Here's how John Carpenter's The Thing was saved by reshoots and re-edits. The Thing 1982 is a remake of the classic sci-fi b-movie The Thing From Another World. Produced by Howard Hawks, this movie was based on the novella Who Goes There? where a team of scientists are besieged in an Antarctic research station with a shapeshifting alien that can imitate people. The Thing From Another World is regarded as one of the best alien horror movies of its era, though it dropped the shapeshifting element.

The producers of The Thing remake in the 1980s approached several filmmakers like Tobe Hooper before John Carpenter signed on. At this stage in his career, Carpenter was coming off the success of Halloween and Escape From New York, with The Thing being his first big studio project. The original film was also one of his personal favorites, but to make it unique he went back to the novella's themes of mistrust and made the alien a shapeshifter once again. The movie's unrelentingly bleak tone and gory special effects saw it become a surprise critical and commercial dud, but thanks to TV and VHS it was slowly reappraised as a genre masterpiece.

Related: Why The Thing Needs A Proper Movie Sequel (Not A Remake)

One of the defining elements of John Carpenter's work is how lean they often are, with pretty much every scene or shot serving a function. He learned a harsh lesson while making The Fog, as the movie's release date was looming and he realized it just wasn't working. He felt that everything from the scares to his original music score fell flat, and made the dramatic choice to go back and reshoot around a third of it. This included adding new scenes like the eerie prologue on the beach and more overt violence. He was faced with a similiar dilemma during production on The Thing when he had a chance to review an assembly cut and realized it had a lot of issues.

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As recounted by The Thing's producer Stuart Cohen on his The Original Fan blog, Carpenter cited key issues after this rough cut. One problem was too many scenes of the Outpost 31 men standing around and talking, resulting in a slack pace. Another was The Thing's life cycle being too vague, including its threat to the world if it ever escaped the base. To this end, Carpenter swiftly cut many sequences, including MacCready hanging out with a blow-up doll and Childs (Keith David) and Palmer's (David Clennon) greenhouse where they grew weed. Basically, if a scene could be removed, it was.

Next up, John Carpenter wrote up a bunch of new scenes that helped focus the narrative. One big change was to make Kurt Russell The Thing's main player, as originally MacCready didn't stand out from the ensemble until later in the story. This included newly shot scenes of the character talking into the tape recorder or discovering and burning Bennings after he becomes an imitation. In the original edit, Bennings was murdered in the dog kennel by an unknown killer, but his new death not only helped establish MacCready as a leader, but it also gave audiences a visual of the imitation process at work.

Carpenter also shot a new death for Fuchs, who was originally discovered impaled on a door in the greenhouse. Since this scene was now gone, Fuchs' mysterious new demise sees MacCready and others discover his charred corpse outside the camp after he apparently burned himself to death. One of the biggest changes to John Carpenter's The Thing was Blair (Wilford Brimley) looking at a computer graphic that spelled out the creature's lifecycle and stakes of the movie. All together this reshot material adds up to about fifteen minutes, but combined with the removal of scenes that slowed the story, they helped tighten and focus the narrative and reshaped it into a classic.

It was during this reshoot period for John Carpenter's The Thing the director also shot a "happy" ending, where a rescued MacReady is seen at McMurdo Station awaiting a blood test to prove his humanity. This was filmed purely as a precaution, and the footage itself never been seen.

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