The Thing (2011)

[Korachia]

So they are making a new "The Thing" movie. Here is the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txjm94GnrPA

and by comparision here is the one from the old movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouZkkIsLiNg

Yeah I know which one I will be watching again...

(Hollywood, stop raping my childhood/teenage years)

[Riggswolfe]

So they are making a new "The Thing" movie. Here is the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txjm94GnrPA

and by comparision here is the one from the old movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouZkkIsLiNg

Yeah I know which one I will be watching again...

(Hollywood, stop raping my childhood/teenage years)

Well, this one is a prequel about the Norwegians so it shouldn't mess to much with the original.

[Teleku]

Yeah, this is a prequel, not a remake.  Actually looking somewhat forward to it, as I loved the John Carpenter version.  Could suck, but I'm willing to give it a chance since there's an opportunity for a decent story this way.

I'm also kind of curious how they're going to transition the end of this one into the beginning of the other movie.

Ronald Moore's first project after the end of Battlestar was to write the script for this.  But then they eventually canned his and let the guy who wrote the Nightmare on Elm Street Remake script do it instead...

[Arthur_Parker]

If Starbuck was the frozen thing, then BSG would have had a better ending.

[Teleku]

Agreed.

[stu]

I just hope the creatures are completely...

<removes sunglasses>

Out of this world.

[Surlyboi]

[Margalis]

Looks like this thing should have been kept...

...on ice!

Silly puns aside, it really looks more like a remake pretending to be a prequel than an actual prequel.

[NowhereMan]

Well in fairness I'm not sure where else they'd have gone with it. Remote arctic base with slightly unbalanced characters that discovers shape shifting alien that starts to kill people off (cue paranoia and constant fear of everyone around you as well as mystery creature). If they're doing this as a horror then I don't see many other angles to approach it from, what will mark it out as a prequel rather than remake is going to be the characters they've placed in it.

[Teleku]

Looks like this thing should have been kept...

...on ice!

Silly puns aside, it really looks more like a remake pretending to be a prequel than an actual prequel.

Nah, I think they're trying to make it prequel'ish enough.  It looks like they are going to spend time revealing more about the alien craft, and probably give all sorts of back story to the aliens race and other origin story stuff.  That will be on top of it being a clone of the first movie with the same situation and nemesis.  Now whether its a bad idea or not to try and give an origin story to the alien, we'll see, but that's usually the point of a prequel movie.

[Margalis]

what will mark it out as a prequel rather than remake is going to be the characters they've placed in it.

Americans?

[Teleku]

Hey, I just looked at the cast list on IMDB, and most of them aren't Americans.  So your safe there!

[NowhereMan]

His safe where?

[Yegolev]

A friend who considers The Thing to be one of the best movies ever was able to see the new one five weeks early thanks to a friend at Carmike.  He says it is fantastic.  Although I am skeptical since the original had Kurt Russell and no women, while this one seems to avoid both those points.

[Johny Cee]

A friend who considers The Thing to be one of the best movies ever was able to see the new one five weeks early thanks to a friend at Carmike.  He says it is fantastic.  Although I am skeptical since the original had Kurt Russell and no women, while this one seems to avoid both those points.

As someone who loves the original, that's reassuring. 

The commercials for this have looked terrible.  They've looked like typical "monster picks off redshirts one-by-one" type affairs.  The real draw of the first film is that the monsters were basically just people:  they are content to lie low and play it cautiously, or they were secretly building an escape vehicle.  The monsters "win" by holding out until the next crew arrives.  The humans know this, so they're getting increasing on edge and paranoid, and are acting as monstrous as the Things.

I know the film is based on a Joe Campbell story, but it's the fact that the Things are very much like people that draws the most parallels to the Lovecraft "At the Mountains of Madness."  The original version of The Thing is the closest we've ever gotten to a good Lovecraft adaption.

[Sir T]

One of the potential problems is that we know the ending, We know that they are all going to die, so its going to have to be something interesting to avoid it just being a film about redshirts.

