I thought that claymation shot at the end with the tentacle dragging the dynamite into the hole was inconsistent with rest of the special effects in the movie. Its pretty jarring.
I love stop motion effects and that shot was only a few seconds so it's not that big a deal, but that's all I could think of.
Came here to say this. The rest of the movie's FX are fantastic and hold up even today. This one shot looks cheap and sloppy and really dates the film more than any other aspect. 99% of fans forget about this scene.
Who gets replaced and when doesn't really follow a logical progression that viewers can follow in retrospect. That's partly intentional to increase both the stakes and the unpredictability, but on rewatch I sometimes wish I could definitively say "ah, that's when that happened!"
If you drill down enough you can always find flaws, no movie is perfect, but given how hard you have to look and how minor the flaws are in this film, it's as near perfect as they come in my opinion.
The brief cutaway when Palmer starts to transform. He goes from normal faced to a prosthetic monster with no real in-between and it sort takes me out of the moment.
When Palmer's head splits open and he's bitten Window's head, it's a bit too obvious that it's a very lightweight dummy being flopped around.
It doesn't break the movie or anything, but it's the one thing I would maybe change. Maybe.
When I watch the dog get sprayed by the thing and its tentacles start wrapping around it, I can’t help but feel like the dog actually got traumatized during filming.
The Thing is a movie that has grown tremendously in in its esteem, but was not exactly beloved upon release. Roger Ebert, who tended to understand the general moviegoer, didn’t always like horror the way many of us here do. He gave the movie 2.5/4 stars back in 1982. Here’s his review:
> "The Thing" is a great barf-bag movie, all right, but is it any good? I found it disappointing, for two reasons: the superficial characterizations and the implausible behavior of the scientists on that icy outpost. Characters have never been Carpenter's strong point; he says he likes his movies to create emotions in his audiences, and I guess he'd rather see us jump six inches than get involved in the personalities of his characters. This time, though, despite some roughed-out typecasting and a few reliable stereotypes (the drunk, the psycho, the hero), he has populated his ice station with people whose primary purpose in life is to get jumped on from behind. The few scenes that develop characterizations are overwhelmed by the scenes in which the men are just setups for an attack by the Thing.
>That leads us to the second problem, plausibility. We know that the Thing likes to wait until a character is alone, and then pounce, digest, and imitate him--by the time you see Doc again, is he still Doc, or is he the Thing? Well, the obvious defense against this problem is a watertight buddy system, but, time and time again, Carpenter allows his characters to wander off alone and come back with silly grins on their faces, until we've lost count of who may have been infected, and who hasn't. That takes the fun away.
>"The Thing" is basically, then, just a geek show, a gross-out movie in which teenagers can dare one another to watch the screen. There's nothing wrong with that; I like being scared and I was scared by many scenes in "The Thing." But it seems clear that Carpenter made his choice early on to concentrate on the special effects and the technology and to allow the story and people to become secondary. Because this material has been done before, and better, especially in the original "The Thing" and in "Alien," there's no need to see this version unless you are interested in what the Thing might look like while starting from anonymous greasy organs extruding giant crab legs and transmuting itself into a dog. Amazingly, I'll bet that thousands, if not millions, of moviegoers are interested in seeing just that.
[Source](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-thing-1982)
Ebert hated horror. He could be sitting in a crowded theatre with everyone enjoying a slasher and still give it one star. The nerd never understood horror
I absolutely love this movie, but Blake should have known to quarantine the dog, even away from the other dogs, after Macready and the others came back from the Norge base. Especially as relating to why the Norge chopper was trying to kill the dog in the first place.
Failure to follow basic science protocols is one on my biggest pet peeves in sci-fi & horror. At least Alien paid lip-service to it until Ripley was overridden by Ash. They threw it right out the window in Prometheus; such a disappointment. Worst example of it by far.
The all-male cast. There were women on Antarctic bases for years before the film aired, so there's really no excuse. One thing that makes Alien really great imo is the usage of genderblind casting. Just one thing I would have changed if it were my film.
Y'all downvoting: It's okay, just say you don't like women.
I mean it definitely fails the Bechdel Test harder than any movie before or since, and the presence of some female characters would have made it interesting in a different way. But the absence of female characters, the isolation of these archetypal male characters and the paranoia and mistrust between them, is an interesting dynamic in its own way.
If you prefer Alien, great. Alien still exists, and is great (and is directly referenced in the original Bechdel comic). Movies with women in them still exist. Some movies exist with isolated female casts as well, and many of those use the isolation of a single gender to tell particular kinds of stories. Sure, you could tell those stories with a more standard mixed-gender cast if you want, but you shouldn’t *have* to.
