I always felt the Thing had very strong characters. True, they could have been developed that bit more, but that could have slowed the story too much.
I think you certainly get enough to understand what and why they do things in the movie, and that is enough.

The book sounds cool though, so will have to get it.

… That or Blair has Microsoft’s software “ALIEN INFESTATION ’85! — Calculate Alien invasions in minutes! (Do not make illegal copies of this disc)”

And no, there were no implications of a collective intelligence. That’s what made such a large number of guys (who just prior to this showed no indication of Thingness) such a great plot twist.

Thirty Things I would definitely like to see. Did they have some form of collective intelligence in the book then?

Now, in the original book there were I believe a around 50 guys at the arctic base. It was one of the better moments in the book when MacReady decided they were going to find out “Who’s who”, ending up with a good 30-something people being Thinglings.

As for the original book’s version of The Thing, it seemed he implicated it not having an original form.

Little details suggest some kind of back story too, like Doc Copper’s piercing (what on earth is a guy his age doing with a nose ring in 1982? Could he even be a slightly degenerate version of his neurosurgeon from The Terminal Man, whose “work” went so spectacularly tits-up nine years before, and, wracked with remorse, has sequestered himself off to Antarctica?); Palmer’s Hell’s Angel jacket; Nauls blatantly refusing to turn his music down for Bennings; Garry’s slowly disintegrating uptight ex-military bearing etc etc. Not one cartoon in the bunch, which makes the one-liners when they do come all the more effective: “I don’t know what the hell’s in there but it’s weird and pissed off,” and when Norris’s head scuttles out the door, Palmer’s classic “You gotta be ****ing kidding.”

Personally I can well do without a sequel or a prequel. However, there’s undeniably a story to be told not just about the Norwegians, but the alien saucer as well. Was it being flown by an assimilated species or the Thing in its natural form? I haven’t read Campbell’s short story, so does it even have a natural form or was it originally some kind of Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers-type spore?

Knowing the outcome of the Norwegian base is irrelevant. As John Carpenter said himself, there’s a sombre inevitablity about his own movie right from the very opening scenes of the helicopter taking potshots at the dog, as if some grim apocalypse has already taken place.

If the entire world population could be infected 27000 hours from first contact with the organism, a sequel wouldn’t need additional creatures coming to earth for outbreaks of mass Thingism to occur. Blair writes in his notebook “It could have imitated a million life forms on a million planets. It could change into any one of them at any time.” Which could be a laugh. Just keep the CGI to a bare minimum. The severed head crawling around on tentacles in The Faculty doesn’t convince half as much as Norris in The Thing because your mind’s telling you one was physical and on-set, and the other…wasn’t. Animatronics with the odd CGI tweak could work, especially on larger manifestations of the creature. I always thought they missed a trick by not having some disgusting amalgamation of everyone who’d been absorbed as the final version, kind of like the T-1000 thrashing about at the end of Terminator 2. They did actually try a stop-motion Blair/dog combo which Carpenter, to his credit, rejected as the footage didn’t really match the look of the rest of the film. The only part of that sequence which survives is the tentacle grabbing MacReady’s detonator.

The movie’s ambiguities and unanswered questions are part of the reason why it’s lasted. For example, is the reason MacReady’s breath mists in that end scene and Childs’s doesn’t because Childs is Thanged-up, or is it simply to do with the ongoing problems they had trying to reproduce subzero conditions on an LA soundstage in the middle of a heatwave? I actually prefer not knowing.

The only question I really want answered is how did Ennio Morricone come to be involved? It’s kind of an anti-Howard Shore situation: the latter going from Cronenberg leanness to Lord Of The Rings epic, the former going from operatic spaghetti western to the sort of restrained, minimalistic atmospherics Carpenter normally handles himself.

To me The Thing is the last truly great film Carpenter made. In a period of just eight years he tuned out that, Escape From New York, The Fog, Halloween, Elvis, Assault On Precinct 13 and Dark Star, which makes it all the more sad that he’s been largely treading water ever since. At best.

So should there be a Thing 2 (THINGS, even) or a Thing Zero, whether he has anything to do with them or not? As far as I’m concerned no, but in the words of MacReady, “Why don’t we just wait here for a while. See what happens.”

Despite my level of constant grumbling, I guess we need to adapt and just look to see who does what with their little piece of a franchise. They’ll either screw it up and bore the crap out of us, or make us say, hey, nice job!

In my opinion, Ronald D. Moore has the superb talent necessary to create a prequel of sorts.

If given enough room at his own keyboard, he’ll bring it to us like no one else can.

Again, IMHO, but I’ve been a bit biased these days with his present day project that’s on-air.

Anyway, there are plenty of movies I wished would be made where you know how it ends because I’m interested in seeing how it got there. For example, the colony living on the moon that was being terraformed in Aliens. I would love to see a movie showing the outbreak and those people putting up their last stand before the battle is ultimately lost. We know they lose, but we also know they put up a fight. I would love to see their fight. But of course, the only person that can do that justice is James Cameron, anyone else and I probably won’t want to watch it…

“This is the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas”

While John Carpenter’s version was decent, it had its weak points. Mostly being too short, not enough character development, and instantaneous time shifting. Plus Blair’s computer model doesn’t accurately represent The Thing, which always irked me.

In anycase, I think a remake using well-controlled CGI would do more good than harm. I will be so wrong, I know, but I’ma just sayin’

BUT … if Universal plays its cards right, they have the most clever TRILOGY on their hands EVER.

Let the prequel be about the original alien ON the spaceship, why it crashed and how it took down the norwegian crew, ending the film with the alien turning into the dog from the original intro.

Then … skip the original movie (making it PART 2 of the trilogy) and do a full out invasion flick with The Thing as the basic premise.

Don’t tell me that wouldn’t be a friggin’ cool idea.

It’s not my job to work out the details … but … I’m available.

Sounds to me like a prequel of John Carpenter’s version but a remake of the original 1951 film.

Vic

If this is CGI, then not for me. Love those effects and shock moments.
Of course, we’ll know how the movies turns out, so will need some really good reasons to watch it.

The isolation and the alien among them is a very good story and can be redone. Carpenter went back to the book and it worked. I’d love to see something that was tense and grim.
Unfortunately I suspect it will be various ways to kill Norwegians with special effects.

I hope they do a decent job of it.

Vic

Will it at LEAST marry-up to what was EASILY one of the most pants-shite-causing films ever?

I will ALWAYS remember the chest sinking down with the cardio paddles and the MAW that takes the dudes arms off at the elbows. Just classic. There’s got to be 25 or so different elements and that truly deserves a podcast review for sure.

Keep us posted and PRETTY PUH-LEEZ let them cast that right and bring on an effects house that doesn’t sucketh.