thing itself also isn't stupid. It's patient, calculating, and never reveals itself unless it has to. It doesn't do so very often because it recognizes that the people in the camp are its biggest threat, and so its best bet is to turn them against each other. Something that doesn't often get talked about is how, when doing the blood test, the Palmer-thing waits until Mac actually stabs its blood and it leaps out, using the shock as a chance to quickly transform. It was only thanks to Mac's flamethrower crapping out on him and Windows freezing up in terror that it managed to kill the latter. I think all of this really does add another layer to the horror of the situation. Most of the time, we roll our eyes at the bad, stupid decisions characters in horror movies make, and the prequel is no exception. They don't exist to be characters, they exist to be kill fodder to show off the monster and so you don't really give a damn. The Carpenter film shows you characters who are genuinely and even overly cautious, work together and make intelligent decisions like we want to see, but they still *fail.* It's not even made clear if, after all their work, the Thing is actually dead by the end. Carpenter's film says that if you were actually in a horror movie and even if you made all the right decisions, you could still end up dying, even if you win.
Well said. If you know everything the characters know as they know it, roughly the best you could do... is what they did. There's a degree of pleasant detachment at feeling like you'd survive. (See those "How to Win X Horror Movie" videos.) But no, not here. These are reasonably clever guys doing their best, and they still die.
This was a really damn good analysis! The idea of being reduced to meat, forgotten and unrecognizable pulp, is my biggest fear. Like the idea of someone being crushed under a hydraulic press or eaten whole; they're just gone. There's no sanctity in their death, nor anything to mourn. It's why The Thing is my favorite movie, horror or not. Nothing since this film has captured the essence of "We're all electric meat computers trying to survive in a cold, isolated, and dangerous world, and we end up killing each other just as much as that world because we're scared." It's horrible, yet the craft of it is beautiful and incredible. It reminds me of the way Disco Elysium captures those feelings of regret, depression, and hopelessness so perfectly. It's tough to witness, but one should not deny its craft. I hate that The Thing got panned just because people couldn't handle the emotions it made them feel, I'm glad that it wasn't forgotten and left behind. I think we live in an age now where people are much more willing to face these emotions and actually think about them rather than just turn away and call it "bad," and The Thing's recent popularity and Disco Elysium's success are proof of that. Though at times (often) it feels like society can be regressing, I think people's willingness to face these darker aspects in mature ways is hopeful.
@@themonsterunderyourbed9408 I've always liked the idea of being religious, but I just can't. You can't force yourself to believe in something if you simply don't believe in it. Hell, I'd have an easier time making up my own deity to believe in. It would be comforting to truly believe in a benevolent God, but... I just don't.
that's exactly the opposite how i want to go. I don't want for anything to be left behind. I don't want a tomb, i don't want to be a waste of meat rotting in a wooden box. My ideal would be dropped in a volcato, where i would pulverize even before i reach the magma
Finally watched the original thing after all these years and having seen the prequel first. This is a phenomenal and spot on analysis that deserves more recognition! Thank you for giving me something to think upon as I write my first body horror film.
Its hard for me to feel the amount of paranoia when I cant remember every single character coz they dont even have a single memorable trait. I mean like when someone shouted "Henrik is dead!" and all I can think is "Who's Henrik?"
There was a sense of isolation and foreboding the 1982 version created with it's suspense and building narrative that I have not experienced from another movie, I watched it when I was young and my dog coming up to me while watching alone downright terrified me as he stared all confused lol.
Haha amazing - your dog actually creeped you out and that's exactly why the Carpenter version is so good. This 2011 prequel is a joke of a horror film.
The prequel got the character of the thing all wrong. It's supposed to be "the chameleon that strikes in the dark" but they had the monster jumping out and chasing people down the halls. Practical FX force filmmakers to show less, rather than more, which is much scarier. Computer FX are so cheap and easy, they use it everywhere and it's not scary.
@@tonysoprano6628 True, but the film didn’t execute that very well. It was really just cat and mouse the whole way through. If the short story (of the 1982 events from the things perspective) is anything to go by. It should been a slow build to a horrifying climax, instead we got points where the creature really had no reason to show itself. The 2011 prequel was just very poor
@@Lava91point0 The CGI effects ruined the movie for me. I can accept the creature was adapting and chasing people down the halls but those effects were horrible man.
@@tonysoprano6628 But the thing in the prequel did clean up the shower room after Kate Lloyd found the blood and teeth fillings in it. Since the thing have shown intelligence by cleaning up the shower room, that one scene exactly contradicts how the thing functioned during the rest of the movie and John Carpenter's The Thing
The effects people did do practical effects for the 2011 prequels in honour of Rob Bottin’s work on the 1982 movie. Word was that the movie execs thought the FX looked too “old school” and at last minute swapped out the practical effects with rushed CGI. The people who had worked so hard on the effects didn’t even know what the studio had done until they saw the movie themselves. Yet another example of Studio interference ruining a movie. I’d love to see the prequel, with all the original effects back in place.
One big reason I loved the 1982 version over the 2011 version is that the monster had a sense of psychical presence that is missing with cgi. CGI has edges between where it and the physical set meets, which is difficult to make look good. While practical effects also have edges to them, they’re easier to work around in a movie like the thing (tight spaces, small scale, lots of items around, and more of a focus on how the characters react to the thing than the thing itself)
And the guy who slit his wrist. Didn't even know who he was until the deadmeat killcount came out and pointed it out to be Colin. And even I STILL had to rewind to check which one was Colin.
@@elioorozco8185 And remember: Colin is essentially supposed to be the prequel's Windows, who was a much better character, and his death scene is horrifying to watch, while Colin's death happens Off-Screen, and he goes out like a bitch.
I was glad when people died in the prequel, they were so stupid or such caricatures. I don't remember much about them, but I remembered everyone's names and personalities in the '82 version.
@@SavouryGalette oh no no you don't understand the actual base they went to in 1982 film was the 2nd base the thing attacked after being frozen again when it ran away as a dog ,it's just that coincidentally the same major plot points happened there for some reason
I think you hit the nail on the head. The Thing (1982) is just better filmmaking. It's easy for a lot of people to blame, plot holes, or CGI when a movie doesn't work, but more often than not, it's simply that the writing and the filmmaking. The movies that people love today are littered with plot holes, and even great modern films use plenty of CGI, but when a movie connects with you, you don't notice that stuff, you just like it.
The CGI is why the plot and film was changed for the worse... I kid you not... There was a film with practical effects, effect tests on youtube look amazing, like Real life CGI actually, because of the lifelike robotic movements used by the special effects company. The studio literally wanted CGI because CGI was selling according to the math they use... They forced reshoots and changes and the film is nothing like planned as a result.
Thank you! It used to drive me crazy when people acted like it was just the CGI that ruined the 2011 film. Cgi just another tool, it's not what makes or breaks anything.
The sound effects and the sound track in the 1982 The Thing is both mesmerizing and horrifying. It is one of the least mentioned aspects that gives it an other worldly feeling, which most alien creatures depicted even if not horror themed rarely have.
I love how Quentin Tarantino took elements of JC’s “The Thing” into “The Hateful Eight”, especially when Kurt Russell’s character states “Someone here is not who they say they are”, QT stated The Thing was one of his favorite movies. The entire setting of The H8ful 8 is a salute to “The Thing”, a cabin, in the dead of a winter storm populated by a bunch of characters, many of whom are not who they say they are, and of course one of the leading roles played by Kurt Russel.
holy cow ! never though of that, now to think the atmosphere among the characters in The Hateful Eight is so tense, it really does resonates The Thing !
Amazing video. You explained really simply the actual problems we see so much even today in the movie industry. The excess romantization kills the very core aspect of human beings: We are animals, crude and nasty when our life is threatened. The writing of characters and situations in a horror movie (or any other genre actually) should reflect that. That chaotic crudeness.
To be fair, what used to scare me the most when i was younger with the practical effects was the unnatural movement. The jitter effect. And to be fair..... it still some how creeps me out more then the best CGI produced, smooth moving abominations. Also what one commentator pointed out, the difference between a creature that tries to survive and uses tactics instead of mindless attacks.
I'm not sure I agree about the unnatural movements, I mean it's unnatural movement I guess but it's how like a head stretching and popping off would look, because it's actually what you are seeing. I mean we know it's not a real head, but we are literally seeing a head stretching off a body then all the cords popping in real time. Where as with cgi it's someone's interpretation of what it looks like. But with real effects it's actually happening so all the unpredictable things and things someone wouldn't interpret actually happen naturally. Not sure I explained myself but hope you get what I mean. Also I do agree that it's unnatural even tho what you are seeing is how it naturally happens lol.
I couldn't agree more. Old school 70s and 80s body horror was AMPLIFIED by the unnatural movement of the prosthetic effects. CGI utterly fails in this regard. The way fake skin wrinkles as it's pulled...or the way its tensile strength gives in "ropes" when it's pulled apart simply hasn't been replicated by cgi yet.
Real life creatures and humans do not move so smoothly. Every movement is full of little jittery movements. That is why CGI in motion is so much more fake-looking than a still image can be. Not saying the old school animation is more realistic, but the new stuff is just as bad but for different reasons...
@@xEvilNeverDiesx I get what you mean yeah, good props will properly simulate the effects and physics of whats happening. What I really like about practical effects is how they look real for both the audience and the actors. The lighting is genuine and sometimes the actors really get spooked themselves, which makes for a very convincing screen experience. Practical effects also tend to be messier and grittier, CGI can look too "clean" at times and create an uncanny valley effect. I'm not against CGI, it is very useful and allows certain shots to be pulled off, but it does have a bad reputation because they do detract from the movie when they're done poorly. Props can and have been done poorly too, but CGI is a relatively new thing that has been spammed and the negative associations can stick to people after seeing their fair share of lousy CGI.
My favorite scene in this film..is the "spider-head"..which scuttles away..because it appears just off the edge of the camera,just short of blindsiding the audience..and at the same time underlies the apparently unlimited resiliency of the creature...the fact that it takes a moment for Nawls to even see the thing...he's open-mouthed..the audience is open mouthed.
In the 80's, we had the nuclear clock. At every moment there was the creeping knowledge that a bomb could drop, followed by instant retaliation and complete obliteration worldwide. It's difficult to describe how that impacts a nation psychologically, but the average person didn't want a movie with an unhappy ending or uncertainty. They wanted an obvious bad guy and a strong hero in the same way that you want a happy song when you're at a truly low point because a sad song when you're actually sad can be overwhelming.
@@mayabartolabac Almost sounds like a subtle social engineering. An attempt to create enough apathy in the hopes of deterring possible meaningful change. Or just the motions of society trying to get through difficult change like any point in history.
I'm a fan of the 2011 Thing (I saw it in theaters) and the 80s thing (I was traumatized by it as a child in the early 90s) and I, for the most part, agree with your analysis. Very perceptive observation about the characters in the 80s thing being dehumanized (called by names that aren't really "names") and not really connected to each other personally, but rather just resigned to being alone together. You really get a sense of that in the Carpenter version.
@@carriersignal sure. We did it at a place I worked at too. It’s not uncommon in a work place but when it’s done in a move like this, it’s one of several choices Carpenter made to distance the characters from the viewer and each other
The comparison between the narrative structure of the film and Maslow's heirarchy was really eye opening for me. I'd never thought of it in that context before and it definitely helps explain the process of designing fear as a product. That's always been difficult for me to put a finger on in these conversations, so thank you!
It's a good way to summarize how so many action oriented movies (past or present) fail to create any real tension. Not sure what that's evidence of, seems like a single class in movie school oughta clear that right up, there are so many great examples of how to do "urgent terror" well... so something else is going on there other than ignorance. Conflicting priorities within the studio?
The JC version generates a subdermal feeling that stays with you after the movie is over. Things are not resolved, the tone hints towards a darker end. That we are isolated and alone no matter how many people are around us. This evaluation of The Thing was well done; the discussion, scene selection, and exploring conversational delivery is impressive.
I feel the fact that puppets can't do backflips and you aren't free to jerk the camera all around them while they jiggle forward in a goofy jog helps with the cinematography sometimes. Makes every move of the camera more deliberate. Keeps things stationary and more intimate which is probably helpful in a movie like the thing.
This helped me better understand why my immersion is so throughly broken when characters make puns all the time in action and horror movies. Also, romantic pursuits being established on screen have a similar affect. When I see two people flirting, my brain automatically assumes there’s no danger or urgency because you wouldn’t flirt in such a situation. So when the monster comes on screen the next scene, I’m already checked out. The social politics thing was a good point too. If you have energy to have a Twitter debate for example, you’re definitely not concerned about anything important relating to survival.
It’s actually insane that this film got so absolutely hacked apart upon its release. And now is revered a genuine classic masterpiece. How times change.
Na, thats normal for a big part sadly. In terms of media, a lot of new stuff gets massively hacked and later be considered a classic. I also will bet my left hand that 50 shades will be a special classic in 30 or 40 years.
Most people really don’t like true horror. The professional critics who watched “The Thing” watched every major studio release back then, because that was their job. It’s definitely a switch from “ET,” which came out the same month.
I saw The Thing when I was 13, the same day I saw ET. Of course, I loved both films for very different reasons. The Thing was one of those movies, that blew my mind. The tone, the isolation, the cold, the dark, the paranoia, the music, the effects, the performances.... masterpiece. Thank you John.
That so many supposedly educated critics came away feeling bad and not realizing that was the WHOLE point of the movie is kind of wild. You would think a movie that is both entertaining, and shocking, and with themes close to heart in the Cold War would be a hit with just about everyone. Goes to show just how badly America needed to reinforce its own exceptionalism after Viet Nam. We still haven't accepted our flaws.
I just watched The Thing 2011 and I was so angry afterwards but I didn't know exactly why, since I am a huge fan of the 51 and 82 version... But not only you conveyed what I felt in words, this video even gave me goosebumps... Fantastic stuff, thank you
So the moral of the story is, CGI isn't the problem in the right hands and as long as they keep it grounded to the story being told and not going overboard like many do. With the kind of computing tech we have today, CGI should be able to look as real as the real thing in the right hands. The real problem is, people expect everyone that is doing CGI to have top end skill sets for the job but that just isn't how it works. For me, CGI isn't a problem anymore, what is the problem is the tools to create them and too many going overboard in what they try to do and not keep it ground, basically, too many newer movies are about the special effects and not the story but in the right hand with the right director, CGI artist and so on, they can make a masterpiece of a movie today.
The biggest issue is that CGI folks are overworked, underpaid, & never given enough time to perfect anything anymore which is why it looks so bad these days depending on the movie.
