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Posted: |
Nov 17, 2011 - 3:52 PM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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Hmm...I searched, but I couldn't find any more general threads about the film and score, just PR threads, various pre-release hype etc.
Anyways, I just came back from it, and absolutely loved it!!
Made in total respect for the Carpenter film -- both in style and narrative -- while having its own cool stuff, like more of the Thing biology, the spaceship etc. Great atmosphere, setpieces and photography. And what about that set/costume design? I'm guessing the designers must have spent lots of time watching the 1982 film over and over again to get everything right.
The coolest for me, though, was the Norwegian perspective. FINALLY a Hollywood film that actually uses real, Norwegian actors (some of our finest male talent too) and lets them speak the REAL language throughout the whole film, not some lame-ass proximation by an American like the hilarious stuff in Carpenter's film. Yes, I was positively surprised by all the Norwegian (and Danish) spoken in it! Kudos! Perhaps a bit overboard to let them sing the 1980's Norwegian Eurovision Song Contest turkey "Sami Ædnan", though. But it was fun! Almost felt like an extremely expensive Norwegian film at times! 
And how they set up the Carpenter film at the end was just superb.
As for Beltrami's score, there were hints of the 'delicious darkness' he does so well, and some of those SCREAM ostinato things for the more action-oriented scenes. Some of the more typical stinger and suspense stuff didn't do much for me, but it was no doubt effective in setting the mood.
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Posted: |
Nov 18, 2011 - 1:40 AM
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By: |
Francis
(Member)
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a great example on how to copy a 30 years old classic. Now all they need to find is a reason to see this instead of our beloved DVD/BD of Carpenter's original masterpiece (of course, superior in ANY sense).
Yes, a true crime against humanity; make a prequel and expect people NOT to see the Carpenter version that follows it and is setup in the new movie. They really did it this time. I'm going to have throw my blu-ray of Carpenter's "The Thing" in the garbage bin and buy this new one, because it's obviously meant to erase the Carpenter and make it obsolete. But hey, instead of making a prequel to "The Thing", let's instead make Twilight 5 and Saw 16, Human Centipede 12 and Paranormal Ass'shit'titie 8 because those movies are what real horror is about! And for shame people who'd go and see this, because it isn't like Carpenter's version had any people attending the theater run, no, it didn't bomb bigger than Pearl Harbour! It didn't have an audience smaller than its own cast. So let's instead make another crap sequel to milk dry a stupid current franchise and not resurrect a cool cult classic premise and expand on the origin story! (END RANT)
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Is the director Dutch, do you know? He had that kind of name, and I hadn't heard of him before.
Yeah, he is indeed Dutch. He's the son of a famous Dutch film producer. The Thing is his first film, before this he directed commercials.
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Posted: |
Nov 18, 2011 - 4:34 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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I hear that we actually see what the thingy looks like in its natural state. That's a pity. I always felt the scariest element of the original was that the thing had no real form at all. It was an alien virus without even an intelligence of its own, but instead just a relentless, mindless drive to survive and multiply via a few handy biological tricks including using/assimulating human intelligence to further its aims. Now, the implications of that are REALLY scary.
Well, the 'thing' is a parasite. Who knows what its real face looks like? What you see of biology in this film could just as well be the copy of the alien race the parasite attacked on the spaceship, not the thing itself. Otherwise, what you see is basically the same as in Carpenter's version, i.e. warped bodies, legs, tentacles and stuff. I think they managed to keep the mystery of it while at the same time adding some cool new features.
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Posted: |
Nov 18, 2011 - 9:56 AM
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By: |
Les Jepson
(Member)
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I hear that we actually see what the thingy looks like in its natural state. That's a pity. I always felt the scariest element of the original was that the thing had no real form at all. It was an alien virus without even an intelligence of its own, but instead just a relentless, mindless drive to survive and multiply via a few handy biological tricks including using/assimulating human intelligence to further its aims. Now, the implications of that are REALLY scary.
Well, the 'thing' is a parasite. Who knows what its real face looks like? What you see of biology in this film could just as well be the copy of the alien race the parasite attacked on the spaceship, not the thing itself. Otherwise, what you see is basically the same as in Carpenter's version, i.e. warped bodies, legs, tentacles and stuff. I think they managed to keep the mystery of it while at the same time adding some cool new features.
In John Campbell's original novella (seventy-ish years old, now), the first distorted glimpses of the thing in the ice is sparcely described -- red eyes and blue snakes for hair. This is one of the few stories in printed form (outside M. R. James) that can still make me look over my shoulder
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Posted: |
Nov 18, 2011 - 10:05 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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I hear that we actually see what the thingy looks like in its natural state. That's a pity. I always felt the scariest element of the original was that the thing had no real form at all. It was an alien virus without even an intelligence of its own, but instead just a relentless, mindless drive to survive and multiply via a few handy biological tricks including using/assimulating human intelligence to further its aims. Now, the implications of that are REALLY scary.
Well, the 'thing' is a parasite. Who knows what its real face looks like? What you see of biology in this film could just as well be the copy of the alien race the parasite attacked on the spaceship, not the thing itself. Otherwise, what you see is basically the same as in Carpenter's version, i.e. warped bodies, legs, tentacles and stuff. I think they managed to keep the mystery of it while at the same time adding some cool new features.
