Think John Carpenter’s The Thing but made by idiots. The end.
Ok, no. I can’t just say this film is awful don’t watch it, because much as that is true, I kind of need to justify myself. Basically it’s a prequel to the 80s Thing. And I really like that film, so I was a bit worried before I even saw anything about this film. I thought it was too long since the original, I thought it couldn’t work without John Carpenter and mainly I thought about how unnecessary it was. Yeah, at the start of the original we see the Norwegian base, but basically we just see how exactly the same thing happened to them as happens to the characters in the film. So basically we already know the story and we don’t need it laid out. But obvious that sounded like a ripe money plant to be picking and a prequel was born. I already hated the idea, then I heard reviews from America where they hated it, so I went into the cinema knowing it was going to be bad, and I wasn’t wrong.
There is a huge pile of issues with this film but six major problems.
Problem number one: The characters
The characters are bland. The original film didn’t have a great level of character depth, but we could at least tell them apart, in this film, except for the two women, the black guy, the boss and the guy who looks like Ewan McGregor, the rest are just lots of the same bearded Norwegian. I couldn’t keep track of who was who, or how many were left or when they could’ve been infected, which somewhat ruined the suspense. And even the characters I just described, that was their whole personally. Take the boss, all we ever find out about him is… he’s the boss? That’s it. No-one is developed at all which means we neither understand nor care what’s happening to them. Oh and it misses the point because the original was all men so they could all try and take charge and be paranoid of each other, but the woman’s presence seems to have removed all the tension.
Problem number two: The effects
Ok, I’d better get this out of the way. This film doesn’t use practical effects, it uses CGI. This immediately makes it inferior to the original, which has some of the best practical effects ever. But hey, just because it’s not as good as the original doesn’t mean it’s rubbish. But the fact the effects are worse than The Phantom Menace really does. Seriously, the CGI is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s bad enough that we have bad CG, but the human face seems to HAVE to been on all the things, which leads to some of the most unintentional funny moments in this year’s movies. Seeing the boss guy’s face complete with beard on this huge video-game looking monster literally made me laugh out loud. This is not good for a horror movie.
Problem number three: Its connections with the original
This film really doesn’t know what it’s doing in this sense. At times it goes out of its way to show things we see in the first place, for example the two headed thing we see in the deserted base in John Carpenter’s film, is shown in this film, but there’s not really any reason for it to be there, except it ties into the original. Other times there’s stuff that just doesn’t appear, like the guy we see in the original who’s cut his wrists, he’s here at the end, but we never see him do it, or get any impression he was going to, he just does it off camera and we see the result. Even little things like the shit not being dug up in this film when it was in the original, it’s like the makers of this version saw the original, but it was a couple of years ago so it’s like they’re doing the script from fuzzy memories. And of course there’s the fact that half the stuff from the original happens here, the attack on the dog, the unfreezing, the locking people up, the testing scene, the small things in the rec room, etc, tec. This film started off as a remake and it’s pretty obvious from the amount of similarities between the two Things, but this isn’t good for this new movie, because it begins in even more comparison between it and the original, which it loses horribly.
Problem number four: The plot doesn’t make any sense
The entire plot revolves about the thing killing and replacing people so it can survive and spread. So they need to stop the thing escaping so they disable all the snowmobiles. But then later they fix them in about a second, so how did it do any good if they could be fixed so quickly? The thing at the end goes back to the spaceship (we’ll go back to that), and tries to escape in that. But if the ship worked in the first place why did it leave it instead of using it to travel somewhere more populated? And how did Lars survive when he was attacked? And why did they get Americans involved? And why did no-one get surprised when he gets the flamethrower? And…
Problem number five: The plot doesn’t make any fucking sense
Ok, there are a million tiny plot holes, but out of any other reviews I’ve read of this no-one seems to have picked up on the one that annoyed me the most. The way they find out who is the thing is by checking their fillings, because the thing can’t recreate inorganic material. But wait. If the thing can’t recreate inorganic material, what’s up with the clothes. We’ve seen the thing wearing plastic jackets and watches, so explain. If they get attacked and the clothes are ripped off then they shouldn’t have them. Or if they are infected subtlety and their cells are changed from the inside then why would the fillings fall out? So that makes no sense. And why does no-one check the main girl’s fillings, hey we know she’s not the thing but they don’t. And why does the thing change into the monster at the exact moments it’s at its weakest? And… You get the point. It makes no sense.