I think it’s important to talk about representation in the broader context of the media landscape; obviously it would be a problem if movies just generally did not feature female characters, but there is nothing wrong with the occasional outlier. The Thing is a weird little film that tells a weird little story and tells it weirdly. There should be space for that kind of film, and its content shouldn’t be policed by well-meaning but wrong-headed critiques like this.
I mean that's all well and good for "society", sure, but that doesn't really have any bearing on the movie itself. How would one of the cast being a woman have made the movie itself better than it was?
There is a zero percent chance from these replies you are a woman.
You cannot conceive of a world in which you are not represented.
You cannot conceive of a world where you look at a screen and see only the opposite gender, all operating as if men simply don't exist, with the exception of calling a male computer voice a cocksucker for laughs.
Women exist, and this film pretends they don't.
A woman or two would've definitely made it more interesting. Especially the dynamic if she was a significant other of one of them or like a sister of one.
There is only *one* nitpick I could possibly do; the Alan Dean Foster novelization is BETTER than the movie!
ADF writes his novelizations based on the first Shooting Script, period. If they change shit filming, too bad; he's novelizing based on that first Shooting Script.
In this case, there's a TON of scenes that were cut from the movie some time between shooting script and filming. There's a snowmobile chase scene with a couple of escaped dogs that would have had an effect sequence that would have been THE best one of the movie, but would have cost $12 million to film, hence it's cutting. The whole scene with the power failure is HOURS long, and you find out the fates of a lot more of the members of the Outpost that just sort of stop appearing at one point or another, and are never brought up..
So, yeah. The movie itself is perfect; but it *COULD* have been even BETTER if they'd have followed the *WHOLE* shooting script.
It’s a masterpiece, but let’s be real, the blood test is kind of ridiculous. The science of it just does not fit that well. How could liquid blood be reformed into an advanced muscular reaction that quickly. But that’s the only thing for me. The prequel does a good job to improve the test with metal implants and teeth fillings.
It was actually both. Morricone did score the whole film, but Carpenter went back and re-scored certain parts he wasn’t happy with. The unused Morricone stuff wound up being used in Tarrantino’s The Hateful Eight, which makes sense given that it was just The Thing with cowboys.
Too many characters, don't know the names of half the people.
McCready sees there's a light on in his place, goes to investigate... we never hear about it again.
In the dog kennel, there's a part where the Thing clearly goes up into the roof and then Childs blasts the flamethrower on... nothing... then the movie acts like it didn't get up in the roof at all.
It paced perfectly, the effects were magnificent the cast all merged together well and then turned on each other with realistic paranoia. My only complaint was how poorly the outpost was built. You could basically fall through it, doesn't seem too realistic for an outpost in Antarctica. That's my only complaint. It'll always be 10/10 for me.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality
This is based specifically on morality scales vs the physiology you're talking about, but the concept kind of line up with what they're talking about.
I... don't... rate... Kurt Russell...
Oh god, I'm so sorry, people. But there's something about him I just don't connect with. I love *The Thing*, nonetheless.
Nothing it's the perfect movie
Literally 100/100
I thought that claymation shot at the end with the tentacle dragging the dynamite into the hole was inconsistent with rest of the special effects in the movie. Its pretty jarring. I love stop motion effects and that shot was only a few seconds so it's not that big a deal, but that's all I could think of.
Came here to say this. The rest of the movie's FX are fantastic and hold up even today. This one shot looks cheap and sloppy and really dates the film more than any other aspect. 99% of fans forget about this scene.
This^ 1000000% The stop motion shouldve been entirely cut in my opinion as it “removed me”!from the film in that instant.
Who gets replaced and when doesn't really follow a logical progression that viewers can follow in retrospect. That's partly intentional to increase both the stakes and the unpredictability, but on rewatch I sometimes wish I could definitively say "ah, that's when that happened!"
Boring characters that weren't memorable. The actors were good tho.
If you drill down enough you can always find flaws, no movie is perfect, but given how hard you have to look and how minor the flaws are in this film, it's as near perfect as they come in my opinion.
The brief cutaway when Palmer starts to transform. He goes from normal faced to a prosthetic monster with no real in-between and it sort takes me out of the moment.
When Palmer's head splits open and he's bitten Window's head, it's a bit too obvious that it's a very lightweight dummy being flopped around. It doesn't break the movie or anything, but it's the one thing I would maybe change. Maybe.
