The Thing; A clip for the, confusingly titled, Prequel to John Carpenter’s classic ‘The Thing’ (updated with HD clip).

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Well it’s not the best clip to be certain. Why they arealways so insistent on showing the ‘Dude gets scared by colleague only to besuper scared by the real killer / monster / Smurf clip742/a’? Is it just toconfirm that “yes, it is going to be a scary movie”?

I've seen Aliens biatch!

Now the clip on its own certainly doesn’t confirm anythingabout the film one way or the other of course and as there have been two filmsbased around the book “Who Goes There?” First we had the superb ‘cold war’classic ‘The Thing From Another World.” A perfect example of the @commies areeverywhere’ science fiction that Hollywood produced in that era; as squarejawed as you’d like complete with “stupid” geniuses trying to work for the goodof science, no matter the consequences to the average Joe and a faceless enemywho could go anywhere and destroy everything if you didn’t “keep watching theskies!”.  A significant change was madeto the alien though; instead of a horrific creature who ate other animals (yesthat includes people) to assume their identities and memories, this alien wasinstead a plant based life form that fed itself and its offspring on fresh,juicy blood. It was a hit and has gone down as a classic, well made film.

It's not an alien it's Commies damn it!

In 1982 John Carpenter made a not a remake and it seems set fortha tradition of confusing films for the series. The film is basically a far morefaithful version of the Novella than the earlier film. With the intelligent, ambulatory,vampire plant       removed and thefrightening shape shifter restored. But in changing the title to The Thing andusing the font and title styling the film definitely works as, at least, aminor remake as well. The film was very much unappreciated in its time.Critically overlooked as merely a blood soaked attempt to cash in on Alien andsuffering from being to horrific. It has, of course, joined the likes of BladeRunner (which is one of the films it was up against) as a film that was neithera commercial nor critical success upon release but has since become both.Recognised as one of the best Sci-Fi horrors ever made and enjoying success onvideo and DVD as well as a Video game sequel in 2002, comics and more books.

Arguably Russel's best role.

So we really shouldn’t be too harsh on the people behindthis prequel; after Carpenter’s it’s not a remake, remake of The Thing fromAnother World. This film is not a remake or a reboot, but a prequel; the filmmakers have been pretty clear about that. Of course there’s annoyance that thefilm is falling out of step a little by placing so many Americans on “TheNorwegians’” base and that ‘explosion’ of The Thing from the block of ice doesn’treally seem to fit in with what we know of the creatures ‘melted out’ resurrection,but only time will tell if this film is worthy of the previous two, and thebook, or not.

Synopsis...

“Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. Itis also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientificpossibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crewof international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentallyunleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into aperfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, butinside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like anepidemic among a group of researchers as they're infected, one by one, by amystery from another planet. Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joininga Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial shipburied in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in thecrash eons ago. But it is about to wake up. When a simple experiment frees thealien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew's pilot, Carter (JoelEdgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast,intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit humanagainst human as it tries to survive and flourish. The Thing serves as aprelude to John Carpenter's classic 1982 film of the same name.”

I've seen Wrath of Khan and I'm not touching that!

Trailer...