In John Campbell's original novella (seventy-ish years old, now), the first distorted glimpses of the thing in the ice is sparcely described -- red eyes and blue snakes for hair. This is one of the few stories in printed form (outside M. R. James) that can still make me look over my shoulder
I never read the novella. Are there Norwegians in it?
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I thought the film was mostly average, bar a few cool FX and sound design moments.
What bugged me the most was how they screwed up the creature's motivation. In Carpenter's film, it only attacked to protect itself or when it was alone with the victim. In this one, there's no rhyme or reason for the attacks. And the finale was pretty stupid.
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Posted: |
Nov 20, 2011 - 5:35 AM
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By: |
Les Jepson
(Member)
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Thanks! Sounds like something I would enjoy reading. I should also really get my act together and check out the old Howard Hawks film.
Something occured to me re: the possibilities of sequels here:
The film ends as a direct set-up to the Carpenter film. At the same time, the female protagonist is the only survivor who will then maybe proceed to the Russian base they talk about rather than return to the Norwegian camp. So in the fictional universe, you now have the girl and Kurt Russell a few hours/days later waiting in the flames over at the US camp. Of course, Russell is - in real life - 30 years older, so you can't really have the girl and Russell meet in a sequel. But some kind of cross-referencing would be cool, should a sequel ever surface
John Campbell's "Who Goes There?" is one of the scariest science fiction stories ever. He was a superb writer, although he is perhaps more famous as the editor who nurtured SF golden age giants such as Isaac Asimov, et al.
The Howard Hawks adaptation, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, starts promisingly enough and at first more or less follows the novella (apart from relocating to the Arctic). The mostly American protagonists witness the alien ship crash land and manage to destroy it by trying to melt the ice around it with thermite. They then find the frozen creature nearby and dig out a block of ice containing it. Back at the research station they leave it in cold storage with a man guarding it. He is soon spooked by seeing distorted glimpses of the thing through the block of ice and throws a blanket over it. The blanket turns out to be an electric one which is plugged in. Bad move! The creature emerges, turns out to be James Arness in overalls, and proceeds to smash the place and people to bits, while using the blood of his victims to raise his young. These turn out to be some sort of vegetable lifeform related to the humble carrot. As you can see, after the creature is let loose the film departs drastically from the novella, which carries on from there with the shape-shifting and paranoia we see in John Carpenter's, THE THING.
I think most of us here would agree that the best thing about THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD is Tiomkin's score; although, to be fair, we must remember budgets, sfx capabilities at the time, and censorship circa 1951. It was also the first film to deal with a hostile invasion of the Earth by an extraterrestrial, so it started the trend.
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Posted: |
Nov 24, 2011 - 12:35 PM
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By: |
Francis
(Member)
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Ok, finally saw the new Thing.
The opening of the movie was handled very exciting IMO; we get to be there with the Norwegians who discover the ship and the frozen popsicle containing 'the thing'. Anthropologist Kate Lloyd, the heroine of the movie, gets to travel to the Antarctica research site and assist Dr. Halvorson on what is to be a major find. Along with the Norwegians, they dig up the block of ice containing the creature, bring it back to the research camp and all hell ensues.
This prequel version to The Thing takes the 'thing' up a notch and I found the creature equally exciting as it is grotesque and gory (like in the original). The spectacle of limb tearing, heart ripping and flesh deforming is done so well it looks genuine. This has got to be as close as to what I expect the Lovecraft tentacle monsters to be and I still feel they could've gone further in this version. To Howard Berger's credit, it took 30 years for his 1982 effects to get outdone by CGI. I've seen many monsters and tentacles mayhem done by CGI, and there are shots in this new movie where the CGI movement is noticeable, but where Berger needed a lot of cutaways to make his 'thing' work, in the 2011 version you get to see it all happen in one fluent shot with all the nuances and detail there. You get to see The Thing race through the corridors like the Tasmanian devil which felt beyond cool. Little is left to the imagination. And having seen The Thing in what is said to be it's original form, it could be anything really. The design work on its many shapes is impressive.
That said, the cinematography this time around feels very plain. A lot of the dialogue scenes have a HBO show look. But once the action gets going, the movie delivers on the shock and suspense; yes, again there is a sequence where everyone has to be tested to see who the thing is, but it's done differently and effective enough to stand next to the Carpenter. And of course, everything is setup nicely for the Carpenter and is done very subtle. Only the inevitable ending I felt could've been done better; this new version was always going to have to make its impact during the first two reels and once you get to the last, there's little to add to it. I felt they could've done more to make that transition more fluent, but as is, it'll have to do. I also want to say that I felt the filmmakers failed to make the acting and setting look 80's, it feels much too contemporary IMO.
The score by Beltrami works in the big moments, but is nowhere near as unsettling as Morricone's was; it sounds much more similar in approach to how Goldsmith would've done it. The Morricone credits bass plucking does return, though it feels a bit out of place in this version.
Conclusion, whereas the Carpenter focuses much more on the psychological effects and the 'whodunnit' aspect, this new version doesn't ever stop to pause and allow just that, instead it is already ready to hit you with the next assault. Which is why I think it will be better to watch it after seeing the Carpenter I think. But well worth seeing!
8/10
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