Thing, The |
  • USA / Canada • 2011 • 103m •    • Directed by: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.. • Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Eric Christian Olsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Paul Braunstein, Trond Espen Seim, Kim Bubbs, Jørgen Langhelle, Jan Gunnar Røise, Stig Henrik Hoff, Kristofer Hivju, Jo Adrian Haavind. • Music by: Marco Beltrami.      Paleontologist Kate Lloyd is invited by Dr. Sandor Halvorson to join his team who have found something extraordinary. Deep below the Arctic ice, they have found an alien spacecraft that has been there for perhaps 100,000 years. Not far from where the craft landed, they find the remains of the occupant. It's cut out of the ice and taken back to their camp but as the ice melts, the creature reanimates and not only begins to attack them but manages to infect them, with team members devolving into the alien creature.
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Review:
I was massively optimistic going in and very skeptical of all the negative reviews that had been popping up prior to my viewing of the movie. They don't know what they're talking about, I told myself, they just love to hate on things because that's the 'cool' thing to do these days. After all how could they possibly mess this up? It's such a perfect concept and what's more, it's pretty simple. As the classic Spielberg quote goes any great film plot can be summed up in one sentence: Alien creature could be anyone (in snow). Not an overly convoluted structure but one that worked so well in John Carpenter's 1982 version, so well that it remains one of my favorite movies of all time.
I'm not complaining about how the prequel pooped all over the original, I'm just disappointed and somewhat baffled by just how they could have made such an awful failure of a movie with such a rich concept to work with?? Surely there would be at least one good thing about this movie, right? RIGHT?? Even if this was just a standalone movie it would still suck, it just doesn't work. It's not scary, it's not suspenseful, it's not tense, it's not dark, it's not exciting, it's not really anything. Coming away from this movie the best way I could describe it was just hollow.
There's just nothing to it, it's an empty husk. It feels like exactly what it is a big pay check for everyone involved with no creative drive behind it whatsoever. I find it hard to believe that anyone involved with this movie cared at all about the original they didn't even care about just making a decent movie!! And if they did it certainly does not show one single bit. You can almost feel the apathy soaking through every aspect of the movie. From the blank expression on Mary Elizabeth Winstead's face to the pointlessness of every scene to the almost laughable lumbering joke a CGI monster.
I don't know if there was a definitive moment during the film in which my heart began to sink but when the Thing started chasing people down corridors it was the beginning of the end. The Thing does not chase people around. What should have been an intense psychological expression of human paranoia is now just a lazy, stupid creature feature and a bad one at that. It's Hollywood telling us in no uncertain terms, You are so stupid the only way you'll understand this is if we have a big stupid looking creature who's all 'Blarg I'm a scary monster coming to get you!!' lumbering awkwardly down a corridor and then have a pretty young girl running the opposite direction who's all like 'Eeeek help me'. And let me tell you nothing feels better in this world than being treated like a moron, right? You guys all love that feeling don't you, because there' s no way you would ever understand anything even slightly subtle, you're far too stupid for anything like that. Well thanks a lot Hollywood you condescending asshole.
So it's a prequel, so you're already going in with a different perspective. You have your internal check list, the block of ice, the Axe in the wall etc. etc. And the filmmakers obviously knew this would be our mind-set as an audience, and then apparently went out of their way to antagonize us. Now I'm acting like a fan boy right? Hear me out, you've seen the original movie two Norwegian dudes chasing the creature in husky who quickly meet untimely ends at the American camp, and now we have a prequel. Finally a chance to explore these characters, find out what drove them to this end, who are they as people what horrors have they witnessed in the frozen wasteland. An amazing set up for a movie, so how does the prequel answer these questions? Well as it turns out, poorly is how. In an absolutely stunningly questionable decision they get all of 10 seconds in the end credits!! What were they thinking?? One of the guys isn't even in the movie until this point and isn't referenced to once!! He just shows up in the helicopter out of nowhere, he doesn't know what the Thing is, he's never witnessed the creature transform, he has no idea other than what Lars shouts at him in 5 seconds before they just jump into the helicopter and leave and THAT'S IT. They may as well have inserted another clip in the credits, just the smug face of Hollywood exec grinning as if to say, Yeah audience those are the guys from the original movie, I bet you love that don't you, you stupid audience. Well no Hollywood I didn't love it, it sucked.
They took a concept that could have been brilliant and just pooped all over it? Why? This is what I'm left asking, the film is just a series of god awful choices. It would have taken just one person who looked at the last page of that script to speak up and say 'Hey you guys all know this sucks right? Why are we making a prequel that shows such disdain for these characters?' This is why I stand by my previous statement that they are deliberately trying to antagonize us.
The Thing isn't just bad, it's belittling, it's insulting and it's baffling and I hate it.
Review by stubs182 from the Internet Movie Database.
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Oct 9 2016, 14:20
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