Problem number six: The ending
So we reach the ending. And yes, they go in the spaceship. That doesn’t make any sense for one thing, and for another it barely looks like a spaceship except for some weird CGI 16-bit tower thing, which is never explained. This scene could’ve just as well happened in a cave than a spaceship. It jumps the shark too, as in the original we know it’s an alien, but the rest of the world is pretty normal, which makes it scarier. This just jumps directly into straight sci-fi. So they kill the thing, the woman could still be the thing but just drives off to a Russian base. Wait. A Russian base? But the point of the film is they’re isolated, and now there are three bases within driving distance? And really the only reason there is a Russian base is so there’s somewhere to send the woman, because we couldn’t possibly have a sad ending, oh wait, the original has them both about to freeze to death. And then they have the ending that links into the first where conveniently only the two Norwegians who don’t speak English survive and chase the dog thing with a gun, which doesn’t make any sense. Oh and the pilot hasn’t been around for the whole film so he just believes Lars about the alien instead of maybe thinking Lars killed them all. Oh I give up trying to make sense of it.
In conclusion, this was a film that no-one was asking for and should never have been made. The plot almost exactly mirrors the original until the insane spaceship bit at the end, the characters are bland and forgettable and the effects are laughable. Oh and it makes no sense. The main problem is it’s dull. It’s the same film we saw in 1982, but just made by a bunch of hacks. There is no reason to watch this film over John Carpenter’s The Thing so just watch that again and you’ll have a far better time.
1/5
Ok, no. I can’t just say this film is awful don’t watch it, because much as that is true, I kind of need to justify myself. Basically it’s a prequel to the 80s Thing. And I really like that film, so I was a bit worried before I even saw anything about this film. I thought it was too long since the original, I thought it couldn’t work without John Carpenter and mainly I thought about how unnecessary it was. Yeah, at the start of the original we see the Norwegian base, but basically we just see how exactly the same thing happened to them as happens to the characters in the film. So basically we already know the story and we don’t need it laid out. But obvious that sounded like a ripe money plant to be picking and a prequel was born. I already hated the idea, then I heard reviews from America where they hated it, so I went into the cinema knowing it was going to be bad, and I wasn’t wrong.
There is a huge pile of issues with this film but six major problems.
Problem number one: The characters
The characters are bland. The original film didn’t have a great level of character depth, but we could at least tell them apart, in this film, except for the two women, the black guy, the boss and the guy who looks like Ewan McGregor, the rest are just lots of the same bearded Norwegian. I couldn’t keep track of who was who, or how many were left or when they could’ve been infected, which somewhat ruined the suspense. And even the characters I just described, that was their whole personally. Take the boss, all we ever find out about him is… he’s the boss? That’s it. No-one is developed at all which means we neither understand nor care what’s happening to them. Oh and it misses the point because the original was all men so they could all try and take charge and be paranoid of each other, but the woman’s presence seems to have removed all the tension.
Problem number two: The effects
Ok, I’d better get this out of the way. This film doesn’t use practical effects, it uses CGI. This immediately makes it inferior to the original, which has some of the best practical effects ever. But hey, just because it’s not as good as the original doesn’t mean it’s rubbish. But the fact the effects are worse than The Phantom Menace really does. Seriously, the CGI is some of the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s bad enough that we have bad CG, but the human face seems to HAVE to been on all the things, which leads to some of the most unintentional funny moments in this year’s movies. Seeing the boss guy’s face complete with beard on this huge video-game looking monster literally made me laugh out loud. This is not good for a horror movie.
