The Thing (2011) Review: Ain’t No Thang – OR IS IT?

Yell! Magazine’s review of The Thing (2011):

Hey everybody, remember The Thing?

Yes.

No – No, don’t do that… I mean, The 1982 version directed by John Carpenter.

This?

Yeah, that. That Thing. Well, just imagine that, but with less characterization, and you’ve got an apt description of The Thing (2011). There we go. Review over. I’m going away now. Later.

Whoa wait, what the hell?

God damn it. TheMatt warned me about this, but I thought he was just being weird. Sheesh. This job is too hard.

Alright, so what you’re looking at here is nothing more than a remake that was called a “prequel” because studio execs didn’t want Carpenter fans mailbombing their houses. The original was heralded as a ground breaking film that successfully combined human paranoia with the alien threat of a formless creature brought to life by some of the most progressive practical effects of the decade. It was a great film back then and still manages to hold that distinction to this day.

So of course, it only makes sense to rewrite the same story literally scene for scene, rearrange things a tiny bit, and replace Kurt Russell with Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Have you seen the poster? It’s not a prequel, it’s a remake. A remake of a remake of an adaptation.

To an extent, it seems that this so called “prequel” is catering to your standard Hollywood crowd by assuming you haven’t seen any movies made before the ’90s. Any fans of the original are then “appeased” by its chronological placement and get to have all their “questions answered.” Those sly dogs down in Hollywood will do anything for some dirty, dirty money — but does outright lying to people make a film truly not worth watching?

Well, this explains that ice block from the first film. I have been thoroughly appeased.

Kate, a paleontologist (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has been hired by Dr. Sander Halversen (Ulrich Thomsen) and his assistant Adam Goodman (Eric Christian Olsen) to provide them with an analysis — I guess — of a crashed extraterrestrial spaceship that was discovered buried deep within the ice of Antarctica. They make their way to the compound via helicopter, piloted by Sam Carter (Joel Edgerton) and happen across the corpse of a strange creature, also encased within a glacier. Could be anything — or it could be any THING!

After excavating it and taking some DNA samples, the damn Thing frees itself and goes on a rampage throughout the base. While hiding from utter destruction and assimilation, they manage to conclude that even something as small as the cells of the creature’s blood can manage to take over its host. Soon, trust is shattered, people are digested, and fans of the original film are sitting in disbelief that this prequel is nothing more than a re-hash.

Worse yet, it’s a lazy rehash, devoid of the quiet insanity and personality that allows the original to be remembered with such reverence.

Read about the verdict after the jump…