@@d3l3tes00n Honestly, it usually looks fantastic -- it's just that it blends so well (backgrounds, spaceships, removal of things that don't belong, etc) that you don't realize you're seeing CGI. Some of the super-ambitious center-stage stuff looks odd -- usually because they're trying to create stuff that really DOES look odd -- monsters and such -- or because they make poor stylistic choices, like making things look too polished for what they are. And, of course, if it's not a billion-dollar blockbuster, there's the sort of thing you're talking about. I'm not denying that there's truth in your statement -- just pointing out that people overlook the immense success of CGI in creating effective illusion, in order to focus on its occasional failures.
The Thing (1982) is one of the best movies ever. It is perfect. Definitely a contender for my favorite film of all time but at the very least my favorite horror film. It baffles me how little it is talked about honestly.
6:15 I like your takes. The thing about Maslow's hierarchy is that it happens simultaniously, not in steps. The lower ones are more important, but they don't have to be fully statisfied before we go for the higher ones too. This has been established for some time now, but since most schools only teach the original theory they forget to mention it. And yes I would have hated any romance in this movie too, but it is possible. Fear of death brings people closer together or at least it can.
This is where I think “annihilation” succeeded, by making Natalie Portman utterly powerless at the face of an unknowable unseen creature. The most fascinating part was seen how each evolution led to a more and more warped version of nature and reality itself.
@@themorbidzoo I saw annihilation alone in a theater with maybe 5 people in it and was glued to the scream the whole time. It made me feel things I couldn’t describe and there were multiple times in the movie that I had to close my mouth because I had unknowingly left it hanging open. It’s a shame my friends and family never saw it’s charm. The soundtrack of the movie is half of its experience and the work that went into it was remarkable to witness
@@levibull6063 The Biologist is not supposed to be a likeable character, none of them are. You don't have to like the protagonist for them to be a protagonist.
You just perfectly encapsulated my main issue with the horror genre these days, particularly "creature features" because effects and technology have cone so far they focus on the IT more than the ambiance, more than plot building, character building, sound design, the tense moments and everything else around the IT. Thats one reason classic horror is so much more scary... a movie that scares you good will have turning on lights and pulling back shower curtains for weeks after viewing. It sits in the back of your mind and gnaws... I LOVE THAT. I miss that feeling.
Watched a movie called the void recently, saw it on a really low screen brightness the first time, really was an amazing movie, really scary. As soon as i rewatched it but on a brighter screen it really changed things. The shadows and dark bits of the screen really made the film unsettling, made all the monsters etc much more frightening, id recoomend watching a certain scary films you know are good with lower brightness, really turned it into a much more captivating film, not saying you do it so some aspects are not visible
I really love the way The Thing handles it’s monster. The alien is methodical, calculated, but not inherently malicious. It’s like an animal, acting on instinct and predictable when you actually pay attention to its behaviors. This concept instantly improves any fictional alien or monster for me. A monster has to act on more than just a desire to kill. It becomes less predictable when it has more motives. Because animals respond to different emotions in a variety of ways, there’s more flexibility. What angers it? What scares it? Does it want to kill to eat? or kill to defend itself? Or both? How can the characters take advantage of these things? Etc etc. i’m a little biased because my favorite movie does this, but i enjoy it in any story where it’s present
This analysis is what got me to finally watch The Thing (1982) tonight with some friends who'd also never seen it. Great movie. I loved all your analysis points and shared most of them with my friends. You're absolutely right in one of your other videos when you said that this channel would get more people seeing your work than any amount of paper writing and publishing would do. And I say that having 1 published paper under my name already. Cheers and happy holidays!
Awesome analysis. I would however, argue that the puppets from 1982 are not inferior to the CGI of 2011. CGI today is really getting there, but up until very recently, it tends to be over-animated. Plus, imagine how a limb would move if tendons, muscles, and joints were actively breaking down and and re-configuring themselves. Probably stiff and flimsy and awkward, like a puppet. I don't want to get too morbid, but if you've ever seen the beating of lungs inside a cut-open chest, it looks almost puppet-like. The visual line between actual sustained bodily harm and puppetry is far more blurred, than between CGI and actual sustained bodily harm. TLDR; puppetry (sometimes) outshines most modern CGI in realism. Little Shop of Horrors as my testament.
Yes, CGI is getting nowhere even today. Just looks like a super highly detailed cut scene from a video game. Outside of a videogame setting it looks like shit. Only usable for inanimate objects and backgrounds. Anything else especially anything alive looks uncannily horrible and should be kept at a minimum and shrouded in darkness, layers of fog or other atmospherics never to see the light of day. The CGI era as we know it today is an abomination to moviemaking as an art. Lets hope it ends soon. Bring back the puppets.
I think CGI Peaked completely with Lord of the Rings. Because that was pretty much the last time real hardcore effects artists were the ones doing the whole thing. That is why even now Gollum looks good. What brings an end to things is the basic thought that you 'fix it in post' mindset. As in every single thing is 'enhanced' or 'fixed' with CGI.
@@mariawhite7337 don’t necessarily agree with you that cgi peaked with the lotr trilogy but i do agree that the trilogy highlights how good cgi could be and age when done right, that is by combining it with practical effects and set pieces as well as mocap if possible. Too bad studios these days are too lazy and cheap to make those stuffs and would “just animate it and then we’ll layer it in stupid amount of texture to cover the cracks” or in your much simpler words “fix it in post”
I always felt Carpenter's version had his characters be that ambiguous so we the audience would be on our toes for who is who. We know as you said just the basic of what we need to know about each character through actions and emotions.
Its the fine line one must always walk. Its too easy to fall into the trap of giving main characters more focus than supporting characters,... and in a horror film this becomes the trap of "oh, okay, all those guys are gonna die, but these ones are not" and all the tension disappears. This is made even worse when you make a movie where the audience already knows the only survivors will be the pilot, and the Norwegian with bad aim. The setting itself demanded even greater care, but got less.
This is such a beautiful, well worded, and concise essay. I keep coming back to it to enjoy it again. It doesn’t feel like 12 minutes, it feels like a chat with a friend. Well done.
82 The Thing is my favorite film of all time. I have never heard someone compare the creature, and body horror as a whole, to real life deformations and parasites exactly the way you did. Very intriguing. Fantastic video!
A lot of these old horror films were inspired by real life things like that. The Fly from how gnarly and creepy insects look up close. The Blob from the rise in awareness of rapidly spreading slime molds, specifically a fast spreading slime mold that appeared somewhere in Texas. The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, They Live!, from the rising fears of alien abduction and the beliefs that Aliens were living amongst us.
Funny how a bunch of my friends and I, just "nobodies" in a little town not on the map, no film school under our belts, no journalism in our dreams... KNEW that "The Thing" was great the first time we saw it, the year it came out. We knew nothing was like it, we knew the acting was reserved and realistic, we knew the style helped us immerse ourselves until it was over... and I, being a classic sci-fi geek, knew the source material was WAY ahead of its time, and fascinating... not just blood and guts.
3:38 to supplement to point of “because they could do whatever they wanted with the monster they figured they didn’t have to put effort into the framing,” (or to kind of just reiterate your point lol) I find it really interesting that the clips of practical effects cut from the rest of the movie look fake here, they don’t feel that way when you’re watching the movie. The framing and context makes it feel real enough when experiencing the movie. And that’s I think where the CGI falls flat. Because there’s little to no framing every flaw and imperfection stands out because that’s all the movie is giving you.
I recently read "The mountains of madness" by H.P. Lovecraft, a story who shares some similarities with the Thing. (just a quick recap of this one : a scientiic expedition in Antartica discovers some strange and really ancient beings frozen in the ice, and later they find an entire city which used to be one these Elder things citadel) And something awesome with it, is about the Elder Things in this novel, is the fact that they ARE sentients. These are creatures who woke up in a laboratory after thousands of years of sleep. So when they were awaken, surrounded by strange ape-like and wolf-like beings trying to kill them while screaming, they freaked out ! This is something we can find in the 1982 "the thing", the fact that the monster is sentient, it knows it is vulnerable and fights for it's own survival. In the 2011 movie, it seems like it's just here to kill stuff and look bad. When I rewatch the scene of the dogs, I can't stop thinking : what the hell is happening in it's mind right now ?! Sadly, I don't find this dimension in the recent movie. Also, this video have 18 dislikes right now, but it's so good it should have none... I think there are 18 impostors among us...
Hell yeah, it's a super Lovecraftian monster in 1982, one of those things that makes you feel little and meaningless, there but for the grace of god go my stupid self. I haven't read the mountains of madness in a long time, I might need to pick it up again. Thanks for the watch!!
As far are the YT algorithm is concerned it registers both likes and dislikes the same as engagement so either way it helps promote the channel at least lol
I didn't know The Thing was panned when it came out. I was in High School at the time so I was the target demo. I was blown away and everyone I knew who saw it was as well. It was to horror what Star Wars was to SiFi. Absolutely terrifying! I feel sorry for Carpenter. To be fired after you make a masterpiece?!?!
I was in high school in the 80s too, and I must disagree with the commentator that the 80s were a "weird time". They were about as un-weird as is possible, which is one reason why this movie tanked at the time. Now the 70s, THOSE were weird.
The part that the 2011 film did really well was the transition to Carpenter's film, where there was hysterical panic leading straight into dog chase with iconic music. That was an instance in the latter production that did capture the original film. This was a great analysis of the films.
Love the Carpenter version of The Thing. Just brilliant. I own both films. The prequel isn’t really all that bad. It’s just not as good as the 1982 version. They are now trying to make a remake. Yes, Blumhouse is making it. Like he is now with The Exorcist. I guess they are truly running out of ideas! To me it’s sacrilegious to do this with these classic films that really don’t need a redo.
I don't typically see remakes as bad because even if they don't do well it gets people talking and can remind people about the original film and inspire a newer generation to watch the original out of curiosity. Sometimes I never know about an original movie until I have seen its remake. This was the case with this film and I preferred the original as well but still enjoyed the remake.
Love these videos! Not only do you have a really strong idea that you're conveying but you also narrate them far better than a lot of youtubers on top of making a really solid _video_ for your _video_ essays. Keep it up!
Solid points. Honestly this is part of what made Dead Space such a great game at first...and also why the series went to shit in the 3rd installment. If you've never played it, I highly recommend watching a playthru.
This movie and the 1st Alien. The people feel real, like.. what if normal people did something like this. They are relatable. The physical object effects add to it. Yes you can tell many are puppets especially now with good video quality.. BUT.. you see things like 1) natural light reflections 2) water / moisture 3) shadows 4) actors making real contact with the props. I really wish movies would go back to doing practical effects and use CGI to help enhance it.
This was a much better overview of this movie than most I've seen on youtube. I saw this movie at a "projectionist screening" at the theater I worked at as a teenager before ANYONE else had a chance to see it. I was BLOWN AWAY! After the "Dogtown" scene both my friend and I turned to each other with a look that just said, "HOLY SHIT! THIS IS AMAZING!" We watched in raptured wonder for the entirety. Our little mall triplex had a weird tradition from this OLD SCHOOL theater manager who had been doing it for HIS ENTIRE LIFE, which was to put a quote from an employee about the movie. As I was the only one who had seen it, my description was "The scariest horror movie that's ever been made. Not for the squeamish". My friend and I watched it twice more for the two weeks it played at my theater. But we saw it again at a local drive in in October where, during the showing, it started to snow, ever so gently. Not so much as to obscure anything, but it was one of those "perfect moments". I've been heartened that this movie finally caught on. I've been a fan from my first viewing and it's one of those movies where because you can't see it again for the first time, the next best thing is when you find out one of your friends hasn't seen it, and YOU get to show it to them.
SHe pointed out the use of eye contact in the first movie that I missed somewhat also the heiarchy of human needs is not used in the second movie which made it stupid
Mariana, this is the kind of review I've been looking for. It's been bugging me for a long time why 2011 Thing fails. Some of my issues are technical, some are bad characterization. However, your observation about Maslow's hierarchy of needs puts a fine point on it. The characters are at an emotional tone like they're not in a knife's-edge survival situation. They act like their mental map of the world is in accord with reality -- which is impossible. Anyone could split apart into an all consuming unstoppable eating machine at any moment. Nobody would be observing the normal protocols of leadership hierarchies. I'd also add: the characters are too "clean" -- there are no rough edges. Their flaws are always flaws and their virtues are always virtues. The character flaws in the '82 Thing become virtues when their world is turned upside down. McReady isn't just a sore loser, he'll win and he'll think outside the box to do so (literally -- he dumps his drink inside the box on which the chess game is being played). When faced with a superior opponent, or life-or-death situation, he only cares about survival and using all resources at hand to do so. There are many ways that '82 Thing is as close to cinematic perfection as can be attained. Plot, characterization, theme, music, setting, pacing, direction, blocking, dialog, lighting, and many others. Where 2011 Thing fails is that none of those elements are working in harmony to evoke the existential terror of being defiled in every conceivable way by a predatory creature which is formless. It corrupts your body and steals even your mind and turns them all to it's own designs. The Thing adds insult to injury in that it is fully self aware yet has no interest in negotiating with humans. It truly views people like cattle which contribute little more than meat and a pragmatic disguise. Also, it's lack of peacemaking implies that the humans were doing exactly as it wanted all along. It was never truly under threat.
Thanks so much! And yep, I agree on all counts. I think most "bad" movies come down to whether the filmmakers actually understand what their movie is about. The 2011 Thing is a movie that misunderstands its own point.
Most horror films rely on visuals to terrify and fail because of it. Although visually shocking throughout, The Thing uses something far more powerful. Being made to feel what the characters felt. Which JC seals with a masterful stroke, the final scene.
The main thing I hated about the 2011 movie was that it was essentially a remake packaged as a prequel. Dialogue and scenes lifted directly from the 1982 movie, with a couple additions like the fillings in the teeth and retconning the ending so it doesn't actually match the original... it's a remake, and a poor one at that. There's a lot of that going around with Ghostbusters Afterlife, Force Awakens, Jurassic World 1 and 2...... all remakes, packaged as sequels and prequels, simply because *actual* remakes like Ghostbusters 2016 and RoboCop 2015, are universally hated.
One of my favorite films, and a really great commentary on it! I have watched a lot of these, and this is one of the best. Something I always wondered, even when I was a kid, was this: are you "killed" when assimilated by the Thing? Or, does some part of your conscience still survive? In some scenes, it seems like the victims don't realize that they are no longer themselves - particularly Norris. He seems to genuinely not realize what's about to happen when he has his heart attack. I feel like this would have been an interesting thing to explore in the prequel, sadly, that didn't happen.
I always assumed Norris was fully-assimilated but that the host body wasn't replicated properly or had some sort of complication that led to it not being able to survive as a reconstructed human. I.e the "heart attack" was a failure of the system of organisms.
