The Thing 1982 VS The Thing 2011 video

I love how this movie starts. It got you all like "why they chasing and trying to kill this cute dog what? huh?" and then they crash the helicopter and the norwegian guy is talking but you can't understand it cuz it's not english but it's done so well that it just conveys that something isn't quite right. the J&B bottle at the beiginning? absolute banger. Every character feels developed and memorable straight from the start, it feels like we're actually just watching people that exist in their established living conditions, like we as the viewer are just a fly on the wall. They all have their individual personalities, and things that I remember about them, and names that actually feel like they matter. Every character in the 2011 version besides the main 2 or 3 just feels pointless and meaningless, like they exist only to die and serve as a meat bag.

Jed is the dog at the beginning and she's incredible at just acting so strange it's so cool. There's a scene where we watch jed walk down a hallway to enter a room with someone in it alone, and all we see is this persons shadow. However, the person casting the shadow isn't anyone in the cast but a random crew member instead to leave it ambiguous.

Mac and Dr Copper go to investigate the norwegian base, this is where we see all the stuff that The Thing (2011) tried to set up to match what they find. It's pretty cool that they did that but it still just kind of feels like an afterthought done for fanservice and nothing more.

They discover a body of someone that slit their own throat and was preserved by being frozen. Something that this scene represents to me is how this movie doesn't really do any jumpscares or things like that, or at least uses them very sparingly and effectively in a way that doesn't break but continues to contribute to the tension. This scene is very unnerving but all it does is build tension, it doesn't break it like a jumpscare would. This whole movie feels like a very steady build of tension, and paranoia. Where as the 2011 version feels like it's constantly quickly building and breaking tension with it's many jumpscares, and many of the jumpscares, at least one that i can think of right now (the one where the guy sneaks up behind someone and literally says boo), really shows that it just toys with you and doesn't actually care about telling a tense and paranoid story like the first one is known and loved for, but is just trying to be a scary movie to scare you more than anything.

Jed is literally the least dog like dog in the world she's such a weirdo

Are the practical effects in this vs the cgi in the new one the make or break defining key difference? no, absolutely not. Are the practical effects in the original 1982 release really cool and awesome? yes. yes they sure are.

Something else that I really love about this movie is that it does a very good job at convincing me that these characters are very smart. They're scientists, they know what they're doing. They never do anything that makes me question why they would do that, why they're stupid enough. Everything they do makes sense towards trying to achieve their goal and beat this thing, they never do anything stupid. the 2011 version is full of moments that make them look very stupid, and many scenes that make me feel that classic way of like "no don't do that! no stop ahhh!"

Norris, Copper, and Mac go to checkout the excursion site where the thing was discovered originally. It's possible to determine that at this point, Norris has been assimilated. We know that somebody has been already because of jed moving finding the the person with the shadow earlier. We also know later that the thing has to be alone with someone in order to do the assimilation, and conveniently enough norris is left alone while copper and mac go downwards into the ice, so norris can't commence the assimilation process. This is a cool detail.

Bennings is left alone for a bit in a storage room with the split face thing, windows goes to get some keys from garry, returns and finds bennings being infected. He drops the keys which is an incredibly important detail because it helps us figure out who rigged the bloodbank.

Fuchs and Mac go have a conversation, which shows us one of the ways that john carpenter breaks the rules of film making. He only shows characters eyes if what they're doing or saying is very important. A lot of the time people are wrapped up in layers and you can barely even tell who they are, which adds to the paranoia and fear tremendously.

We go after bennings who was assimilated, he's running away, they find him and he lets out this horrifying scream. In an interview John Carpenter said that this scream is supposed to be every single creature the thing has ever assimilated screaming in unison. it's horrifying.

They make a smart decision by collecting and burning all the bodies and remains of any things they have. They don't know that somebody (I think it's Norris, maybe Palmer, but it's kind of up to the viewer and it's pretty open ended. Many different ways to connect the dots.) is already assimilated, but with the knowledge that they have this is the best possible move they could've done really. This scene features everybody that is still alive but just one person, Blair. This is a trick used several times throughout the movie but it's not always pointed out like it is in this scene, and that's pretty cool. That in combination with the many cuts, many instances of an untold amount of time passing, and things just generally happening off screen really adds to the lack of trust, uncertainty, and paranoia as well. Blair is fully overtaken with paranoia and destroys all the communication equipment and vehicles, and kills all the dogs, because he knows that if the thing escapes it'll infect and kill all of humanity. This part is basically perfect because it displays the paranoia that's been building in a physical, visible form. It's so good.

