Movie Review: The Thing (2011)

While its reputation has grown considerably in the thirty years since its release, I was and still am lukewarm on John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982).

Basically rubber puppets doused in egg whites, I thought that the special effects were cool but not particularly scary (even by 1982 standards). And the characters, as is often the case  with Carpenter, were only slightly deeper than their skins. For instance, we know that the main protagonist, MacReady (Kurt Russell), is the “suffering/loner/cool guy” because he takes loooong swigs of whiskey and  wears a sombrero-like hat. Yes, I get that Carpenter sets up MacReady as the ultimate outsider in order to juxtapose him with a title character that turns out to be the ultimate “conformist.” And, okay, the ensemble cast did a good job and certainly had their share of great moments. Yet, I never really felt invested in them and their predicament.

To be fair, I grudgingly went to the see the 1982 version with an ice block-sized chip on my shoulder because they dared to remake Christian Nyby’s (or Howard Hawk’s – depending on who you believe) original version  of The Thing made in 1951. Sure, it is dated as hell (James Arness plays “the Thing” wearing modified Frankenstein make-up), and not as faithful as Carpenter would later be to the  John W. Campbell, Jr. novella, Who Goes There?, on which the film was based. But the 1951 movie still holds up because of its more subtle and nuanced development of characters through the inspired use of overlapping dialog. While not deeper than Carpenter’s characters, they felt a lot less forced (to me, anyway) and were more fun to hang around with.

So, with that said, it’s interesting to read about the 2011 version of The Thing, directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. The critical comparisons are now being made from the vantage point of the 1982 movie and NOT the one from 1951. And when I say “interesting,” I mean that in a “damn, I feel old” kinda way.

All in all, this new incarnation does a good job at telling a now familiar (almost staple) science fiction story of paranoia. An alien capable of assuming the form of its victim reeks havoc at a remote Antarctic outpost. At the outset, the filmmakers decided to approach this as a prequel to the Carpenter film. Set in 1982, the new “Thing” chronicles events leading up to the action that will “later” take place with MacReady and company.

The cast is lead by Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Kate Lloyd, an American paleontologist, who travels to the very bottom of the world to study an amazing find made by Norwegian scientists. The tension between her and the expedition leader, Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen), over how this find should be handled is a fairly standard sci-fi plot (with Halvorson taking on the “mad scientist” role). Yet, their conflict is handled in a more restrained manner, without too much melodrama. Likewise, when Lloyd is forced to take over as the de facto “leader” of the outpost as the crisis escalates, there is no over-the-top scenes of Lloyd strapping on bandoleers as happens with Ripley near the end of Aliens (I much prefer the smart, brave, and REAL Ripley at the end of the first Alien).

I think the biggest mistake the new film makes is tethering itself to Carpenter’s film. This places unavoidable limits on the narrative and as well as what the new “thing” could look like in an age of CGI magic. I like the neat method Lloyd devises to figure out who is human and who isn’t. And it’s fun to spot the multiple homages thrown in to the 1982 version. But looking for such “Easter eggs” effectively erodes the fourth wall and, in so doing, took me out of the action as a viewer.

Of course, one can enjoy this new version The Thing without haven’t seen the Carpenter version.  In fact, I’m tempted to say that, based on my wife’s reaction, NOT having seen the 1982 outing makes this one even more entertaining.