@@57harrierstrikes I agree that it makes sense that when he was assimilated, his heart condition was also replicated, and that the “thing” was genuinely experiencing a human cardiac arrest. Also an interesting idea.
Norris and Palmer were fully assimilated when they tried to torch McReady and escalated the tension by convincing the others that he had been assimilated. The thing was fully in control of Norris at this point. As Brian said prior, the thing assimilated Norris perfectly including his defective organs. Seems to me that his memories would have remained intact. So if Norris knew he had a heart condition so would the thing. I think that Norris would have died regardless if he had been assimilated or not. He didn't know he had a bad heart and the activity of boarding up the doors and stress of the situation was too much for his body.
Imagine having lunch at a diner with Childs.
*Childs opens up his sandwich, removes a slice of cheese and holds it up on display.*
Childs: "If this was an imitation - a perfect imitation - how would you know if it was really brie?"
😂 I'm pinning this comment
@@themorbidzoo The gesture is appreciated. I do hope I can one day offer a comment of actual substance.
@@U-L-T-R-O-N I assume that applying a scorching hot piece of wire to _that_ concoction would also elicit an otherworldly shriek?
@@U-L-T-R-O-N ???
Then he puts the slice of cheese on your sandwich and...well would you eat it?
Another big problem was that the 2011 Thing was a stereotypical, killing machine, monster. Whereas the 1982 thing was very calculating, strategic, and precise. The 1982 thing wasn’t just trying to absorb and replicate everyone, it knew it was vulnerable and, like the men it was hunting, was trying to survive, and would only strike for necessity and in isolation.
Thats a thing I’ve seen what later incarnations of The Thing do, making it like some animal making quick decisions.It didn’t try to infect the other guys sitting next to him when it was caught in the blood test, it tried escaping its restraints and attacked windows since he was the closest and only threat for those few seconds and tried to escape out to the cold when Macready sets it on fire.I’ve seen other media like one of the comics, the game, and the 2011 movie that makes The Thing creatures less smart and some mostly untouchable creature unless harmed with fire, making them creatures that sometimes assimilates one or more people right in front of group of people and attacking the other survivors sometimes without a plan, ignoring their own safety just to get a person with a plan that’ll just get them killed instead of fleeing.Some of the other continuations I’ve seen make it look like fire is the only way to kill it but Macready was able to finish off multiple things with dynamite, after setting one on fire and finishing the possibly “last” thing without setting it on fire at the end.
Could be explained by the fact that the Thing gained experience interacting with humans after the events of the prequel, so it changed its tactics in outpost31.
@@namethis658 thats a weak excuse for poor story telling
@@richardbug3094 How? it makes SENSE.
@@namethis658 I like this idea a lot since it portrays the Thing as an adaptive organism just like how the 82 movie wants you to view it. It makes sense that it would have different strategies to approaching whatever alien life it was acclimatized to and would need to adjust to human behavior if it didn't want to be hunted down and killed like a big dumb monster. It doesn't redeem the 2011 film but it is interesting to think about.
I feel the 2011 film made the thing far too deadly, it was way too fast and strong for the humans to beat. The 1982 thing was vulnerable and slow, as long as it didn't get you alone you had a chance of winning and that made for a much better movie. Either side could feasibly win and that made you pay attention to what was going on.
There really was no reason the humans won against it in 2011. The second it proved able to infect people on touch- and had tentacles- AND had everyone in one room- AND ALSO had a second person in the room infected already...
No, they absolutely should have lost right there.
That's the truly mind bending part. Each movie or show loves to see how far into a dangerous unwinnable fight they can put the characters in without actually having the main character(s) lose. The Thing 1982 didn't have to create an unbeatable beast. but the question is how the characters even figure out what the rules are. This is why Final Destination, Terminator, Alien, and Predator all work: it's not about beating an invincible enemy, it's about seeing if the characters can figure out the rules that the other side already knows and takes advantage of.
Exactly, but here’s the thing ( ;) ) : to survive you can’t be alone, but you cannot trust anyone.
This is very true. It might go a long way to explaining why the original was just such a masterpiece compared to the prequel. As a prequel. Maybe "the thing" learned from its obvious behavior to be more secretive. So there are explanations that offers continuity in a very sensical way with the story. We also knew what happened to this entire camp. Just the total loss of mystery compared to the 1st film. I really enjoyed them both but ' the thing' inspired by Lovecrafts in the mountains of madness. It is legendary to me in terms of monster horror. And the slow deception is such an iconic part of it.
The 1982 movie was the second part of the story. The 2011 movie was the first part.
That was a great point about how people react in real life: if a monster is consuming people in the room, the characters’ focus is on the monster - nothing else. A lot of movies fail at this.
Thanks :) And agreed, horror cinematography is an art. It has its own rules that are disregarded so often
It's basic common sense. I guess you can't expect much from pampered protected directors and producers that have never known danger just regurgitating the same old sheltered ideas... right?....
It would be cool if one of the characters stoped focusing on the monster and imediatelly got killed lol
horror movies these days tend to squeeze in that political correctness when the situation is a matter of life and death. getting chased by a monster? women empowerment!
@@Cricket0021 - Like “Halloween” (1978) and “Alien” (1979)?
"The camera wants you to focus on grief when survival is at stake"
I've never been able to put this feeling into words and it's beautifully straight-forward here. This really has no place in the horror genre IMO unless it's to contrast different people's reactions to a dire situation. And yet it seems to happen in so many modern horrors. Thanks for the vid.
That's something I've noticed with many horror remakes especially if the characters are bitches or assholes, we as an audience are supposed to feel bad at a shitty character being brutally murdered because its brutal?
That's really bad film making and it's really grimey to try to manipulate the audience
Even the first Nightmare on elm Street the first person killed is Tina the most likable character, and her boyfriend was witty and sarcastic but still a likable character who was screaming for Tina to wake up who was killed in front of her, he's accused of her murder
Then he gets killed , so we as the audience already are invested and traumatized because they were good people killed which makes you want the monster killed
That's how you make good horror
@@Chuck_ELWeren't the ordinary characters in _The Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ decent folk?
Every movie that be like WE HAVE TO DO THE THING NOW leads directly to THE ROMANTIC PAIR wasting 2 minutes of screentime while the audience is like "hurry the fk up!"
Also note specifically the BLACK male who is the one we are supposed to cry over by exaggerating and protracting the drama as the White guy suffers a far worse fate but made less important and not tragic at all.
@@Chuck_EL The formula is if they are a male White character they are assholes, clowns or creeps, black males are heroic, alpha, self righteous and caring and women are all round perfect and boss. The value and importance of black characters must be accentuated and amplified even subtly, while White people need to be devalued, vilified and ridiculed.
Also, just on a visual note: the characters in John Carpenter’s The Thing looked like real humans and scientists: old, fat, long faced, rumpled, etc. everyone in the 2011 version looked like they stepped out of a J. Crew catalogue, and they were led by a thin, wide eyed beautiful person who never had a hair out of place. John Carpenter’s characters wore realistic clothing for the environment: bulky sweaters, parkas, etc. in the 2011 version, the petite woman( who should be freezing in that environment) is running around in a thin tight top because, you know, we have to show off her beauty and her breasts.
Well said sir.
Far more believable..therefore much scarier
Apart from Lars he was realistic
Edvard and Adam were too hot to be scientists. They all look like Olav or Jonas irl.
Your points are spot-on. Also consider that the prequel's main character is supposed to be a noted paleontologist...but the actress was like 22 years old! WTF?!?
Thank you for explaining this! It was nagging in the back of my mind why the characters are so “wrong”. The best I could think of was that they were too young
Whew, that analysis at 8:44 about how the 2011 "Thing" prioritizes grief over survival in the attack scene is just brilliant.
Thanks so much! Love y'all's body positivity 💗
Still prefer the original b&w.
@@themorbidzoo i think its just thirst traps
This was one of the best points about this film - ever.
@@themorbidzoo Yes! Nothing more positive than telling people obesity is attractive and not at all related to hugely increased risk of debilitating disease. Might as well celebrate smoking.
The 1982 version is better because Carpenter ramps up the tension and paranoia better than the 2011 version. The paranoia is literally palpable. The hot needle blood test scene is one of the most tension inducing scenes ever put on film. As a viewer you could feel the paranoia along with the characters. It was so bad they were killing each other. It culminates when MacReady shoots and kills Clark. The paranoia was deadlier than the monster in some scenes. That's why it's a masterpiece.
exactly. In many monster flicks, the emphasis is the monster including the original 50s version. But Carpenter's version was closer to the original short story where no one knew who they could trust and anyone could be a "thing." I think the Norris reveal especially surprised people more so than Palmer (which was also a shock) because Norris was so innocuous and wasn't trying to manipulate people like he would have been in a badly directed film. The Norris-thing said to the audience and the characters: "forget what you think, anyone could be a thing" which heightened the paranoia. As the reviewer said the characters became reduced down to the basic level of survival and not some stereotypical hollywood archetype we've seen time and time again in horror films.
"Gentlemen. I know you've been through a lot. But if its all the same with you I'd rather not spend the rest of the evening TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!"
"So Clark was human ... that makes you a murderer." I have to say MacReady acted in self-defense here, I mean, people were getting killed and Clark did come at him with a weapon in hand.
@@pvanukoff Not to mention he was very much willing to potentially let someone freeze to death outside just on a hunch. "What if we're wrong, Childs!?" "Well then we're wrong....."
blame the hollywood producers who asked the 2011 team to rush the film
Imagine your career floundering because of the poor response to a movie that is going to be considered a bedrock of the horror genre just a few years later.
I think when most people say that practical effects look "real" what they really mean to say is they look "tangible." Sure the kennel-thing and especially more than a few shots of the Palmer-thing look like puppets but you can, for lack of a better word, "tell" that it was a thing that was actually made and exists in physical space as opposed to an effect added later.
This isn't a critique of you by any means by the way, just something that occurred to me when you mentioned that. This video is absolutely fantastic
Thanks so much! Yes, I think this is a failure of definitions and film discourse rather than an actual disagreement, which is the kind of thing that drives me insane. When we say "practical effects look more real than CG" what I think we're saying is more that the artistry behind the creation of the puppets and the way they're filmed makes it more effective than what is obviously ones and zeroes added later. That doesn't mean, definitionally, that puppets have more fidelity than even mediocre CG to what a Thing would really look like, it means the audience is more sophisticated than Hollywood is willing to admit. I wish THAT were the conversation instead of squabbles that often ultimately sound like appeals to nostalgia.
That effect of intuitive fidelity cuts both ways too. There are plenty of things that appear fake or unreal when we take videos or photographs of them. Space is an easy environment to replicate almost perfectly in CGI, but the problem is we have no preconception what space looks like. The harsh, uniform lighting, absence of any atmospheric haze, hard shadows, and nothing to establish depth makes any space shot, real or fake, appear fabricated to a lot of people.
There is something I came to think of while watching all the Hobbit and LoTR movies back to back. "How come the special effects feel way more real in the older movies?" I figured it came in large part down to how the effects were generally treated, rather than how they were made:
If you go frame by frame, most of the orcs in LoTR are for example blatantly just dudes in cheap masks and basic costumes, or relatively basic copy-pasted CG creatures, but they are all carefully kept in the background, in the dark or slightly out of focus and always moving so you never get a good look at them. Only a handful of orcs are done with extremely elaborate prostatic effects or high quality CG, but these are only kept in plain view for a few precious moments each, again so you never have time to notice that a thick elaborate mask is only capable of a single well sculped facial expression, or that the skin on some CG creature seems to stretch in weird ways as it moves. They knew most of their effects just weren't solid enough to carry an entire scene on their own, (at least on a realistic budget), and planned accordingly.
In the newer movies they were confident in their effects, and put their carefully crafted CG effects on full display for numerous very long unbroken sequences, giving the audience more than enough time to notice and examine every little flaw. (It also meant the story could get completely side-tracked for long and extremely elaborate action sequences without breaking the bank.)
I suspect 2000-2015 era CG had the capacity to look significantly better than classical practical effects, if they were treated during planning, filming and editing as though they were practical effects. As though they could generally only hold their own for few previous moments at a time, and that their shortcomings needed to be carefully hidden to maintain the illusion. Although they did that too, but that's not the kind of "CG" people notice and complain about.
A separate issue now is how a lot of "CG" heavy movies just end up telling poopy stories because the studio was mostly just concerned about drawing idiots with a flashy spectacle, which sadly works extremely well. They keep making Marvel movies for a reason.
@@fnorgen I love this comment. This is much of my point with this video, it’s not enough to just have impressive effects, you have to *sell* them
@@themorbidzoo i would have to disagree with the statement that there is less artistry in cg, while i must admit i’m biased as a cg artist i think it’s more how they are implemented and treated in movies today. people still went through the process of designing and creating those effects, just in a different way. no hate it was a great video it’s just that phrase really angers me
My biggest issue of the 2011, among many issues, was the female protagonist figured out what was going on WAY to quickly- as if she had watched the earlier versions of the film and was like "Oh, it's one of those aliens that likes to absorb and imitate other forms of life". Very unbelievable.
Totally, it's like they didn't trust the audience to sit through that process, even thought that process is THE SOURCE OF ALL THE TENSION i just can't with this movie
STRONK FEMAIL KARAKTUR!
@@Xbalanque84 It's a bastardisation of female empowerment. It feels purely performative as if they decided to put her there just for marketability. Like who gives a shit man, there's a monster ffs and they're worrying about aesthetics. Shit movie, sucks ass.
Nah, it's because she played Among Us
you ever think that you're just like the critics that ravaged the 1982 film?
that later on people will change perspectives and say that it's actually a good film?
This man deserves a national apology for the mistreatment of his masterpiece....🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
Agreed, thanks for the watch!
@@Lostcanonmedia I think your right, I think I read somewhere Hollywood was pressuring the idea for the thing to be remade. To avoid having it completely remade and take away from the old film. A prequel was made to explore a different angle. And it was ok, some creepy moments but over all it didn’t have that same alien space horror. Omg I saw it a few months ago and I felt like it was a nightmare come to life. I’m shock of how much horror they could make back then and that head struggling to crawl with its tongue? Nightmarish stuff
Justice for John!
I don't need to apologize - I have loved The Thing 1982 since the first time I saw it. It is one of my favourite films, and the 2002 videogame (which was a masterpiece of a PS2 game and the true sequel since Carpenter himself confirmed it as canon) is also my favourite videogame.
If John needs some help in paying back those critics, I would love to give him some backup...
@@milesipka I was obviously referring to the negative critics, not the fans.
