As the title implies, this is part two in a series about Who Goes There and its four movie adaptations. Last week we covered Who Goes There, The Thing from Another World and Horror Express, so if you are just joining us; part one can be found here. This week we’ll be covering The Thing (1982), The Thing (2011) and I’ll actually include a conclusion. The article runs a little long because I didn’t want this stretching into a third part, so we should probably get to it.

The Thing (1982). This is both the most and least faithful big screen adaptation we are probably ever going to get of Who Goes There. This is the most faithful version of The Thing (although it still isn’t psychic) and quite a few scenes are taken directly from the book, But while the book is pure sci-fi the film is a straight horror with some sci-fi themes. so a lot of the things lifted wholesale are re-purposed to build tension and atmosphere instead of exploring the premise. Most of the changes are to serve the genre switch. So they don’t discover The Thing or its space ship but the new setup is brilliant for the logical leaps it lets the character take. The film doesn’t need a scene showing the characters taking time to figure out how to kill the The Thing when the Norwegians already showed that fire is effective. Besides, the Norwegian tapes show a reasonably accurate version of the ship’s discovery. Sure, we loose a lot of information on what’s going on but that just builds the sense of unease. The research team is much smaller, but for the first time we get some of the original book characters, although they do have significantly more human personalities. The original book only had four types of characters; noble robots, raving madmen, The Thing and slightly perturbed back ground characters. that’s not a criticism, it worked great for a short sci-fi book, but horror requires the characters to have more personality. Unfortunately, since the film doesn’t need a reason to thaw out The Thing we don’t get the obligatory over zealous scientist. This is the only adaptation that completely forgoes depicting an original form for The Thing and changes the signature mewing to a series of deep growls and screams, personally I think these changes were very important for reinforcing the new genre, even though I do miss the mewing. So all of that is great but I doubt anyone would remember this film if it weren’t for the incredible special effects. They’re not flawless, some of the backdrops look very flat, about %10 of the practical effects look like they’re made of latex or plastic when they’re not moving and a lot of the blood looks like ketchup. I’m willing to bet those looked better before being digitally remastered. The rest of the effects are incredibly impressive, the transformation scenes are incredible and they still look better than a lot of effects in current movies. There’s a reason this is a horror classic, You should definitely check it out.

The Thing (2011). This is an odd one, its definitely trying to be a prequel to The Thing (1982) but it pulls enough details from Who Goes There that I’m willing to call it an adaptation in its own right. The film covers the previously untold story of the Norwegian research team that discovered and was subsequently murdered by The Thing before the events of The Thing (1982). The Thing is basically the same, except this time the film makers weren’t limited by practical effects, the exciting world of CGI opened the limitless gates of imagination, allowing the film look significantly worse than a film that was released nearly thirty years earlier. There are some practical effects that are mostly used when The Thing isn’t moving and they look fantastic, like better than 1982′s effects. Sadly they only make up about 5% of The Thing’s screen time, the rest of it looks like stolen assets from the first animated Resident Evil movie. Strangely a large amount of practical effects actually were made for this but got switched out for CGI last minute, I’m of the mind that you can’t judge a film for what it isn’t so I’ll just say it looks genuinely awful. After establishing that the outside world has some knowledge of crashed ship and frozen alien the film starts stealing beats from 1982, but changes them just enough for them to make less sense, for example the idea of using fire is just immediately apparent to them without any indication it might be effective. At least we got our over zealous scientist back. About halfway through, the film decides it really doesn’t care about being a slow paranoia driven horror film, it want’s to be an action film, so the rest of the film is a bunch of forgettable action sequences. The climactic final battle takes place on The Things ship, the same ship that the Norwegian crew clearly destroyed in the tapes. I don’t understand why they would make a film and ignore continuity in such a big way while spending so much time covering little details, you know your film has issues when your set designer cares more about continuity than your script editor. The characters are bland and poorly acted. (I know this is the second time I’ve criticised Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s acting, but trust me, she really can act. Don’t believe me? Go and see Smashed, It’s outstanding.) The film is bad, unless you have a reason other than entertainment to watch it, you should definitely skip it.

The Point. This franchise has a lot of content that wildly varies in quality and faithfulness. But it’s important to remember that none of these films are made any better or worse for being part of a franchise, 1982 isn’t bad because of Horror Express and 2011 isn’t good because of The Thing From Another World. Remakes don’t change anything about your relationship with the original piece of work. 2011 doesn’t need to be compared to 1982, it’s a poorly written, poorly acted ugly film without that baggage. So let’s just calm down with all the hate for type of thing, remakes reboots, and sequels aren’t bad because they’re remakes, reboots or sequels, they’re bad because they’re bad films. So don’t demand that original films be made just because they’re original, demand that the films that are made are actually good. Otherwise we might never get the strict sci-fi adaptation of Who Goes There that I want so badly. Maybe one day I’ll do a cash in sequel to this mini series, It’ll cover the 2002 The Thing video game and The Hateful Eight or maybe I’ll just sell the rights to an even less talented writer.





Tune in next Thursday for ‘The Franchise Wars, Part 3. Continuity Error.’, a discussion of The Marvel Cinematic Universe, destructive continuity and more about the nature of originality and unoriginality.







An Article By Blake Wynne.