[stray]

(Hollywood, stop raping my childhood/teenage years)

I don't think disapproval here is about raping childhood. This is just very unnecessary. Besides, it's not like they had action figures and saturday morning cartoon versions of the Thing. I remember loving the Swamp Thing like that, but not the Thing. This movie was never infantile to spark that kind of liking when we were young. I'm sure a lot of kids probably weren't even allowed to see it.

Although I wouldn't stop anyone from trying to remake it (and fail). Just like Conan. It might get more people to watch the original anyways.

[Margalis]

I know the film is based on a Joe Campbell story, but it's the fact that the Things are very much like people that draws the most parallels to the Lovecraft "At the Mountains of Madness."  The original version of The Thing is the closest we've ever gotten to a good Lovecraft adaption.

The John Campbell Jr. story ("Who Goes There?") is really good by the way. Very close to the Carpenter version and super creepy. It's one of the few things I've read that made me not want to go to bed.

Also to nitpick a bit multiple people are referring to the "original" but there was a 1951 film "The Thing from Another World" that is also sometimes known as simply "The Thing" that the Carpenter version is a "remake" of. That's what I think of when I think of the original. (It's not very good IMO)

I'm hoping the new movie is good, the makers have said the right things, but in the end if it's bad I don't think I care too much.

[Johny Cee]

I know the film is based on a Joe Campbell story, but it's the fact that the Things are very much like people that draws the most parallels to the Lovecraft "At the Mountains of Madness."  The original version of The Thing is the closest we've ever gotten to a good Lovecraft adaption.

The John Campbell Jr. story ("Who Goes There?") is really good by the way. Very close to the Carpenter version and super creepy. It's one of the few things I've read that made me not want to go to bed.

Doh.  My brain switched John Campbell with Joseph Campbell.

Also to nitpick a bit multiple people are referring to the "original" but there was a 1951 film "The Thing from Another World" that is also sometimes known as simply "The Thing" that the Carpenter version is a "remake" of. That's what I think of when I think of the original. (It's not very good IMO)

I'm hoping the new movie is good, the makers have said the right things, but in the end if it's bad I don't think I care too much.

True, though "John Carpenter's The Thing" is more of a re-adaption of the same source material, like 60's TV Batman to 80's Film Batman, then it is a remake of the "The Thing from Another World."


One big reason to hope this film does well:  Guillermo del Toro is trying to get a studio to back his planned (supposedly very faithful) "At the Mountains of Madness" adaption.  If the The Thing (2011) is big, I'm sure someone will throw money at him to produce another Antarctic horror movie.  I mostly think del Toro is mediocre (besides Cronos), but wish him luck. 

[stray]

Wait, what.. this is a del toro movie? *suddenly interested*

I've only seen Pan's and the Hellboy movies, but I like the design/look of them (besides the stories, of course). Not sure if he's entirely responsible for that, but it's pretty similar across all of those movies, so I'll just say he is. He has his own style as much as Carpenter did. At least this wouldn't be a standard popcorn remake.

edit: Nevermind.. I misread that.

[DraconianOne]

No, this isn't a Del Toro movie. He wants to make his own "The Thing" with a budget of $150m and Tom Cruise. Apparently, because it's going to be a "faithful" adaptation of one of Howie Lovecraft's stories, this'll make it sell.

I think we've covered the "selling media based on niche geek interests to mass market" topic several times on these boards.

[stray]

I think we've covered the "selling media based on niche geek interests to mass market" topic several times on these boards.

I've been gone from these boards for awhile. I'll have to catch up on that (very compelling) topic.

edit: Actually, that's interesting. I think it's good to find that angle to niche things. Spread the love. Fuck geek elitism. Things don't have to be watered down or anything.

[Johny Cee]

No, this isn't a Del Toro movie. He wants to make his own "The Thing" with a budget of $150m and Tom Cruise. Apparently, because it's going to be a "faithful" adaptation of one of Howie Lovecraft's stories, this'll make it sell.

I think we've covered the "selling media based on niche geek interests to mass market" topic several times on these boards.

A couple of things:

1.  You're misinterpreting the lesson.  Selling media based niche geek interests, like any niche interest, is fine and a successful strategy.  Overbudgeting for niche geek interests, like Firefly or Scott Pilgrim, is where you go wrong.