The Thing is one of the greatest movies ever. I caught it on TV back in the mid 2000's, was captivated instantly. Another point about the 82 version is the men were rugged, they looked like how you'd expect people trapped in a snow storm would look. The 2011 version had people who looked like they were gonna be in a fashion magazine
that's another huge problem that keeps fucking happening in modern movies. in Black Widow, we see Natasha get fucking blown up twice, beaten to fuck, tank several story falls and she comes out the other side every time pristine. Meanwhile, John Wick. Like, come on, it's not that complicated. Sure, John Wick cartoonishly can ignore his wounds the next day but, at least they're still visible.
Thinking about it,Amongus is just a game version
Also, the reason the 2011 version has no appeal is that there is no question as to who is the thing and who is not. We are even given clues as to when the characters are assimilated. And there is no surprise or twist in this regard. No ambiguity.
Agree. There is still debate even today about who the curly-haired shadow who's alone with the Dog is in the 1982 version, but there's zero mystery about the 2011 Thing (for the record, I think it's Palmer, but we'll still never know). There's a very clear path in the 2011 version where each Thing is left alone with the next person who's going to be the Thing. It's so boring.
I rewatched the 2011 film a few days ago with one of my roommates, and I could _not_ pin down when characters got infected. It felt like they'd just become infected because it was convenient to the plot. Afterwards, he and I rewatched the original and (if you know who is infected) you can pretty soundly nail down when they all being Things.
@@ChessAlbaneze The '82 version had a lot of logical problems in who turned on what order, but it's still immensely more well presented than the '011 version because it was more about not knowing who was the thing, its unpredictability, and alien animalness.
As soon as the woman tells our main character she Saw a Guy walk out of the bathroom and he might be the thing after that she inmediatly reveals herself.
The thing is supposed to be smart IT would feel a lot better if they had waited for her reveal and let the distrust play out.
I cant even remember these peoples names and i watched the movie last Friday.
@@prpeptv8463 To be fair she thought it was a chance to assimilate another victim caught alone. Which, by the films' historical logic, *should have happened* (because no one alone with this thing is never NOT doomed), but didn't because the attempted victim was the protagonist and the movie had to happen, so she got away, causing the awkward chase.
One thing I like about 2011 The Thing is the inorganic material test. Not everyone has had fillings in their teeth, so it makes it impossible to clear everyone, it just narrows it down a little. They should've done more back and forth between the characters trying to convince each other, but instead the thing reveals itself unnecessarily for another 10 minute action sequence. It's like the film gets bored with the distrust scenes and wants to hurry up and get to the alien revealing itself and attacking people instead.
I actually got bored by the "let's wait to show it" way of thought. That was already done in it's sequel. I was honestly expecting a lot more thing outs than Carpenter's. I need to pay $50 to go with my family to the theaters and only see five or so thing outs? Seriously?
@@BD-cv3wu And you are the reason why movies have degraded into the sorry state they're in. You demand an amusment park ride where you can sit down, throw your hands in the air , then go home; and the studio delivers. Who cares about plot, character, suspense, or anything that makes a movie good...Just show us the damn monster for an hour so we can go home!
@@austind7232 I mean, who even cares about the masterpiece of an atmosphere that the original had? who cares about the intriguing ending? who cares about the horrifying knowledge that this primal looking thing is actually as smart or even smarter than we are?
@@BD-cv3wu if you care about money and time so much, what are you doing here- wasting time and electricity to watch a video essay about "The Thing"?
@@starhalv2427 Because I love it to death. I wish I was it.
Carpenter’s version does have moments where the Thing looks and moves unrealistically, but I always felt it made sense that the alien looked and moved weird since it was so far from anything human. It never broke the immersion for me.
This is one of the things I retrospectively appreciated about stop-motion effects in movies like Clash of the Titans. As a child, I accepted the weird motion as evidence of the unknowable other-worldliness of these creatures, and it seemed all the richer and more captivating for it.
I loved the '82 THING, the spider head really unsettled me, but I have no interest in viewing the 2011 THING just as I have no interest in viewing the PSYCHO remake... what's the point.
@@robanderson473
What's the point is don't believe what everyone says.
See it for yourself then judge it.
Yes the 2011 Thing isn't as good as the 1982 but.. it does some things better and some things worse then the 1982 version.
I actually liked the CGI effects of the 2011 thought is was good and the Thing moved more fluidly compared to the 1982 version.
2011 version was more action that Thing was more brutal in the attacks compared to the 1982 version.
Either way check out the movie because it ties into the 1982 version darn well.
Plus it's different then all these superhero movies we are getting now anyways at least 2011 version is somewhat a refreshing movie compared to movies now a days being released.
@@iestynne
Yes motion I agree but watching the 1982 version now some parts seem outdated and at times over the top with all the blood and everything.
2011 wasn't as grotesque and didn't have the crazy amount of blood as the 1982 version had.
Both are just different.
@@robanderson473
If you think the spider Thing was unsettling.. wait until you see the Splitface Thing from the prequel.
Now that... was eerie and will make you same damn.... thank gosh I wasn't Adam haha.
That looked painful as fock what Adam went through.
I find it so interesting how you point out that practical effects doesn't look more real than CGI, and also you provide pretty good evidence for it as well. But I actually think it's more complicated than that; when you see bad CGI you can often tell intuitively that something is off. This, as we know, is usually due to color and lighting, but the issue is that even if you can't put your finger on it, it's very clear that whatever you are seeing doesn't exist beyond the movie, it's just computer graphics, because bad/questionable CGI isn't "integrated" into our world properly. Whereas Practical effects might be off when it comes to movement and/or textures, but you can see that it actually exists in the world, OUR world, and it, as we know, actually does to the extent that the props has a physical existence beyond the movie. So I would say that in one way it looks more real and in another way it does not. At least that's how I see it.
I hope that makes sense. XD
I get your point, but you wouldn’t believe how much cgi there is in movies that is literally impossible to notice. There is a lot of stuff vfx studios aren’t allowed to share that they made. Even if a studio markets how good the practical effects of their movie are, it may be cgi you see in the final movie
@@mylittleossi1234 that doesn't refute OP's point though as they made sure to mention BAD/questionable cgi not just thge use of it. Both in visual and special effects when it is done well it helps to enhance the story that is being told and aiding in suspension of disbelief. However when it is poorly done and then you add in poor scripting or direction it can hamper said suspension and bring down even an otherwise enjoyable experience . For some anyway.
There's another thing in this - possibly overlooked in the debate: Gravity.
We have an innate sense of how things move in the world around us, and cgi too frequently doesn't quite get that right (eg, in one of the clips here, the creature is standing on two legs, but most of it's mass is to one side, and we don't see it shifting it's legs to compensate - subliminal, possibly, but enough to rankle). Practical effects are forced to work just as we do.
Plus, with practicals, you can spot a problem on set or in rushes and do another take. CGI only comes along months later (or is already done, fait accompli) and tweaking it is a lot harder, time-consuming and expensive.
Still, as pretty much everyone says here, it ultimately depends on how much care you put into it. John Carpenter is one of those master directors who know exactly what they want to see, and make sure it's what we get.
Practical effects fall into the uncanny valley of creepy or frightening. Bad CGI often falls on the other side of the valley, looking or feeling so unrealistic as to be comical.
I think something else to consider is that CGI is probably considered to be "easier." I don't say that to discredit the remarkable work that animators and visual effects artists do, but with CGI I think filmmakers fall into the trap of just assuming that they can make the CGI do whatever they want and that takes away from the art of cinematography. I think Jaws is the perfect example. If the shark was CGI, then we would have seen tons of shots of the shark from the beginning of the film. But because it was practical, and because Spielberg was not a huge fan of how the animatronic looked, he instead chose to shoot around the shark, creating more suspenseful scenes as a result. I think practical effects can ultimately end up leading to more creativity on the part of the filmmakers since they can't just "fix it in post" with CGI.
I saw 'The Thing' in the theater, in 1982, at Ft Bragg, and it instantly ranked and will always rank right up there with 'Alien', as a sci-fi/horror masterpiece. How it could've taken others so many years to fully appreciate it is incomprehensible to me.
Some people are allways ahead rhe curve. Ever since i 've seen it, nothing even came close to it on how visceral the effects felt mostly because of the fact they were half obscured, limited on screen time, and supporting the very claustrophobic paranoia driven scenario perfectly acted by the cast instead of expecting the cast to be the support and having the effects shown face front with long well lit shots. Point is in most well made horror movies you as part of the audience are trying to catch glimpses of it in the limited shots you get with very carefully limited lighting and while The Thing went more graphic than most, it maintained largely the formula and had a plot that sold it well. I would compare the difference to a sensual erotic film where you see a woman's body allways dressed in a risque classy provocative dress helped by the right shots, music, conversation delivered well and not wooden and falling flat... And then you see a remake with first shot if that particular woman being sitting with nothing on crotch fully exposed and lit front view legs wide open in a long shot. Kills the whole mystery and interest early on.
Agreed! I saw Alien on its first run through the theaters. I went by myself, at night, and the theater was almost empty. I knew almost nothing about the plot except that it science fiction and then, as an adolescent, I loved anything sci-fi (and still do).
I was wrong. It wasn't sci-fi. Not the way I knew it and expected it. It was horror, plain and simple. It was my first experience with a movie that was so terrifying that I literally almost had to walk out because it was just too stressful. I didn't walk out and I'm so glad I did.
It's interesting that two of the most terrifying movies I've ever seen, Alien and The Thing, both of which feature alien xenomorphs (shape-changers), are of an age that they relied entirely on practical effects and what the effects couldn't accomplish they relied on directorial brilliance. Best example is that when I watch the movies now -- I couldn't count the number of times I've watched both -- it surprises me just how little you see of the creature in both films. With modern CGI they can put icky scary monsters in every scene if they want, and in The Thing (2011) they don't do that exactly but the creature(s) have a hell of a lot more screen time than in the original. And that made them much less scary to me. Likewise with James Cameron's juvenile, butt-stupid shoot-em-up Aliens where he threw entire platoons of xenomorphs at the characters and didn't evoke one tenth of the stress and fear the original did, the fact that the creatures had so much screen time made it easy to start yawning every time they appear. In Cameron's simple, ham-fisted directorial technique anything that's worth showing you once or twice is worth shoving down your throat.
CGI doesn't automatically make a bad movie. In both Cloverfield and the 2014 Godzilla the monsters were visually spectacular and extremely realistic, but had less then ten minutes on screen throughout both entire movies. So much else is implied and suggested rather than beating you in the face with it that it forces your imagination to work and in a sense it sort of customizes the 's horror to the individual viewer's psyche. Its the essence of great writing and directing.
Incidentally, for those who play computer games, the 2014 game Alien:Isolation is a real treat. If you consider something that will make you sh!t yourself a treat. Unlike other Alien-franchise games that seek to replicate the stupidity of the Cameron shoot-em-up sequel, A:I is slavishly loyal to Ridley Scott's 1979 original in spirit, look, and for the sense of helpless fragility it instills in the player in the face of the xenomorph. And it's an ironic acronym of the title of the game (A:I) because the AI (artificial intelligence) controlling the xenomorph is relentless, unpredictable, and utterly diabolical in its ability to out-guess and out-outmaneuver the player at almost every turn. It's the greatest AI I've ever seen in dozens of otherwise really good game titles I've played over the past 30 years. And it tops the movie in one respect: instead of you watching the creature hunt down down the characters as in the movie, in the game the creature is hunting YOU and believe me, you ain't ready for it. It's the most terrifying game I've ever played. So frightening that it's used in university experiments to study the physiological and psychological effects of extreme stress and terror.
And unlike the movie, which I just barely withstood without fleeing, I have never been able to finish the game. For me the terror and the stress are so extreme that I literally was paralyzed and couldn't move, and hid in the closest cabinet or locker until the xenomorph eventually found me, tore the door off, and killed me.
I havent played the game from The Thing, but I suspect it would be a disappointment compared to the original movie, especially if as I suspect it's primarily an action game rather than a horror game like A:I.
And just sayin' the 2011 The Thing is not at all a bad movie. I enjoyed it. Had it been an original rather than a sequel/prequel to Carpenter's brilliant original I suspect it would have gotten much better reviews. Of course it sort of sucks by comparison. But then almost every horror movie I've ever seen sucks in comparison to The Thing, in my opinion the only other two that are its peers are Alien (1979) and of course The Exorcist, a movie which still makes me sleep with my light on for a couple of nights after after watching (the novel is even worse). And hell, I'm an atheist.
@@patrickscalia5088
Excellent review, and I'm not even a gamer!
I've never seen 'Exorcist', but I always rank 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'(1978) as a distant third, in my personal trilogy of horror. I suspect if you watch all three, alone, in the dark, you won't sleep well. I'll need to get around to actually watching 'Exorcist', one of these days, but I was too young to see it in the theater; my Catholic parents would've rather sent me to a sleeper-over at Anton Lavey's house than drop me off at any theater playing that movie. By the time I could've seen it on video, it had been parodied so much that I didn't bother. Timing issue. I know that those who saw it in the theater literally freaked out. I recall the mass hysteria.
Ever took into account that those people had a different opinion than you?
@@SavouryGalette
yes... the wrong one
After repeat viewings the aspect I find the scariest about the Thing is that it's not a villain, not really all that calculating, or even hell bent on taking over the world as Blair assumes, simply because it chose not to infect Clark despite having ample opportunities to do so. It's just afraid and trying to survive and decided not to eliminate a person that was nice to it, possibly the first human that ever was. The entire situation is a huge misunderstanding, and one day it could be a similar misunderstanding that eliminates us all.
Hadn’t even thought of this
Shit, that does explain Clarke in the most depressing way possible.
On one hand i've always thought of the Thing as a virus that just goes wherever, which explains this away as just random "luck", on the other hand it's building a space ship so it's definitely sentient.
@@cikame More particularly, it's obviously sapient, which isn't the same thing as sentient. Even a frog is sentient. The two words mean different things.
There's a short story called "The Things" by Peter Watts that writes the story from the perspective of the Thing and I highly recommend it to everyone here who has an hour to spare.
Can we please also touch on the fact that actors in movies are getting to be way to good looking and clean?
It’s ok for characters to have some physical flaws. It makes them more recognizable, and real. And I don’t believe researchers working out in the middle of Antarctica would all look so well kept. Or look like super models.
The problem with that is that you just end up with only 10-15 actors playing every mayor character in every movie, but it would be hard to get new actors that doesn't look attractive now a days because everything orbits around that, even in the case of men,
I definitely can't remember any men or women in the last 25 years in a major role, that wasn't attractive in any physical way
I remember the days when films didn't shy away from bad teeth. Look at films now, in the medieval days, everyone has flawless teeth.