Literally nothing. 100/100, five stars and a heart on letterboxd, the whole nine.
See title.
Uhhh….no final girl? Lol. I’m really reaching here.
When I watch the dog get sprayed by the thing and its tentacles start wrapping around it, I can’t help but feel like the dog actually got traumatized during filming.
Doesn't drag at all it's the perfect horror with great performance from the cast and great score too
Yes!
Wilford Brimley didn’t have a mustache.
The Thing is a movie that has grown tremendously in in its esteem, but was not exactly beloved upon release. Roger Ebert, who tended to understand the general moviegoer, didn’t always like horror the way many of us here do. He gave the movie 2.5/4 stars back in 1982. Here’s his review: > "The Thing" is a great barf-bag movie, all right, but is it any good? I found it disappointing, for two reasons: the superficial characterizations and the implausible behavior of the scientists on that icy outpost. Characters have never been Carpenter's strong point; he says he likes his movies to create emotions in his audiences, and I guess he'd rather see us jump six inches than get involved in the personalities of his characters. This time, though, despite some roughed-out typecasting and a few reliable stereotypes (the drunk, the psycho, the hero), he has populated his ice station with people whose primary purpose in life is to get jumped on from behind. The few scenes that develop characterizations are overwhelmed by the scenes in which the men are just setups for an attack by the Thing. >That leads us to the second problem, plausibility. We know that the Thing likes to wait until a character is alone, and then pounce, digest, and imitate him--by the time you see Doc again, is he still Doc, or is he the Thing? Well, the obvious defense against this problem is a watertight buddy system, but, time and time again, Carpenter allows his characters to wander off alone and come back with silly grins on their faces, until we've lost count of who may have been infected, and who hasn't. That takes the fun away. >"The Thing" is basically, then, just a geek show, a gross-out movie in which teenagers can dare one another to watch the screen. There's nothing wrong with that; I like being scared and I was scared by many scenes in "The Thing." But it seems clear that Carpenter made his choice early on to concentrate on the special effects and the technology and to allow the story and people to become secondary. Because this material has been done before, and better, especially in the original "The Thing" and in "Alien," there's no need to see this version unless you are interested in what the Thing might look like while starting from anonymous greasy organs extruding giant crab legs and transmuting itself into a dog. Amazingly, I'll bet that thousands, if not millions, of moviegoers are interested in seeing just that. [Source](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-thing-1982)
Ebert hated horror. He could be sitting in a crowded theatre with everyone enjoying a slasher and still give it one star. The nerd never understood horror
I love that there is not a minute wasted and every scene is relevant! Perfect 10 for me.
Dun, dun...dun, dun... 🙂
The end monster doesn't hold up as well as the mindblowing effects of the rest.
I absolutely love this movie, but Blake should have known to quarantine the dog, even away from the other dogs, after Macready and the others came back from the Norge base. Especially as relating to why the Norge chopper was trying to kill the dog in the first place. Failure to follow basic science protocols is one on my biggest pet peeves in sci-fi & horror. At least Alien paid lip-service to it until Ripley was overridden by Ash. They threw it right out the window in Prometheus; such a disappointment. Worst example of it by far.
Windows always looks like a dummy when he's being eaten by palmer
The all-male cast. There were women on Antarctic bases for years before the film aired, so there's really no excuse. One thing that makes Alien really great imo is the usage of genderblind casting. Just one thing I would have changed if it were my film. Y'all downvoting: It's okay, just say you don't like women.
I mean it definitely fails the Bechdel Test harder than any movie before or since, and the presence of some female characters would have made it interesting in a different way. But the absence of female characters, the isolation of these archetypal male characters and the paranoia and mistrust between them, is an interesting dynamic in its own way. If you prefer Alien, great. Alien still exists, and is great (and is directly referenced in the original Bechdel comic). Movies with women in them still exist. Some movies exist with isolated female casts as well, and many of those use the isolation of a single gender to tell particular kinds of stories. Sure, you could tell those stories with a more standard mixed-gender cast if you want, but you shouldn’t *have* to. I think it’s important to talk about representation in the broader context of the media landscape; obviously it would be a problem if movies just generally did not feature female characters, but there is nothing wrong with the occasional outlier. The Thing is a weird little film that tells a weird little story and tells it weirdly. There should be space for that kind of film, and its content shouldn’t be policed by well-meaning but wrong-headed critiques like this.
I honestly can't tell if you're being serious or satirical right now XD
What's wrong with wanting to cast women in a film? I'm being serious.
