Episode 479 - The Thing (1982)

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://shows.acast.com/vicegamingsnewpodcast/episodes/episode-479-the-thing-1982
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Love this movie, badly needed this podcast this week full of love and excitement for one of the best horror movies of the 80s.

My heart is open for that 2011 remake to maybe possibly be okay, I haven’t seen it. But it seems like the discourse has never turned on that thing.

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I haven’t seen it in ages, but I actually liked it. It’s not great, but it’s also not terrible. They do some genuinely fun callbacks, because it’s a prequel so they set up some things like the opening with the helicopter and the dog, and some of the dead bodies in the base etc. The version of the blood test is clever.

IIRC the effects are all CG, not practical which is disappointing of course, but if you treat it like a typical mediocre sci-fi horror, and love original premise of The Thing, I think it’s fine

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They famously made a bunch of physical props for Thing 2011 which they used for filming but pretty much every single shot involving them was replaced with CGI. None of the interviews I’ve read have outright said this, but the strong implication is that the studio insisted on the CGI.

Anyway, it’s good, but it doesn’t really do anything fresh. You get to see more of the alien spaceship – an unreleased alternate ending apparently would have shown even more and revealed that the Thing was one of many biological specimens collected by the ship’s pilots, but that was cut and a different one was filmed for the theatrical release – but other than that you’re mostly hitting the same beats as the '82 movie with uglier special effects.

It’s a perfectly enjoyable way to spend an hour and 45 minutes, though.

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Yeah that was the weird assumption I feel like everyone made, that the thing was an intelligent being capable of space flight, like it comes from an advanced civilization that mastered interstellar travel. Given what little we know about it, I always felt it was far more likely that it just took over a life form that had a ship.

I think the lore of the thing is vague for style and purpose because frankly it just doesn’t work otherwise. A memory test for the thing should be pointless because the thing obviously absorbs memories, why else can it speak English? It would feel stupid if it could absorb the intricacies of language but not recall lunch from Tuesday.

The Thing 2011 gets this wrong and imposes rules that make no sense and immediately get contradicted like the idea that it can only replicate biological matter so when people don’t have jewelry or fillings, you know they got got. Meanwhile, they’re all happily walking around with metal zippers and synthetic fabric.

There’s also a really, really weird scene in the 2011 version where they filmed a shot for a storyline they eventually cut, but instead of just deleting it from the film entirely, they cover a huge portion of it with this awful pixel CGI effect. It’s really comical how bad it is.

I also need to rewatch the 2011 movie. I’m of a similar mind to most of these responses - no classic, and certainly not a patch on Carpenter’s film, but I think it’s unfairly treated in comparison and suffers especially poorly for how people view its use of CGI. My kingdom for a recut with the original practical effects.

Because it’s a very common phrase that has no connection at all with Asian people of any origin? Homophones aren’t actually racist.

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i am asian. my mother is indian. i am an asian person.

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I feel like I have no opinion that matters in regards to that phrase or other similar phrases, however that’s an absurd generalization to make in a vacuum but given that Gita is involved… yikes.

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