@@RC-go2kl yeah that it how it was back then, bad teeth wasn't that common since sugar in the diet was rare, so a 50 year old farmer in the medieval probably had better teeth than you at 20 even with the dentist
@@dannore8077 1. a 50 year old farmer in the middle ages would probably be dead at 40.
2. sugar was rare but so was dental hygiene....they didn't had any fillings and for a serf to loose their teeth that meant they would chew food the rest of their miserable lives on the other side of the jaw....
3. lost your front teeth in a tavern brawl ? tough luck mate , good luck sporting the hillbilly smile the rest of your life since dental implants were pretty much inexistent for the peasants in the middle ages....
4. I get what you mean to say but I'm pretty sure modern 20 year olds have way better teeth than even kings during the middle ages , lol
@@surenot4362 1- Not true. Infant mortality was pretty high, but if you survived your early years you still had a good chance of reaching your 50s or 60s.
2- Toothbrushes were not a thing, but they had the notion that taking the gunk out of their teeth helped preserve them and they had methods of doing so.
Other than that, I agree and it also bothers me the obsession with having everyone in modern movies be always well kept and pretty. It's really hard to buy into whatever sense of verisimilitude they wanna sell when I can smell the actor's hairspray from this side of the screen.
I had never known that John was treated this unfairly after the film released. It boggles my mind, how could this happen. Were people blind? Were they stupid? I have and still am considering this film to be the greatest horror ever created.
I agree 1000%‼
Way ahead of its time
I totally agree with you but there is an explanation: E.T came right before this movie. People at the time loved imagining aliens to be these fluffy, mesmerizing yet somehow gullible creatures who teach humankind a unique lesson sent straight from the stars. Watching a masterpiece in horror, isolation and dread featuring aliens during such a time period was a fatal coincidence
“When you find yourself turned into prey, you lose the privilege of imagining yourself as having any greater purpose”
Very well said!
Thanks for the watch!! :)
Indeed.. although I profoundly disagree with the statement that the 1982 movie's FX "clearly looked fake". For the most part they look incredibly REAL. And it wasn't just the models and animatronix, it was the expert lighting and cinematography combined that created a compelling illusion. The dog kennel scene is just so realistic and utterly intense; there are moments when I can't tell if they are using models or real dog corpses, it's that good!
This is pretty much me every time I have to sacrifice mice.
except prey can't bite a live ticking grenade and blow up it's predator
I remember the first time I saw this movie and thought to myself wow, this was amazing....The practical effects, the score, the cinematography, the feeling of isolation, distrust, and pure paranoia was something I had not seen in a horror movie before, or for that matter in ANY movie to such a great effect!
So naturally I also thought to myself....how many Oscars did this win? Surely it got best visual effects, cinematography, maybe best score too?
Nope, NOTHING! And to my utter surprise....it was a box office bomb?! WHAT?!
It just goes to show you how certain pieces of media were simply NOT appreciated in it's time for the masterpieces they really were.
The Thing is not only an amazing Horror movie, it's an amazing movie in general with it's complex themes and just how everything was put together.
This is an excellent reminder to ignore the Oscars always and forever. :) Thanks for the watch!!
This gives me hope lol if not today, perhaps people in the future would someday appreciate the stuff I leave behind
Historically, critics have mostly been biased, ultra-conservative, reactionary idiots. Take Hanslick, for instance. He hated Wagner and Brahms and idolized Brahms because he was closer to the classical style of Beethoven and especially Mozart. Or, to take a less controversial and even more idiotic view, Stravinsky said Berlioz didn't know how to compose... because he didn't compose on the neoclassical style Stravinsky valued.
I remember Leonard Maltin absolutely BUTCHERING it in his review.
Of course, I already knew that Maltin hated anything newer than 1960, unless it was saccharine kid-type fare.
He gave "E.T." a 10. "Firefox" got a 4. "The Thing" got a 2.
So I made a point of watching "Thing" first chance I got. 😁
The Thing is my all-time favorite horror flick and the fact that it wasn't appreciated at the time is all the more reason for me to simply not give a shit about what other people think is "good" or "bad".
It's really fucking sad that this masterpiece of horror cinema wasn't appreciated in its time, but I am glad that I'm not the only one who thinks it's one of the all-time greats.
Great insights here - can I just address the special effects in 2011’s The Thing - the designs may be excellent and the CGI passable; but the reason they have none of the impact on audiences, the way Carpenter’s film does, is the total lack of fluids - 2011’s victims tear apart like bread, completely dry, whilst Rob Botin’s victims explode; spraying, dripping, leaking and oozing all manner of splatter everywhere.
Yes, absolutely!!
great point! I also loved that the original designs had body parts that look useless or perhaps we don't really know the function of.
Like ok some vestigial arms and legs could have been the thing is "trying out" these weird new features it's learnt, but then there are those creepy clusters of tentacles and stalks. I like to think the latter are from other lifeforms that the thing assimilated
How was the 82 version of the Thing considered bad by... anyone? This was one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Constant suspense, not knowing what the hell is going on, not knowing who to trust... it was fantastic. The only downside of the movie is that you only ever really get to "experience" it one time.
It failed back then since it came out like 2 weeks after ET came out + a lot of people were too stupid to understand the themes of The thing and it called the movie an excuse to do excessive gore and body horror.
I’ll also say this. From personal experience, if you go into something great but it’s nothing like you were expecting it to be, you might not like it the first time you see it. But, one of the ways you might realize it was actually great is if you can’t stop thinking about it afterwards, and a rewatch can make it completely click. I loved this movie from the first time, but I’ve gone through that with other ones.
You'd be amazed at how quickly culture has shifted. Remember that Tipper Gore and the PMRC were from that era; Dee Snider's famous stand against censorship was in 1985.
The film critics of the 1980s told us flat-out why they didn't like the movie, and their reasons are pointed out in 2:34, 7:47, and 10:42. Remember, at this point "arts critic" was a formal profession, which *required* at least some kind of formal training in Criticism-with-a-capital-C. If you don't have those credentials, you don't get hired. And that training primed you to believe in a fixed set of aesthetic rules which a work of art -- in this case a film -- must obey to be considered "great". The degree of "greatness" depended purely on the finesse displayed in obeying one or more of these rules. The horror genre largely ignores these rules, and Carpenter broke them completely. So I don't think we need to speculate about late-20th-Century malaise. The critics were simply doing the same job they'd been doing for the past 200 years.
@@damienvalentine5043 these were the same critics didnt consider " Once Upon a Time in the West" a good movie I suppose.
I was down near the South Pole in the winter of 1982, and watched Carpenter's movie. The head-spider is one of the most breathtakingly horrific pieces of practical effects of it's era. It has no parallels.
Oh god, you were? That’s terrifying
Out of all movies you could watch near the South Pole, WHY THE THING!?
@@jinx1987No, it's the perfect time! What better way to watch The Thing?
@@jinx1987 There's a group of scientists down there that watches it every year.
Idk. I put it up there with the head explosion in Scanners. I can't put one over the other.
Dude please don’t scare me by saying John Carpenter is dead. He is very much alive.
For me a lot of it was the monster designs. In the Carpenter film there were unique designs that not only had recognizable silhouettes but also showed traits of the original form that mutated. In the prequel with the exception of the maw chest, it was just a mass of flesh and tentacles
The critics chose E.T, and Poltergeist over the THING because they chose Steven Spielberg over John Carpenter, it's that simple. Neither the directed or produced Spielberg movies were better than Carpenter's "THING".
Now ET is considered a joke while the Thing is a cult classic masterpiece. How things have turned.
@ lifes40123, E.T is still consider a classic, it’s just ‘The Thing’ finally got the recognition and respect that it deserves.
ET is one of the single most overrated films in the history of cinema. Yeah it's cute, and there is that one scene in the school room with the frogs that is artistically impressive; the rest is a cloying saccharine crowd pleaser that over stayed it's welcome.
@@jeanpaulmichell7243 👎 your entitled to your opinion, but it's not all that cloying and saccharine and was not afraid to make people cry either.
I think ET was despised when almost a decade later, ET was released when guns in their holsters were CGI edited to be walkie talkies.
The thing you mentioned at 9:16 is one of my biggest movie pet peeves. The long reaction shot to someone dying in the middle of a life or death situation. Not only is it frustrating and kills any tension in the scene, but it also is treating the audience like we are too stupid to realize that a character dying is sad without a hint.
Same
The best way to handle death scenes is to always show the aftermath *after*.
The thing moves on, then suddenly "Oh god.. Hes dead" in the background.. pan over to them and bam.. holy shitballs. They died so fast in all that that it was so insignificant that no one noticed until now.
Theres a bit of a chill with this method. It plucks at the strings of our mortality, reminding us.. atleast in that dark.. tiny little spot in the back of our minds, that at any moment the same could happen to us. Barely even a footnote, and everything is over, ending the sentence and entire tale with a simple 'And then they died.'
Its why stupid reaction shots like this suck ass in horror films when youre trying to make it a big thing.
Dont get me wrong, they do have their place, like if it happens in an action movie, and the event rallies the rest to overcome their odds.. but in this its supposed to inflict dread and despair. Another has died. What will we do?
like in "Saving Private Ryan" where while their comrades are horribly wounded, dead, or dying on the beach, the soldiers are taking weapons and ammo off of them, not stopping just doing what they have to do to survive. They don't have time to stop in sympathy. That must be hell
This! So much this! Horror is about OBJECTIFICATION. It's about stripping away the layers of psychology and environment that give us the privilege to be human. When you inject that kind of emotional slop into a scene, you rob it of that potential. And you rob the movie of potential down the road when the characters, who in a realistical scenario would have been running away from their loved ones, now have to contend with the guilt of having behaved like animals.
A couple better ways to do that...
.
1 have a character react during a wide shot.....cry/scream/rush the enemy whatever while everyone else acts normally....
2 do the typical hollywood closeups of tending to the recently deceased...then have one of mourners be murdered as well to prove to the audience it's not going to be that kind of film
As a life long fan of The Thing, I must have seen hundreds of essays like this one dissecting the deeper themes, metaphores, reasons why it bombed, reasons why it's so revered now, and many of them are very good, but this has to be my favorite.
Thanks!!
Yup, excellent analysis of the deeper themes of the '82 version vs the shallow exploration of the '011 one, especially in relation to people's mentality in '82.
In retrospect, I think one of the reasons it might have bombed was that, at the time, it was so ungodly scary. I saw it first run in the drive in with my cousin- we parked the car sideways and rolled down the windows so we could watch while lounging- me in the front seat, my cousin In the back.
At the end of the movie, I was afraid to move. Literally. I lay there for fifteen minutes afraid to sit up to drive home because I didn't know what was outside that open window.
One big advantage that John Carpenter had was he had 1 year to prep, assemble the cast, shoot and direct the film. Whereas the director and producer of Thing '11 were given barely 5 months to do the same.
I actually pray that someone would make a better Sci-Fi movie than John Carpenter's "THING" but I doubt it can be done!!
This video has highlighted my love for this movie, I especially missed the theme of man being reduced to its bare components. In that sense, it’s also so interesting to see the group use every tool known that ‘separates’ humans from animals (weapons, buildings, science, reasoning, intelligence) only to fall just short and be exterminated to the last regardless. In the end you can’t outrun your own nature
I was favorably impressed by The Thing(1982) in its theatrical release. I was unaware of the negative reaction by critics and some moviegoers, or that it harmed John Carpenter's career.
Thanks for the watch. :) I'm jealous you got to see it in theaters
“Maybe I’m a metaphor” and “beware the patriarchy, lol” are the single most hilarious lines I could ever imagine coming from a horror movie monster 🤣
Wait..those are actual lines? I don't know because I didnt see the new Thing.
Wait..is this an actual line?
@@agriosbrit’s in the video
@@agriosbr No they're not actual lines. They're humorous criticisms the video creator edited over top of the visuals in this video to tie off a point they were making with a joke.
Humorously, that's pretty much what every movie since 2016 has been.
"A group of people who've settled into being alone together."
"Populated not so much by people as by people shaped objects who we come to know by names that aren't really names."
You're describing the internet.
Or very large cities. It's strange how alone one can feel when surrounded by hundreds of people.
She's doing and awful lot of projecting here..... No surprise....
@@Razumen Worse than alone. We are fundamentally tribal creatures, and we tend to see people we don't know (not our tribe) as potential rivals. After all, for thousands of centuries, the only people you were likely to see were your tribe, unless you were fighting outsiders over a water source or something.
So you're constantly suppressing that instinct to run or fight every time you walk down the street in a city. No wonder there's so much paranoia.
And the war on ideals being good and bad, black and white. That's the Thing. Flooding us with hate till we are apart of the Thing, adding to the hate.
@@coreym162 how so? these are really great observations about the characters in the movie. dont see how this could be a projection.
My biggest issue with it is that in the original you can find the moment every person became infected, if you pay close enough attention. But in the sequel, people just kinda get infected with seemingly no indication on when.
Wow, that had some seriously insightful moments about the hierarchy of needs and the camera's disregard of survival breaking the monster's tension. Excellent content, thank you.
Ah, thanks so much!!
@@themorbidzoo yep, I was thinking that too. This video made me want to sit through the movie again without any distraction at all, but I'll go watch some of your other videos first.
It would have been cool if they made the other characters aproach this character to help him get saved only to unexpectedly die themselves to show the audience that the monster is a REAL threat
This! This is what I learned in this video. The camera doesn't simply show what is goin on. It tells you what is important and what isn't in these ways. I never considered it like that before.
This shits me so much in so many movies. Characters caring about or focussing on things that wouldn’t matter in a particular situation. Like the world is literally ending, everyone on the planet is about to die horribly, but some woman is still mad at her boyfriend for cheating on her.
I think part of the reason practical effects look better to most people is the design of the thing has to be changed to work in reality therefore making it more realistic, possible and less goofey by nature.
Oh shit, a pro-practical argument I actually like
Oooh, that's an excellent point.
I kinda liked certain effects in the remake too. Felt far less real than the original even though graphically speaking it of course was far more impressive; the movements were more fluent and facial expressions were based on muscle structures rather than a few robotic motors.
Still, seeing a REAL thing doing all these things in front of a camera, like the head ripping off the body and slowly sliding down the table had much more impact than any CGI moment in the remake.
The remake indeed was very forgettable. Just by having seen this video I remember bits and pieces of it and now I realise that there is some movie on Netflix that is quite similar; some alien crashed on earth and its precense transforms the DNA of everybody who gets closeby, resulting in all sorts of horrible hybrid monsters.
It's so forgettable that I can't even remember the title, just like how the remake of The Thing is forgettable.
@ronaldmcdonaldjunior6616 I think that was "Swamp thing", not sure.