They lock up Blair since he's crazy and decide that it's a good idea to do a blood test with their stock of uncontaminated blood, but then discover that the blood has been destroyed. This leads to a massive argument between everyone and a confrontation with between Garry and Windows. They burn the blood that remains so that it's not a threat of any kind, and make a plan from their. They shoot up Copper, Clark, and Garry with morphine since they're the biggest suspects for being assimilated at this point. Mac records his famous tape that's used in the video game, and he walks up on Fuchs to ask if he has anything figured out or any ideas of how to proceed. This startle's him, we see him jump which again adds to the paranoia and everything. He suggests preparing their own meals and only eating out of cans since it can be done through even just small particles. This again shows that they're very smart.

Fuchs runs outside following somebody and finds a jacket with Maccready's name on it and it's all ripped up which is supposed to make us think that he has been assimilated, and disappears. Our gang goes out to try and find Fuchs, talks to blair and he's begging to come back inside, and then we find the charred, burned remains of Fuchs. We never know how he dies, if he burned himself before the thing could get to him or if he became a thing and tried to burn himself, or if someone else burned him, we never learn. They go to investigate Mac's shack, the lights are on and he left them off. They begin boarding up the doors, Nauls returns (he was with mac) showing them the jacket that Fuchs found, everyone begins suspecting Mac. He breaks in through a window and takes control, threatening to blow everyone up if they "mess with him". Norris passes out and stops breathing. There's lots of arguing between characters, and tensions are incredibly high. They put Norris on a table, he's revealed to be a thing and attacks. This is one of the only jumpscares in the movie, Copper is using a defibulator on Norris and his stomach opens up and bites Copper's hands off. It's crazy.

The famous blood test scene pulls up now leading to another jumpscare. Mac says to tie everyone up, most people odn't want to be tied up so it's a very tense scene. Childs is all like "don't tie me up" and Mac is like "then I'm gonna kill you" and pulls a gun on him. It's tense. Child's decides to comply and clark tries to attack Mac, who promptly turns around and shoots clark in the head. He dies. They test their blood by heating up a wire and inserting it into a dish of blood to see if it reacts to the heat, with the idea that infected blood will act on its own, with every piece of their body being able to act independently in a way. It clears Nauls, Windows, Maccready, Copper and Clark who are both dead already. People start arguing a little saying "this is bullshit, pure nonsense", garry specifically who we suspect to be the one that got into the blood since he has the key. Maccready says "I thought you'd say that, you're the only one that could've gotten the blood so we'll do you last" before testing Palmer. He inserts it into the blood and the blood reacts like they thought it would, revealing palmer to be a thing. This is an incredible jumpscare as it starts to build tension towards Garry being tested, but subverts your expectations by revealing palmer. It's so good. Windows is attacked and they burn him. It's so sad because windows was one of my favorites lol.

After the whole fiasco they finish testing by clearing Nauls, Childs, and Gary as safe. They're the only one's left besides Blair in the storage shed outside. Child is stationed at the only enterance as Gary, Nauls, and Mac go outside to test blair, Mac instructs Childs to burn blair if he escapes without them. They get to the shed to find the door open, and find that Blair dug his way out. He had been using parts of the vehicles to build "a ship of some kind". They return to the main base, Naul's sees childs running off doing something and tells gary and mac. The power turns off. They have 6 hours until the whole places freezes and they all die, mac thinks that's what the thing wants to happen so it can jsut freeze up and go back to sleep again. They decide they need to find and stop it from doing that, figuring they have no chance of getting out alive anymore. They decide to pretty much just bomb the whole place.

They go down to the room with the generator in it to see if they can restore power, but the whole generator is missing. Not just broken, but just completely missing. They decide to destroy the whole base. They split up and plant their bombs, Blair finds Gary and kills him, he's a thing. Naul's and Mac are actually still together, but Naul's hears something and wanders off, he's presumed dead off screen, Mac tries to ask him how it's going and doesn't get a response. Mac is attacked by one big thing, and narrowly escapes throwing a bomb at it and running away. This explodes pretty much the entire base in one big go. Mac sits down in some of the rubble with his J&B bottle he's had since the beginning and starts drinking. Childs shows up saying that he thought he saw Blair and went after him, that's why he disappeared. Mac hands him the bottle and they share a drink saying they won't last long. Mac says if they have surprises for each other they're not in any shape to do anything and then says "why don't we just wait here for a little while, see what happens?" and the movie ends. Childs takes a drink and mac has a little laugh, we get one last pan of the burning base and the credits roll. I love this ending so much because it's so ambiguous, and the tension never resolves. It ends on a cliff hanger, never giving us an answer as to what happened to the thing. Is Maccready infected? Is Childs infected? Are both of them? Are neither of them? While some say that there's a definitive answer to who it is, I'm okay with their not being an answer. Some people say that Mac gave Childs the bottle as a test to see if he would drink it, given the whole "preparing our own meals" rule. Childs does drink it which many think to be the reason that Mac laughs, and proves that Childs was assimiliated and didn't know this rule. I think he just drank it because he simply didn't care anymore, they were the last two and as Mac said they couldn't really do anything about it anymore.