Problem number three: Its connections with the original
This film really doesn’t know what it’s doing in this sense. At times it goes out of its way to show things we see in the first place, for example the two headed thing we see in the deserted base in John Carpenter’s film, is shown in this film, but there’s not really any reason for it to be there, except it ties into the original. Other times there’s stuff that just doesn’t appear, like the guy we see in the original who’s cut his wrists, he’s here at the end, but we never see him do it, or get any impression he was going to, he just does it off camera and we see the result. Even little things like the shit not being dug up in this film when it was in the original, it’s like the makers of this version saw the original, but it was a couple of years ago so it’s like they’re doing the script from fuzzy memories. And of course there’s the fact that half the stuff from the original happens here, the attack on the dog, the unfreezing, the locking people up, the testing scene, the small things in the rec room, etc, tec. This film started off as a remake and it’s pretty obvious from the amount of similarities between the two Things, but this isn’t good for this new movie, because it begins in even more comparison between it and the original, which it loses horribly.
Problem number four: The plot doesn’t make any sense
The entire plot revolves about the thing killing and replacing people so it can survive and spread. So they need to stop the thing escaping so they disable all the snowmobiles. But then later they fix them in about a second, so how did it do any good if they could be fixed so quickly? The thing at the end goes back to the spaceship (we’ll go back to that), and tries to escape in that. But if the ship worked in the first place why did it leave it instead of using it to travel somewhere more populated? And how did Lars survive when he was attacked? And why did they get Americans involved? And why did no-one get surprised when he gets the flamethrower? And…
Problem number five: The plot doesn’t make any fucking sense
Ok, there are a million tiny plot holes, but out of any other reviews I’ve read of this no-one seems to have picked up on the one that annoyed me the most. The way they find out who is the thing is by checking their fillings, because the thing can’t recreate inorganic material. But wait. If the thing can’t recreate inorganic material, what’s up with the clothes. We’ve seen the thing wearing plastic jackets and watches, so explain. If they get attacked and the clothes are ripped off then they shouldn’t have them. Or if they are infected subtlety and their cells are changed from the inside then why would the fillings fall out? So that makes no sense. And why does no-one check the main girl’s fillings, hey we know she’s not the thing but they don’t. And why does the thing change into the monster at the exact moments it’s at its weakest? And… You get the point. It makes no sense.
Problem number six: The ending
So we reach the ending. And yes, they go in the spaceship. That doesn’t make any sense for one thing, and for another it barely looks like a spaceship except for some weird CGI 16-bit tower thing, which is never explained. This scene could’ve just as well happened in a cave than a spaceship. It jumps the shark too, as in the original we know it’s an alien, but the rest of the world is pretty normal, which makes it scarier. This just jumps directly into straight sci-fi. So they kill the thing, the woman could still be the thing but just drives off to a Russian base. Wait. A Russian base? But the point of the film is they’re isolated, and now there are three bases within driving distance? And really the only reason there is a Russian base is so there’s somewhere to send the woman, because we couldn’t possibly have a sad ending, oh wait, the original has them both about to freeze to death. And then they have the ending that links into the first where conveniently only the two Norwegians who don’t speak English survive and chase the dog thing with a gun, which doesn’t make any sense. Oh and the pilot hasn’t been around for the whole film so he just believes Lars about the alien instead of maybe thinking Lars killed them all. Oh I give up trying to make sense of it.
In conclusion, this was a film that no-one was asking for and should never have been made. The plot almost exactly mirrors the original until the insane spaceship bit at the end, the characters are bland and forgettable and the effects are laughable. Oh and it makes no sense. The main problem is it’s dull. It’s the same film we saw in 1982, but just made by a bunch of hacks. There is no reason to watch this film over John Carpenter’s The Thing so just watch that again and you’ll have a far better time.
1/5
I would have to agree with you, totally. Unfortuantely my new girlfriend seems to think different, but I think this is where actually seeing the original comes into play because she never did. She went and saw The new Thing at the theater while I was working at DISH one night, and all night I heard about how good it was from her. We went that weekend to see it, and again she loved it, and I missed Kurt Russell. Last night I get home from work and she is all happy because it was released on Blockbuster this week, so she hopped on our @home page and put it in our queue so we could watch it again (hooray!). At least this time I can put the 1982 version in the queue as well and agt least watch a good movie, maybe she will uinderstand after we watch it. If she doesn't, I'm going to have to ask her to leave and spend the rest of the night watching movies from the 20 movie channels that came with the blockbuster @home. If she likes the 1982 version better, I might marry her and have kids, and then they can watch the kids shows that they added to the on demand side of the @home through our DISH receiver. I think eitehr way I am a winner.
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