@ronaldmcdonaldjunior6616 The prequel. The 2011 Thing. It's not good
Given the year 1982, there must surely also be an HIV angle to the paranoia of a collection of lonely, isolated men - particularly exemplified by the incredible 'blood test' scene, which I still think is one of the most tense sequences ever put to film. Great analysis and dissection of the armchair-level editing of 2011. Carpenter really was on fire with the 1982 film, forever in my top 10.
Great point! I'm suddenly seeing a waiting room full of terrified men waiting for the results of a blood test that will decide if they live or die. Holy shit. Suddenly that conceptualization is growing into an emotionally powerful understanding of what horror those first AIDS sufferers were going through. Thank you so much for your perspective - it is a powerful tool I will use to continue to try to improve myself.
Wow! How cool is that! Click on a random vid about The Thing that turns out to be the best analysis I've seen of it, and THEN in the comments this old greybeard receives an awesome lesson from a fellow human! Thanks again!
This video even points out more reasons why the first movie was way better like we needed them anyway you can tell from 10 minutes of either movie JCs version rules
While of course possible from a foreboding sense (a sense maybe among some people in the 70s that something was happening) it just barely matches up with the timeline of the epidemic as it wasn't that well known yet so early in the 80s. When filming begun it had just become known as an unusual outbreak in medical literature and among afflicted gay patients.
Particularly the blood tests were not used yet at the time.
I like the idea of stories being able to capture unintended fears at the time of their creation but I wouldn't say they are this prophetic.
@@Dr0dd I see your point, and I wouldn't pin the inspiration as being 100% conscious, any sort of unconscious inkling, or early article read, or influence of the miasma of the time could be a factor.
I do think it's interesting how they lack meaningful friendships or relationships between themselves or outside - there's no wives or girlfriends mentioned; yet none of the usual 'not-gay' inserts of them oogling playboy or putting pinups all over their bunks, which was par for the course in any male-orientated 80s film. The film seems set on isolating its fear of other men. Its thematic commitment to this to the point of forgoing filmic convention of the time is part of why it has aged so brilliantly I think.
While it's an interesting analogue, I think you're overthinking it, the 1982 move is a (mostly) faithful adaptation of a 1930s novel and the blood test scene was already in it.
I saw this movie on its release back in the day and emerged absolutely mesmerised and quite deeply disturbed, but there was no doubt in my mind that I'd seen something of unparalleled quality in every aspect of production. Before it ceased to be shown, I went to the cinema 5 times more, fascinated by Bottin's monstrosities, Morriconi's music, the claustrophobic intensity and Carpenter's nihilistic finale. I made a bit of a bore out of myself at work, at the pub, with the family - where not..? Only a complete philistine would not wax lyrical about Carpenter's masterpiece.
3:42="This is very obviously a puppet." Yes, but the CGI is very obviously CGI in the 2011 film. So, the artifice is apparent in both examples. As mentioned previously, it was the quality of filmmaking that set the 1982 version far ahead of the other.
Indeed. (Not the case for these movies, since 2011 had practical effects on set, but:) Even a puppet is grounded in reality, and actors react to it far more organically - CGI often comes off as a superimposed image, nullifying a lot of the threat it can offer. CGI has a slew of issues beyond just 'not looking good' - its floor of quality is generally a LOT lower than practical effects.
I’m an architect student. Recently I rewatched 1979’s Alien, wondering why it’s so damn good it’s still the best of the saga. And then I started checking the interior design and found some photos of the sets on internet, and it blew my mind how amazing they are. Some of them really beautiful, warm and cozy, contrasting with others dark, sharp and unsettling. And it is that contrast what gives me that uncertainty feeling of not knowing what is going to happened next.
Yes, the set design was what sold me on the film in the first five minutes and gave me a lot of respect for Ridley Scott. Very few directors pan over the set to establish a sense of place. It's almost like they want to hide the background (i.e. make it blurry) to cover up the fact that it's not well built.
some artists try to make the scene as close as what they envision, to sell the feels to the audience
while some just to complete a daily quota, that's the different
Alien is easily one of the best movies ever made.
"I’m an architect student" >> I speak England very much
I love how you start with “I’m an architect student.” This information is literally irrelevant and is both useless and totally meaningless.
Only a pretentious fool thinks being an architect student gives them an extra ability to evaluate whether a movie set is high quality or not.
Apparently just watching the movie was too confusing for you. I guess the movie didn’t show you the movie sets of which that movie was literally composed of, so you had to look up images on the internet of the movie you were watching, because watching it provided no info about the quality of the set pieces used
Something I love about the Carpenter thing is the Monster has demonstrated that it can communicate. It CHOOSES not to. The Monster does not care about anything but killing you. That is scary shit.
Whats scary is its based off of parasites...the thing is a parasite...same thing killing you and most of humanity off in the name of diseases...parasites...
I missed that - what’s the scene where this is revealed?
@@sonofacheron In every scene where it imitates a human
@@sonofacheron There are numerous scenes. We know either Norris or Palmer were the first to be infected be the dog.
Norris refuses to take over leadership from Gary "sorry guys Im not up to it".
Also Palmer when MacReady has been cut loose by Nauls. Whether Thing-Palmer KNOWS Mac isnt a Thing and wants a shot at taking him out or simply doesnt care he is eager to go on the offensive despite clearly already being an imitation at this point.
The Thing is a perfect imitation. It has the intelligence and social skills of a human while it is one.
Finally we have Blairs pleading to be let back in when he has clearly been turned. We know because of his earlier attitude its obviously not him anymore but the imitation is doing its best to plead in a meek and apologetic manner.
Another thing watch Palmers face when Mac is about to test his blood with the hot needle. He does this amazing resigned facial expression almost like "oh boy here we go" in anticipation that he is about to be exposed.
@@jmlaw8888 another interpretation is palmer and Norris things act independently if not competitively.
I like the idea that they are trying to get the superior amount of body mass or the jump on the other.
Like competing Hive minds
The part about the hierarchy of needs and the focus on grief is a problem with a lot of modern movies and TV shows where characters will just stop everything they're doing to have a heart to heart while in a warzone or surrounded by dozens of imminently approaching zombies. The later seasons of The Walking Dead is really guilty of this and it just completely takes you out of the suspense and shatters immersion while you wince in disbelief that THIS is the moment they decide to talk about their feelings and dreams? THIS is their concern right now?!
What I love about the 1982 one is the real horror is fear and paranoia. They've all gone from being close friends/colleagues to being shit scared (and not trusting ) of each other where as the 2011 one was more of a gory kill craze.
1951, B and W, is the original. James Arness is the tall monster -- it's why he was hired. Later the Sheriff, in "Gunsmoke" TV.
That is true, however in the 1982 one the thing really never seemed... dangerous.. Whenever it was discovered it just kinda.. sat there and screamed. The dog, the defib thing, and the very final one. They just kinda transformed and screamed at the humans, not really doing anything. The 2011 ones actually seemed terrifying once they transformed.
You’re mostly wrong about the Thing just standing there and screaming. The Dog-Thing was about to attack before it was destroyed; the Bennings-Thing was too weak to attack at that moment because it was just assimilated minutes ago; and the Norris-Thing killed Dr. Cooper when it revealed itself. I agree with you about the Blair-Thing though, it just stood there and waited to be blown up. The original script was going to have the dog jump out of the Blair-Thing and attack MacReady, but they didn’t have enough money for the effects. Regardless, the 1982 movie is vastly superior to the 2011 prequel.
@@mbattalionenjoyer5162 The dog thing was just making weird noises and the most it moved was like a foot in the air, the norris thing just spouted a head in the center and screamed at everyone else, it was just a coincidence it killed dr cooper. I 100% agree that the atmosphere, writing, and score is far better in the 1982 movie, but the actual thing was just scarier in the prequel for me.
@@aletron4750 The Dog-Thing was about to attack Childs with some sort of appendage before getting torched. It probably wasn’t as aggressive as you’d expect it to be because it was in the process of assimilating the dogs. I’m pretty sure everyone was standing far away from the Norris-Thing so it couldn’t immediately attack anyone other than Dr. Cooper.
I think the Thing in the 1982 version is scarier because it is a silent killer. It waits for the right moment to strike unless it is discovered. The 2011 Thing just feels like a generic monster to me. It displays little intelligence and attacks everyone in sight.
I think another way that the Carpenter film really sticks with you as memorable is that, while there isn't a lot of depth with the characters, they're very clearly not stupid. They ask the kinds of questions people would in this situation, come to conclusions like "If you were all these things, you'd just attack me, so some of you are still human"; and they come up with solutions based on what they learn about the creature, the most famous being the hot needle in the blood test. There's some bad decisions in there, the worst probably being Clarke trying to shank MacReady and Mac shooting him dead, but it's done out of a genuine sense of fear and paranoia. They're all on edge and have no idea who to trust, but still trying their hardest to work together.
The Thing itself also isn't stupid. It's patient, calculating, and never reveals itself unless it has to. It doesn't do so very often because it recognizes that the people in the camp are its biggest threat, and so its best bet is to turn them against each other. Something that doesn't often get talked about is how, when doing the blood test, the Palmer-thing waits until Mac actually stabs its blood and it leaps out, using the shock as a chance to quickly transform. It was only thanks to Mac's flamethrower crapping out on him and Windows freezing up in terror that it managed to kill the latter.
I think all of this really does add another layer to the horror of the situation. Most of the time, we roll our eyes at the bad, stupid decisions characters in horror movies make, and the prequel is no exception. They don't exist to be characters, they exist to be kill fodder to show off the monster and so you don't really give a damn. The Carpenter film shows you characters who are genuinely and even overly cautious, work together and make intelligent decisions like we want to see, but they still *fail.* It's not even made clear if, after all their work, the Thing is actually dead by the end.
Carpenter's film says that if you were actually in a horror movie and even if you made all the right decisions, you could still end up dying, even if you win.
Well said. If you know everything the characters know as they know it, roughly the best you could do... is what they did.
There's a degree of pleasant detachment at feeling like you'd survive. (See those "How to Win X Horror Movie" videos.) But no, not here. These are reasonably clever guys doing their best, and they still die.
This was a really damn good analysis! The idea of being reduced to meat, forgotten and unrecognizable pulp, is my biggest fear. Like the idea of someone being crushed under a hydraulic press or eaten whole; they're just gone. There's no sanctity in their death, nor anything to mourn. It's why The Thing is my favorite movie, horror or not. Nothing since this film has captured the essence of "We're all electric meat computers trying to survive in a cold, isolated, and dangerous world, and we end up killing each other just as much as that world because we're scared." It's horrible, yet the craft of it is beautiful and incredible. It reminds me of the way Disco Elysium captures those feelings of regret, depression, and hopelessness so perfectly. It's tough to witness, but one should not deny its craft. I hate that The Thing got panned just because people couldn't handle the emotions it made them feel, I'm glad that it wasn't forgotten and left behind. I think we live in an age now where people are much more willing to face these emotions and actually think about them rather than just turn away and call it "bad," and The Thing's recent popularity and Disco Elysium's success are proof of that. Though at times (often) it feels like society can be regressing, I think people's willingness to face these darker aspects in mature ways is hopeful.
That’s my biggest fear too. Those hydraulic press videos raise my blood pressure. You said it all perfectly, thanks for the watch!
For dark aspects, I liked The Prestige. It has a metaphysical question that I'm not sure everyone is as creeped out by as I am.
Sounds like you need God.
@@themonsterunderyourbed9408 I've always liked the idea of being religious, but I just can't. You can't force yourself to believe in something if you simply don't believe in it. Hell, I'd have an easier time making up my own deity to believe in. It would be comforting to truly believe in a benevolent God, but... I just don't.
that's exactly the opposite how i want to go. I don't want for anything to be left behind. I don't want a tomb, i don't want to be a waste of meat rotting in a wooden box. My ideal would be dropped in a volcato, where i would pulverize even before i reach the magma
Finally watched the original thing after all these years and having seen the prequel first. This is a phenomenal and spot on analysis that deserves more recognition! Thank you for giving me something to think upon as I write my first body horror film.
The pure tension and insane paranoia is what 2011 lacked..the thing was the antagonist but the true killer was the distrust and suspensions.
"Nobody trusts anybody anymore"
@@enraeh2834 ngl,I feel like the fact we already knew what the thing was and saw it numerous times kinda takes away from the scare factor
Its hard for me to feel the amount of paranoia when I cant remember every single character coz they dont even have a single memorable trait.
I mean like when someone shouted "Henrik is dead!" and all I can think is "Who's Henrik?"
True the fear and paranoia really came through in the 1982 version .
@@kucingnumpakalphardasli8178 Um, I think they played guitar or something? [Shrugs]
There was a sense of isolation and foreboding the 1982 version created with it's suspense and building narrative that I have not experienced from another movie, I watched it when I was young and my dog coming up to me while watching alone downright terrified me as he stared all confused lol.
Haha amazing - your dog actually creeped you out and that's exactly why the Carpenter version is so good. This 2011 prequel is a joke of a horror film.
Yes! More movies like this please
@ronaldmcdonaldjunior6616 The prequel. The 2011 Thing. It's not good
The prequel got the character of the thing all wrong. It's supposed to be "the chameleon that strikes in the dark" but they had the monster jumping out and chasing people down the halls. Practical FX force filmmakers to show less, rather than more, which is much scarier. Computer FX are so cheap and easy, they use it everywhere and it's not scary.
To be fair, I think that the thing in this movie is still learning how to deal with humans
@@tonysoprano6628 True, but the film didn’t execute that very well. It was really just cat and mouse the whole way through. If the short story (of the 1982 events from the things perspective) is anything to go by. It should been a slow build to a horrifying climax, instead we got points where the creature really had no reason to show itself. The 2011 prequel was just very poor
@@Lava91point0 The CGI effects ruined the movie for me. I can accept the creature was adapting and chasing people down the halls but those effects were horrible man.
@@Cucerescmunti Amen
@@tonysoprano6628 But the thing in the prequel did clean up the shower room after Kate Lloyd found the blood and teeth fillings in it. Since the thing have shown intelligence by cleaning up the shower room, that one scene exactly contradicts how the thing functioned during the rest of the movie and John Carpenter's The Thing
The effects people did do practical effects for the 2011 prequels in honour of Rob Bottin’s work on the 1982 movie.
Word was that the movie execs thought the FX looked too “old school” and at last minute swapped out the practical effects with rushed CGI.
The people who had worked so hard on the effects didn’t even know what the studio had done until they saw the movie themselves.
Yet another example of Studio interference ruining a movie.
I’d love to see the prequel, with all the original effects back in place.