A Game of Thrones is a niche geek interest, compared to the mass-market.  It's successful because HBO learned their fucking lessons about keeping costs to projected buys down after the budget disasters that were Rome and Deadwood.

2.  No one is saying it will sell.  It'll probably be a financial blunder if they try to make it as a big budget Hollywood blockbuster, especially since Lovecraft is largely considered to be unfilmable and any of the many film adaptions so far have been....  bad.  If some studio gets suckered into giving it a try, though, I won't argue.

3.  Lovecraft isn't niche.  He or the Chtulhu mythos is name checked all over the place, going right back to Rod Serling's Night Gallery which had multiple Lovecraft based shorts on to dozens of movies (most terrible), and used as the basis for multiple Metallica songs.  Lovecraft still shows up in conventional media, most recently on Supernatural where both he and Cthulthu were plot points.

Hell, the first time I heard about anything Lovecraft was good old Saturday morning cartoons where the Real Ghostbusters ran into both the Necronomicon and Cthulthu.

Both Neil Gaiman and Stephen King are good for at least one Lovecraftian horror story in each collection they put out, and dozens of midlisters have been making their living by digging in Lovecraft's backyard for decades.


Lovecraftian horror is basically the backbone for most modern horror, and has crept into everything from video games (Call of Cthulthu, Eternal Darkness, WoW) to tabletop war games (Warhammer) to CCGs (MtG) to RPGs (everyone from DnD on has taken a crack at it from time to time). 

That's not even getting into the really strange shit....  like the connections between Lovecraft and the Ancient Astronauts/Chariots of the Gods crowd.

[Ironwood]

You're funny.  And kinda wrong.

[Margalis]

Lovecraftian horror shows up in a lot of places but Lovecraft himself is very niche. "Based on the works of Lovecraft" means absolutely nothing to most people.

[DLRiley]

If your a nerd, i mean the type that actually writes your own shit, then ya you know lovecraft. Lovecraftean themes sell (mostly among the less creatively inclined nerd masses), lovecraft itself is obscure niche reserved for the type of geeks that would probably unleash said cosmic horrors if they were real.

[Johny Cee]

Lovecraftian horror shows up in a lot of places but Lovecraft himself is very niche. "Based on the works of Lovecraft" means absolutely nothing to most people.

Yah, fair point.  "Lovecraft" isn't well known, but Lovecraftian themes and influences are literally all over the place even if not generally referred to as such.  Alien, for instance.  Or to get back to the subject, John Campbell was an editor at the magazine that ran "At the Mountains of Madness" and many have speculated about a connection/inspiration from the Lovecraft story.

If your a nerd, i mean the type that actually writes your own shit, then ya you know lovecraft. Lovecraftean themes sell (mostly among the less creatively inclined nerd masses), lovecraft itself is obscure niche reserved for the type of geeks that would probably unleash said cosmic horrors if they were real.

Actually, the obscure niche reference would be hoping for an adaption of Machen's The Great God Pan or Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows."

[Ratman_tf]

Lovecraft was an awesome poet!  

When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Iove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.

 

[stray]

I admit, I haven't read that much Lovecraft. I should get around to it.

I've read a lot of Robert E Howard's stuff though. Apparently Lovecraft considered his style scarier (when he wanted to be), while Howard considered Lovecraft his influence.

[Simond]

1.  You're misinterpreting the lesson.  Selling media based niche geek interests, like any niche interest, is fine and a successful strategy.  Overbudgeting for niche geek interests, like Firefly or Scott Pilgrim, is where you go wrong.

Pretty sure that Scott Pilgrim made all its money back plus a tidy profit once it hit DVD/Blu-Ray.

And speaking of Del Toro, AtMoM is dead. But he's working on Not!Evangelion instead.

[stray]

Scott Pilgrim is a great movie. 

[Phred]

Bah Already answered further into the thread

[murdoc]

Events of The Thing told from the Thing's perspective.

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

[Der Helm]

Events of The Thing told from the Thing's perspective.

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

Awesome. Thanks for the link.

[Ironwood]

That's a Bloodworth.  I think it was even linked in the Thing thread.

It's worth the read though !