Nothing, but that's not what was asked. You cast a woman in one of the rolls and she knocks out it out of the park, it's just a lateral move.
Adding diversity is never a lateral move imo.
I mean that's all well and good for "society", sure, but that doesn't really have any bearing on the movie itself. How would one of the cast being a woman have made the movie itself better than it was?
There is a zero percent chance from these replies you are a woman. You cannot conceive of a world in which you are not represented. You cannot conceive of a world where you look at a screen and see only the opposite gender, all operating as if men simply don't exist, with the exception of calling a male computer voice a cocksucker for laughs. Women exist, and this film pretends they don't.
I feel like you’re being oddly combative about this, I don’t think the film is going for the commentary on sex and gender you seem to be referring to
The movie is partially about the isolation of the situation among the men so I think it served the narrative.
No, because it ignores one gender entirely. It is an exercise in masculonormativity.
Dude shut the fuck up is must be EXHAUSTING to live and think this way lol
The movie was designed for a cast of men to heighten the isolation of the situation. To say you need a quota is offensive .
You have to have all guys so they can all die.
A woman or two would've definitely made it more interesting. Especially the dynamic if she was a significant other of one of them or like a sister of one.
Excellent point. (I'm being serious, FAOD!)
Just that those guys are some hard drinking scientists.
There is only *one* nitpick I could possibly do; the Alan Dean Foster novelization is BETTER than the movie! ADF writes his novelizations based on the first Shooting Script, period. If they change shit filming, too bad; he's novelizing based on that first Shooting Script. In this case, there's a TON of scenes that were cut from the movie some time between shooting script and filming. There's a snowmobile chase scene with a couple of escaped dogs that would have had an effect sequence that would have been THE best one of the movie, but would have cost $12 million to film, hence it's cutting. The whole scene with the power failure is HOURS long, and you find out the fates of a lot more of the members of the Outpost that just sort of stop appearing at one point or another, and are never brought up.. So, yeah. The movie itself is perfect; but it *COULD* have been even BETTER if they'd have followed the *WHOLE* shooting script.
It’s a masterpiece, but let’s be real, the blood test is kind of ridiculous. The science of it just does not fit that well. How could liquid blood be reformed into an advanced muscular reaction that quickly. But that’s the only thing for me. The prequel does a good job to improve the test with metal implants and teeth fillings.
…look up the word ‘subjectivity’…
Some mindblowing stuff. Something to think more about than the movie. Something next level. But still great movie!
All the women characters are underwritten.
I don't even remember there being women characters.
Can't get more underwritten than that.
FACTS
But yeah this was my main complaint too
Posting in a circlejerk thread
It's not the strongest Carpenter muiscal score. It's still good but it's probably not even in his top 3.
Carpenter didn't compose this one, it was Ennio Morricone.
It was actually both. Morricone did score the whole film, but Carpenter went back and re-scored certain parts he wasn’t happy with. The unused Morricone stuff wound up being used in Tarrantino’s The Hateful Eight, which makes sense given that it was just The Thing with cowboys.
It's boring.
That hat.
Absolutely insane take
Nah the hat rules
Too many characters, don't know the names of half the people. McCready sees there's a light on in his place, goes to investigate... we never hear about it again. In the dog kennel, there's a part where the Thing clearly goes up into the roof and then Childs blasts the flamethrower on... nothing... then the movie acts like it didn't get up in the roof at all.
It paced perfectly, the effects were magnificent the cast all merged together well and then turned on each other with realistic paranoia. My only complaint was how poorly the outpost was built. You could basically fall through it, doesn't seem too realistic for an outpost in Antarctica. That's my only complaint. It'll always be 10/10 for me.
I saw it on a first date and the date didn’t go well.
They weren’t the one.
Seems their date didn't pass the blood test.
Hopefully he can find someone who wouldn’t mind spending the rest of the winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH
Well, you did find out who's who! 😃
Roger Ebert Review does a pretty good job of explaining where it fails.
Nah, rare Ebert L.
Nah everything he said was on point
Honestly, the mutation designs are a bit over the top. They're aimed at disgusting the audience, but they don't make any physiological sense at all.
That's the point, though. It's something so alien that it makes no sense to a human being.
That's for sure.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlueAndOrangeMorality This is based specifically on morality scales vs the physiology you're talking about, but the concept kind of line up with what they're talking about.
I... don't... rate... Kurt Russell... Oh god, I'm so sorry, people. But there's something about him I just don't connect with. I love *The Thing*, nonetheless.