One big reason I loved the 1982 version over the 2011 version is that the monster had a sense of psychical presence that is missing with cgi. CGI has edges between where it and the physical set meets, which is difficult to make look good. While practical effects also have edges to them, they’re easier to work around in a movie like the thing (tight spaces, small scale, lots of items around, and more of a focus on how the characters react to the thing than the thing itself)
All those critics are forgotten and this movie is a CLASSIC masterpiece. I saw in in the theater in 1982 and I absolutely LOVED it.
Ditto! 👍
At least in the original you knew everyone but in the prequel someone died and you were like who is that guy. Henrik for example
Who?
And the guy who slit his wrist. Didn't even know who he was until the deadmeat killcount came out and pointed it out to be Colin. And even I STILL had to rewind to check which one was Colin.
@@elioorozco8185 And remember: Colin is essentially supposed to be the prequel's Windows, who was a much better character, and his death scene is horrifying to watch, while Colin's death happens Off-Screen, and he goes out like a bitch.
I was glad when people died in the prequel, they were so stupid or such caricatures. I don't remember much about them, but I remembered everyone's names and personalities in the '82 version.
@@SavouryGalette oh no no you don't understand the actual base they went to in 1982 film was the 2nd base the thing attacked after being frozen again when it ran away as a dog ,it's just that coincidentally the same major plot points happened there for some reason
I just watched The Thing tonight for the first time since I was a kid. Loved it. Then this was recommended to me. Google needs to settle down.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The Thing (1982) is just better filmmaking. It's easy for a lot of people to blame, plot holes, or CGI when a movie doesn't work, but more often than not, it's simply that the writing and the filmmaking. The movies that people love today are littered with plot holes, and even great modern films use plenty of CGI, but when a movie connects with you, you don't notice that stuff, you just like it.
Exactly :)
Exactly the REAL reason it's better is it's just better!
Nail on the head!
The CGI is why the plot and film was changed for the worse... I kid you not... There was a film with practical effects, effect tests on youtube look amazing, like Real life CGI actually, because of the lifelike robotic movements used by the special effects company. The studio literally wanted CGI because CGI was selling according to the math they use... They forced reshoots and changes and the film is nothing like planned as a result.
When a movie is obviously bad it's more entertaining to look for flaws than to try to enjoy it.
Thank you! It used to drive me crazy when people acted like it was just the CGI that ruined the 2011 film. Cgi just another tool, it's not what makes or breaks anything.
The sound effects and the sound track in the 1982 The Thing is both mesmerizing and horrifying. It is one of the least mentioned aspects that gives it an other worldly feeling, which most alien creatures depicted even if not horror themed rarely have.
The scream you hear during the dog scene before Macready pulls the Fire alarm is insane really distorted scary as fuck
I love how Quentin Tarantino took elements of JC’s “The Thing” into “The Hateful Eight”, especially when Kurt Russell’s character states “Someone here is not who they say they are”, QT stated The Thing was one of his favorite movies. The entire setting of The H8ful 8 is a salute to “The Thing”, a cabin, in the dead of a winter storm populated by a bunch of characters, many of whom are not who they say they are, and of course one of the leading roles played by Kurt Russel.
holy cow ! never though of that, now to think the atmosphere among the characters in The Hateful Eight is so tense, it really does resonates The Thing !
Oh , BTW , Ennio Morricone in both of them!
@@polik971 Actually, Ennio Morricone's music FROM The Thing is in The Hateful Eight.
@@d3nza482 my mind is blown again
I thought the Hateful Eight was more a tribute to a certain Christie novel to the point I even knew how the film was going to end because of it.
Amazing video. You explained really simply the actual problems we see so much even today in the movie industry. The excess romantization kills the very core aspect of human beings: We are animals, crude and nasty when our life is threatened. The writing of characters and situations in a horror movie (or any other genre actually) should reflect that. That chaotic crudeness.
To be fair, what used to scare me the most when i was younger with the practical effects was the unnatural movement. The jitter effect. And to be fair..... it still some how creeps me out more then the best CGI produced, smooth moving abominations. Also what one commentator pointed out, the difference between a creature that tries to survive and uses tactics instead of mindless attacks.
I'm not sure I agree about the unnatural movements, I mean it's unnatural movement I guess but it's how like a head stretching and popping off would look, because it's actually what you are seeing. I mean we know it's not a real head, but we are literally seeing a head stretching off a body then all the cords popping in real time. Where as with cgi it's someone's interpretation of what it looks like. But with real effects it's actually happening so all the unpredictable things and things someone wouldn't interpret actually happen naturally. Not sure I explained myself but hope you get what I mean. Also I do agree that it's unnatural even tho what you are seeing is how it naturally happens lol.
I couldn't agree more. Old school 70s and 80s body horror was AMPLIFIED by the unnatural movement of the prosthetic effects. CGI utterly fails in this regard. The way fake skin wrinkles as it's pulled...or the way its tensile strength gives in "ropes" when it's pulled apart simply hasn't been replicated by cgi yet.
Real life creatures and humans do not move so smoothly. Every movement is full of little jittery movements. That is why CGI in motion is so much more fake-looking than a still image can be. Not saying the old school animation is more realistic, but the new stuff is just as bad but for different reasons...
@@xEvilNeverDiesx I get what you mean yeah, good props will properly simulate the effects and physics of whats happening.
What I really like about practical effects is how they look real for both the audience and the actors. The lighting is genuine and sometimes the actors really get spooked themselves, which makes for a very convincing screen experience.
Practical effects also tend to be messier and grittier, CGI can look too "clean" at times and create an uncanny valley effect.
I'm not against CGI, it is very useful and allows certain shots to be pulled off, but it does have a bad reputation because they do detract from the movie when they're done poorly.
Props can and have been done poorly too, but CGI is a relatively new thing that has been spammed and the negative associations can stick to people after seeing their fair share of lousy CGI.
My favorite scene in this film..is the "spider-head"..which scuttles away..because it appears just off the edge of the camera,just short of blindsiding the audience..and at the same time underlies the apparently unlimited resiliency of the creature...the fact that it takes a moment for Nawls to even see the thing...he's open-mouthed..the audience is open mouthed.
In the 80's, we had the nuclear clock. At every moment there was the creeping knowledge that a bomb could drop, followed by instant retaliation and complete obliteration worldwide. It's difficult to describe how that impacts a nation psychologically, but the average person didn't want a movie with an unhappy ending or uncertainty. They wanted an obvious bad guy and a strong hero in the same way that you want a happy song when you're at a truly low point because a sad song when you're actually sad can be overwhelming.
Kinda can't blame anyone at the time of the Cold War when the reality was already looming dread.
I listen to sad music when i'm sad.
then i wonder why the 2020s seem so pessimistic... just our media and all...
@@mayabartolabac Almost sounds like a subtle social engineering. An attempt to create enough apathy in the hopes of deterring possible meaningful change.
Or just the motions of society trying to get through difficult change like any point in history.
@@applesandgrapesfordinner4626 who or what is creating the apathy?
Solid analysis! Keep doing what you're doing! :)
!! I love your videos, thanks for watching!
You should commented this to my comment instead. Fits 1000 times better !!!
I'm a fan of the 2011 Thing (I saw it in theaters) and the 80s thing (I was traumatized by it as a child in the early 90s) and I, for the most part, agree with your analysis. Very perceptive observation about the characters in the 80s thing being dehumanized (called by names that aren't really "names") and not really connected to each other personally, but rather just resigned to being alone together. You really get a sense of that in the Carpenter version.
The names they were called by were their last names. It isn't that uncommon. We do it where I work often.
@@carriersignal sure. We did it at a place I worked at too. It’s not uncommon in a work place but when it’s done in a move like this, it’s one of several choices Carpenter made to distance the characters from the viewer and each other
The comparison between the narrative structure of the film and Maslow's heirarchy was really eye opening for me. I'd never thought of it in that context before and it definitely helps explain the process of designing fear as a product. That's always been difficult for me to put a finger on in these conversations, so thank you!
Thank you for watching! :)
It's a good way to summarize how so many action oriented movies (past or present) fail to create any real tension. Not sure what that's evidence of, seems like a single class in movie school oughta clear that right up, there are so many great examples of how to do "urgent terror" well... so something else is going on there other than ignorance. Conflicting priorities within the studio?
The JC version generates a subdermal feeling that stays with you after the movie is over. Things are not resolved, the tone hints towards a darker end. That we are isolated and alone no matter how many people are around us.
This evaluation of The Thing was well done; the discussion, scene selection, and exploring conversational delivery is impressive.
Reminds me of Stephen King's *"The Mist"*
I feel the fact that puppets can't do backflips and you aren't free to jerk the camera all around them while they jiggle forward in a goofy jog helps with the cinematography sometimes.
Makes every move of the camera more deliberate. Keeps things stationary and more intimate which is probably helpful in a movie like the thing.
This helped me better understand why my immersion is so throughly broken when characters make puns all the time in action and horror movies.
Also, romantic pursuits being established on screen have a similar affect. When I see two people flirting, my brain automatically assumes there’s no danger or urgency because you wouldn’t flirt in such a situation. So when the monster comes on screen the next scene, I’m already checked out.
The social politics thing was a good point too. If you have energy to have a Twitter debate for example, you’re definitely not concerned about anything important relating to survival.
It’s actually insane that this film got so absolutely hacked apart upon its release. And now is revered a genuine classic masterpiece.
How times change.
Na, thats normal for a big part sadly. In terms of media, a lot of new stuff gets massively hacked and later be considered a classic. I also will bet my left hand that 50 shades will be a special classic in 30 or 40 years.
@@Randleray I’d go as far to say there are many middle aged women who already consider 50 shades a classic lmao.
Most people really don’t like true horror. The professional critics who watched “The Thing” watched every major studio release back then, because that was their job. It’s definitely a switch from “ET,” which came out the same month.
Makes you wonder what panned movies nowadays will be "rediscovered" in 30-40 years time.
I saw The Thing when I was 13, the same day I saw ET. Of course, I loved both films for very different reasons. The Thing was one of those movies, that blew my mind. The tone, the isolation, the cold, the dark, the paranoia, the music, the effects, the performances.... masterpiece. Thank you John.
Art is not about the paint, the brush, or even the artist's vision; it's about what it makes you FEEL
The Thing is ART in its purest form
That so many supposedly educated critics came away feeling bad and not realizing that was the WHOLE point of the movie is kind of wild. You would think a movie that is both entertaining, and shocking, and with themes close to heart in the Cold War would be a hit with just about everyone. Goes to show just how badly America needed to reinforce its own exceptionalism after Viet Nam. We still haven't accepted our flaws.
Lol "Viet Nam"
@themug406
The Vietnamese write it as Việt Nam. Two words.
I just watched The Thing 2011 and I was so angry afterwards but I didn't know exactly why, since I am a huge fan of the 51 and 82 version... But not only you conveyed what I felt in words, this video even gave me goosebumps... Fantastic stuff, thank you
Thanks for the watch :)
So the moral of the story is, CGI isn't the problem in the right hands and as long as they keep it grounded to the story being told and not going overboard like many do.
With the kind of computing tech we have today, CGI should be able to look as real as the real thing in the right hands.
The real problem is, people expect everyone that is doing CGI to have top end skill sets for the job but that just isn't how it works.
For me, CGI isn't a problem anymore, what is the problem is the tools to create them and too many going overboard in what they try to do and not keep it ground, basically, too many newer movies are about the special effects and not the story but in the right hand with the right director, CGI artist and so on, they can make a masterpiece of a movie today.
Wonderfully said!
Yep, restraint is as valuable as fortitude.
The biggest issue is that CGI folks are overworked, underpaid, & never given enough time to perfect anything anymore which is why it looks so bad these days depending on the movie.
@@d3l3tes00n Honestly, it usually looks fantastic -- it's just that it blends so well (backgrounds, spaceships, removal of things that don't belong, etc) that you don't realize you're seeing CGI.
Some of the super-ambitious center-stage stuff looks odd -- usually because they're trying to create stuff that really DOES look odd -- monsters and such -- or because they make poor stylistic choices, like making things look too polished for what they are.
And, of course, if it's not a billion-dollar blockbuster, there's the sort of thing you're talking about. I'm not denying that there's truth in your statement -- just pointing out that people overlook the immense success of CGI in creating effective illusion, in order to focus on its occasional failures.
And you can actually make a movie with both, good story and good cgi
The Thing (1982) is one of the best movies ever. It is perfect. Definitely a contender for my favorite film of all time but at the very least my favorite horror film. It baffles me how little it is talked about honestly.
6:15 I like your takes. The thing about Maslow's hierarchy is that it happens simultaniously, not in steps. The lower ones are more important, but they don't have to be fully statisfied before we go for the higher ones too. This has been established for some time now, but since most schools only teach the original theory they forget to mention it. And yes I would have hated any romance in this movie too, but it is possible. Fear of death brings people closer together or at least it can.
Mm that is important, thanks. And yes! A romance is not completely out of turn, just not *this* romance
This is where I think “annihilation” succeeded, by making Natalie Portman utterly powerless at the face of an unknowable unseen creature. The most fascinating part was seen how each evolution led to a more and more warped version of nature and reality itself.
Annihilation is an incredible movie. A rare successful cosmic horror film
@@themorbidzoo I saw annihilation alone in a theater with maybe 5 people in it and was glued to the scream the whole time. It made me feel things I couldn’t describe and there were multiple times in the movie that I had to close my mouth because I had unknowingly left it hanging open. It’s a shame my friends and family never saw it’s charm. The soundtrack of the movie is half of its experience and the work that went into it was remarkable to witness
I was gonna watch it but I really couldnt care about the backstory of it ... like the characters life because it just makes me hate the character
@@levibull6063 yo it was a good horror movie but it is based on a book so there a a lot of differences
@@levibull6063 The Biologist is not supposed to be a likeable character, none of them are. You don't have to like the protagonist for them to be a protagonist.
You just perfectly encapsulated my main issue with the horror genre these days, particularly "creature features" because effects and technology have cone so far they focus on the IT more than the ambiance, more than plot building, character building, sound design, the tense moments and everything else around the IT. Thats one reason classic horror is so much more scary... a movie that scares you good will have turning on lights and pulling back shower curtains for weeks after viewing. It sits in the back of your mind and gnaws... I LOVE THAT. I miss that feeling.
Agreed. Most movies after 2013 are rubbish.
Watched a movie called the void recently, saw it on a really low screen brightness the first time, really was an amazing movie, really scary. As soon as i rewatched it but on a brighter screen it really changed things. The shadows and dark bits of the screen really made the film unsettling, made all the monsters etc much more frightening, id recoomend watching a certain scary films you know are good with lower brightness, really turned it into a much more captivating film, not saying you do it so some aspects are not visible
I really love the way The Thing handles it’s monster. The alien is methodical, calculated, but not inherently malicious. It’s like an animal, acting on instinct and predictable when you actually pay attention to its behaviors. This concept instantly improves any fictional alien or monster for me.
A monster has to act on more than just a desire to kill. It becomes less predictable when it has more motives. Because animals respond to different emotions in a variety of ways, there’s more flexibility. What angers it? What scares it? Does it want to kill to eat? or kill to defend itself? Or both? How can the characters take advantage of these things? Etc etc.
i’m a little biased because my favorite movie does this, but i enjoy it in any story where it’s present
This analysis is what got me to finally watch The Thing (1982) tonight with some friends who'd also never seen it. Great movie. I loved all your analysis points and shared most of them with my friends. You're absolutely right in one of your other videos when you said that this channel would get more people seeing your work than any amount of paper writing and publishing would do. And I say that having 1 published paper under my name already. Cheers and happy holidays!
Amazing, I’m glad you enjoyed it! Thanks so much and happy holidays to you too :)
Awesome analysis. I would however, argue that the puppets from 1982 are not inferior to the CGI of 2011. CGI today is really getting there, but up until very recently, it tends to be over-animated. Plus, imagine how a limb would move if tendons, muscles, and joints were actively breaking down and and re-configuring themselves. Probably stiff and flimsy and awkward, like a puppet. I don't want to get too morbid, but if you've ever seen the beating of lungs inside a cut-open chest, it looks almost puppet-like. The visual line between actual sustained bodily harm and puppetry is far more blurred, than between CGI and actual sustained bodily harm. TLDR; puppetry (sometimes) outshines most modern CGI in realism. Little Shop of Horrors as my testament.
Fantastic comment
Yes, CGI is getting nowhere even today. Just looks like a super highly detailed cut scene from a video game. Outside of a videogame setting it looks like shit. Only usable for inanimate objects and backgrounds. Anything else especially anything alive looks uncannily horrible and should be kept at a minimum and shrouded in darkness, layers of fog or other atmospherics never to see the light of day. The CGI era as we know it today is an abomination to moviemaking as an art. Lets hope it ends soon. Bring back the puppets.
@@Fedorevsky I agree that it's an abomination to the art of film. It's the fastest and cheapest route. Not a fan.
I think CGI Peaked completely with Lord of the Rings. Because that was pretty much the last time real hardcore effects artists were the ones doing the whole thing. That is why even now Gollum looks good. What brings an end to things is the basic thought that you 'fix it in post' mindset. As in every single thing is 'enhanced' or 'fixed' with CGI.
@@mariawhite7337 don’t necessarily agree with you that cgi peaked with the lotr trilogy but i do agree that the trilogy highlights how good cgi could be and age when done right, that is by combining it with practical effects and set pieces as well as mocap if possible. Too bad studios these days are too lazy and cheap to make those stuffs and would “just animate it and then we’ll layer it in stupid amount of texture to cover the cracks” or in your much simpler words “fix it in post”
I always felt Carpenter's version had his characters be that ambiguous so we the audience would be on our toes for who is who. We know as you said just the basic of what we need to know about each character through actions and emotions.
Its the fine line one must always walk. Its too easy to fall into the trap of giving main characters more focus than supporting characters,... and in a horror film this becomes the trap of "oh, okay, all those guys are gonna die, but these ones are not" and all the tension disappears.
This is made even worse when you make a movie where the audience already knows the only survivors will be the pilot, and the Norwegian with bad aim. The setting itself demanded even greater care, but got less.
This is such a beautiful, well worded, and concise essay. I keep coming back to it to enjoy it again. It doesn’t feel like 12 minutes, it feels like a chat with a friend. Well done.
The original thing is genuinely one of my favorite movies of all time and the idea that people hated it when it first came out astounds me.
Yeah they didn't like The Shining, either.
Maybe they just hate vegetables.
Sorry to be a douche about this but the 1982 movie was a remake as well, the original is from the 50s
The original Thing is the 1951 version. I preferred it to the 1982 version for a very long time. Never seen the 2011 version.
82 The Thing is my favorite film of all time. I have never heard someone compare the creature, and body horror as a whole, to real life deformations and parasites exactly the way you did. Very intriguing. Fantastic video!
Ah thanks, much appreciated!!
A lot of these old horror films were inspired by real life things like that.
The Fly from how gnarly and creepy insects look up close.
The Blob from the rise in awareness of rapidly spreading slime molds, specifically a fast spreading slime mold that appeared somewhere in Texas.
The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, They Live!, from the rising fears of alien abduction and the beliefs that Aliens were living amongst us.
Funny how a bunch of my friends and I, just "nobodies" in a little town not on the map, no film school under our belts, no journalism in our dreams... KNEW that "The Thing" was great the first time we saw it, the year it came out. We knew nothing was like it, we knew the acting was reserved and realistic, we knew the style helped us immerse ourselves until it was over... and I, being a classic sci-fi geek, knew the source material was WAY ahead of its time, and fascinating... not just blood and guts.
I believe Kurt Russell made the movie a classic.
3:38 to supplement to point of “because they could do whatever they wanted with the monster they figured they didn’t have to put effort into the framing,” (or to kind of just reiterate your point lol) I find it really interesting that the clips of practical effects cut from the rest of the movie look fake here, they don’t feel that way when you’re watching the movie. The framing and context makes it feel real enough when experiencing the movie.
And that’s I think where the CGI falls flat. Because there’s little to no framing every flaw and imperfection stands out because that’s all the movie is giving you.
I recently read "The mountains of madness" by H.P. Lovecraft, a story who shares some similarities with the Thing.
(just a quick recap of this one : a scientiic expedition in Antartica discovers some strange and really ancient beings frozen in the ice, and later they find an entire city which used to be one these Elder things citadel)
And something awesome with it, is about the Elder Things in this novel, is the fact that they ARE sentients. These are creatures who woke up in a laboratory after thousands of years of sleep. So when they were awaken, surrounded by strange ape-like and wolf-like beings trying to kill them while screaming, they freaked out !
This is something we can find in the 1982 "the thing", the fact that the monster is sentient, it knows it is vulnerable and fights for it's own survival. In the 2011 movie, it seems like it's just here to kill stuff and look bad.
When I rewatch the scene of the dogs, I can't stop thinking : what the hell is happening in it's mind right now ?!
Sadly, I don't find this dimension in the recent movie.
Also, this video have 18 dislikes right now, but it's so good it should have none... I think there are 18 impostors among us...
Hell yeah, it's a super Lovecraftian monster in 1982, one of those things that makes you feel little and meaningless, there but for the grace of god go my stupid self. I haven't read the mountains of madness in a long time, I might need to pick it up again. Thanks for the watch!!
As far are the YT algorithm is concerned it registers both likes and dislikes the same as engagement so either way it helps promote the channel at least lol
Ever read “the things” it does exactly that and it presents the thing itself as scared
@@Cushla-np4pt You mean "Who Goes There?" I assume.
@@RogueDragon05 uh no, here’s a link th-cam.com/video/h-G-k9-y1NA/w-d-xo.html it’s really interesting
I didn't know The Thing was panned when it came out. I was in High School at the time so I was the target demo. I was blown away and everyone I knew who saw it was as well. It was to horror what Star Wars was to SiFi. Absolutely terrifying! I feel sorry for Carpenter. To be fired after you make a masterpiece?!?!
I was in high school in the 80s too, and I must disagree with the commentator that the 80s were a "weird time". They were about as un-weird as is possible, which is one reason why this movie tanked at the time. Now the 70s, THOSE were weird.
Same.
I was 10 in '82 and literally everyone I knew, kids and adults thought the movie was amazing
The part that the 2011 film did really well was the transition to Carpenter's film, where there was hysterical panic leading straight into dog chase with iconic music. That was an instance in the latter production that did capture the original film. This was a great analysis of the films.
Dang, that was some genuinely thoughtful analysis, and I now better understand my contempt for the 2011 Thing movie.
Love the Carpenter version of The Thing. Just brilliant. I own both films. The prequel isn’t really all that bad. It’s just not as good as the 1982 version. They are now trying to make a remake. Yes, Blumhouse is making it. Like he is now with The Exorcist. I guess they are truly running out of ideas! To me it’s sacrilegious to do this with these classic films that really don’t need a redo.
I don't typically see remakes as bad because even if they don't do well it gets people talking and can remind people about the original film and inspire a newer generation to watch the original out of curiosity. Sometimes I never know about an original movie until I have seen its remake. This was the case with this film and I preferred the original as well but still enjoyed the remake.
Just lazy film industry men with zero creativity looking to get paid doing something totally unnecessary and thats had all the hard work done already
Love these videos! Not only do you have a really strong idea that you're conveying but you also narrate them far better than a lot of youtubers on top of making a really solid _video_ for your _video_ essays. Keep it up!
Thank you!!
Solid points. Honestly this is part of what made Dead Space such a great game at first...and also why the series went to shit in the 3rd installment. If you've never played it, I highly recommend watching a playthru.
Ooh interesting. I haven't and I will!
I loooove Dead Space!! Can’t wait for the re-imagining coming out in 2022
dead space is cheapened with lame-a@$ jumpscare and sudden shriek of the volume. not cool
@@kaidanalenko5222 they didn't start that crap until the second game rolled around
Dead Space did give me a similar sense of nihilistic dehumanizing alien horror that Carpenter's Thing did.
This movie and the 1st Alien. The people feel real, like.. what if normal people did something like this. They are relatable. The physical object effects add to it. Yes you can tell many are puppets especially now with good video quality.. BUT.. you see things like 1) natural light reflections 2) water / moisture 3) shadows 4) actors making real contact with the props. I really wish movies would go back to doing practical effects and use CGI to help enhance it.
This was a much better overview of this movie than most I've seen on youtube. I saw this movie at a "projectionist screening" at the theater I worked at as a teenager before ANYONE else had a chance to see it. I was BLOWN AWAY! After the "Dogtown" scene both my friend and I turned to each other with a look that just said, "HOLY SHIT! THIS IS AMAZING!" We watched in raptured wonder for the entirety. Our little mall triplex had a weird tradition from this OLD SCHOOL theater manager who had been doing it for HIS ENTIRE LIFE, which was to put a quote from an employee about the movie. As I was the only one who had seen it, my description was "The scariest horror movie that's ever been made. Not for the squeamish".
My friend and I watched it twice more for the two weeks it played at my theater. But we saw it again at a local drive in in October where, during the showing, it started to snow, ever so gently. Not so much as to obscure anything, but it was one of those "perfect moments".
I've been heartened that this movie finally caught on. I've been a fan from my first viewing and it's one of those movies where because you can't see it again for the first time, the next best thing is when you find out one of your friends hasn't seen it, and YOU get to show it to them.
SHe pointed out the use of eye contact in the first movie that I missed somewhat also the heiarchy of human needs is not used in the second movie which made it stupid
Mariana, this is the kind of review I've been looking for. It's been bugging me for a long time why 2011 Thing fails. Some of my issues are technical, some are bad characterization. However, your observation about Maslow's hierarchy of needs puts a fine point on it. The characters are at an emotional tone like they're not in a knife's-edge survival situation. They act like their mental map of the world is in accord with reality -- which is impossible. Anyone could split apart into an all consuming unstoppable eating machine at any moment. Nobody would be observing the normal protocols of leadership hierarchies.
I'd also add: the characters are too "clean" -- there are no rough edges. Their flaws are always flaws and their virtues are always virtues. The character flaws in the '82 Thing become virtues when their world is turned upside down. McReady isn't just a sore loser, he'll win and he'll think outside the box to do so (literally -- he dumps his drink inside the box on which the chess game is being played). When faced with a superior opponent, or life-or-death situation, he only cares about survival and using all resources at hand to do so.
There are many ways that '82 Thing is as close to cinematic perfection as can be attained. Plot, characterization, theme, music, setting, pacing, direction, blocking, dialog, lighting, and many others. Where 2011 Thing fails is that none of those elements are working in harmony to evoke the existential terror of being defiled in every conceivable way by a predatory creature which is formless. It corrupts your body and steals even your mind and turns them all to it's own designs.
The Thing adds insult to injury in that it is fully self aware yet has no interest in negotiating with humans. It truly views people like cattle which contribute little more than meat and a pragmatic disguise. Also, it's lack of peacemaking implies that the humans were doing exactly as it wanted all along. It was never truly under threat.
Thanks so much! And yep, I agree on all counts. I think most "bad" movies come down to whether the filmmakers actually understand what their movie is about. The 2011 Thing is a movie that misunderstands its own point.
Most horror films rely on visuals to terrify and fail because of it. Although visually shocking throughout, The Thing uses something far more powerful. Being made to feel what the characters felt. Which JC seals with a masterful stroke, the final scene.
The main thing I hated about the 2011 movie was that it was essentially a remake packaged as a prequel.
Dialogue and scenes lifted directly from the 1982 movie, with a couple additions like the fillings in the teeth and retconning the ending so it doesn't actually match the original... it's a remake, and a poor one at that.
There's a lot of that going around with Ghostbusters Afterlife, Force Awakens, Jurassic World 1 and 2...... all remakes, packaged as sequels and prequels, simply because *actual* remakes like Ghostbusters 2016 and RoboCop 2015, are universally hated.
One of my favorite films, and a really great commentary on it! I have watched a lot of these, and this is one of the best. Something I always wondered, even when I was a kid, was this: are you "killed" when assimilated by the Thing? Or, does some part of your conscience still survive? In some scenes, it seems like the victims don't realize that they are no longer themselves - particularly Norris. He seems to genuinely not realize what's about to happen when he has his heart attack. I feel like this would have been an interesting thing to explore in the prequel, sadly, that didn't happen.
I always assumed Norris was fully-assimilated but that the host body wasn't replicated properly or had some sort of complication that led to it not being able to survive as a reconstructed human. I.e the "heart attack" was a failure of the system of organisms.
@@57harrierstrikes I agree that it makes sense that when he was assimilated, his heart condition was also replicated, and that the “thing” was genuinely experiencing a human cardiac arrest. Also an interesting idea.
@@briannewman532 that's pretty awesome
Norris and Palmer were fully assimilated when they tried to torch McReady and escalated the tension by convincing the others that he had been assimilated. The thing was fully in control of Norris at this point. As Brian said prior, the thing assimilated Norris perfectly including his defective organs. Seems to me that his memories would have remained intact. So if Norris knew he had a heart condition so would the thing. I think that Norris would have died regardless if he had been assimilated or not. He didn't know he had a bad heart and the activity of boarding up the doors and stress of the situation was too much for his body.
@@LeagalizeCrime I always saw it as there being a complication with the Thing's takeover of his body