The Thing (1982 film)

John Carpenter's The Thing
File:Thething1982poster.jpg
Directed by	John Carpenter
Written by	Novella: John W. Campbell, Jr. Screenplay: Bill Lancaster
Produced by	David Foster Lawrence Turman
Starring	Kurt Russell Keith David Wilford Brimley David Clennon Donald Moffat Thomas G. Waites Joel Polis Peter Maloney Charles Hallahan T.K. Carter Richard Dysart Richard Masur
Music by	Ennio Morricone John Carpenter (Uncredited)
Distributed by	MCA / Universal Pictures
Release dates	June 25, 1982
Running time	109 min.
Languages	English Norwegian
Budget	$10,000,000 (estimated)

This article is about the 1982 remake of The Thing from Another World. For Thing, see The Thing (1982 film) (disambiguation).

John Carpenter's The Thing is a 1982 science fiction film directed by John Carpenter. Ostensibly a remake of the 1951 Howard Hawks film The Thing from Another World, Carpenter's film is actually more faithful to the novella that serves as both films' source material, "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr. under the pseudonym of Don A. Stuart. The musical score was by Ennio Morricone, a rare instance of Carpenter not scoring one of his own films. Carpenter considers this to be the first part of his Apocalypse Trilogy, followed by 1987's Prince of Darkness and 1995's In the Mouth of Madness.

Plot

An American Antarctic research station is infiltrated by an alien creature, which has the ability to perfectly imitate any animal or human it comes into contact with. The crew of the station come to distrust each other as they cannot tell who is human and who is not. One by one they are killed, either by the creature or by each other.

The crew realize that if the creature were to reach the outside world, it would devour all life on earth in a few years. Although they destroy a vehicle that it was secretly building, ultimately the crew are forced to destroy the station in order to kill the Thing, accepting that this act would also kill themselves. There are only two survivors - neither sure if the other is human, but too weak to defend themselves.

Cast

Actor	Role
Kurt Russell	R.J. MacReady
A. Wilford Brimley	Dr. Blair
T.K. Carter	Nauls
David Clennon	Palmer
Keith David	Childs
Richard Dysart	Dr. Copper
Charles Hallahan	Vance Norris
Peter Maloney	George Bennings
Richard Masur	Clark
Donald Moffat	Garry
Joel Polis	Fuchs
Thomas Waites	Windows

The only woman in the film is the voice of a chess computer, voiced by Carpenter regular (and then-wife) Adrienne Barbeau.

Critical reception and themes

Upon its release, the film was lambasted by critics for its special make-up effects, created by Rob Bottin, which were seen as excessively bloody and repulsive 1. The film fared poorly at the box office, possibly due to the release of both E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial two weeks earlier, with its more optimistic view of alien visitation, and of Blade Runner the same night, as speculated by Carpenter and writers that have written about him such as Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell. Carpenter also said that the audience for horror movies had shrunk when questioned about the failure of The Thing in the book Prince of Darkness. Yet its reputation improved in the late nineties through home video releases, with the film even penetrating the IMDB Top 250 [1]. A collector's edition DVD was released in 1998.

A scene from this film was listed as #48 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

This film is cited as the first installment in Carpenter's 'Apocalypse Trilogy', followed by 1987's Prince of Darkness and 1995's In the Mouth of Madness. The plots and characters of the films are not connected. The film is also notable in Carpenter's career for two reasons—it was his first foray into studio film-making and it was Carpenter's first film to be made without Debra Hill in a co-producing effort. The Thing was the fourth film shot with Dean Cundey as his cinematographer (following Halloween, The Fog and Escape from New York).

Continuation of franchise

As of early 2007 there have been two announced projects to expand the franchise:

• The Sci-Fi Channel planned to do a four-hour mini-series sequel to the film in 2003. Carpenter stated he had heard about the mini-series as well and believed the project should proceed, but because of the lack of updates and the removal of all mention of it from the Sci-Fi Channel homepage, it is likely now abandoned, if it ever existed at all.

• In September of 2006, it was announced in Fangoria magazine that Strike Entertainment, the production company behind Slither and the Dawn of the Dead remake, is looking for a writer or writers to tackle a theatrical prequel to "The Thing.".

• According to Variety, Strike Entertainment and Universal Pictures are getting ready to remake The Thing. Ronald D. Moore is set to write the script with Marc Abraham and Eric Newman producing. David Foster, producer of the original film, will also executive produce the remake.

Video and DVD releases

After its cinema run, the film was released as usual on video, and also on laserdisc.

The Thing has been released on DVD twice by Universal. The first edition was a Universal Collector's Edition released in September of 1998. It contained the documentary The Thing: Terror Takes Shape on the making of The Thing, along with deleted scenes (shown in the television version), a theatrical trailer and production notes. The only thing lacking was an anamorphic widescreen transfer which was remedied with a new DVD release in October of 2004, which features a new anamorphic transfer with identical supplements to the 1998 release. The Thing has also been released on HD DVD.

The Terror Takes Shape documentary on the Region 1 Universal Collector's Edition DVD contains the option to replace the documentary's dialog with the full, isolated Ennio Morricone soundtrack.

Other media

Video game

Main article: The Thing (video game)

In 2002, a video game was released, taking the form of a sequel to the film. The game — also titled The Thing — makes use of the elements of paranoia and mistrust intrinsic to the film, and was released on multiple platforms: PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. The game is horror-based with action elements. The game's trust-based mechanics, which allowed you to test your fellow team members for Thing-infection, were undermined by the game's insistence on automatically converting previously uninfected team members into Thing infectees at certain waypoints. This lent a feeling of pointlessness to the game's testing mechanic, as you could test somebody, find out that they're clean, and then see them erupt into a Thing as soon as you walked through an invisible waypoint moments later. Some retailers, such as GameStop offered a free copy of the 1998 DVD release as an incentive for reserving the game.

Books and comics

There was a novelization by Alan Dean Foster published in 1982. It was based on the second draft of the screenplay. It includes the sequence in which MacReady, Bennings, and Childs are forced to chase after some infected dogs who escaped onto the Antarctic tundra.

Dark Horse Comics published three comic book sequels to the film, featuring the character of MacReady as the lone survivor of Outpost #31. The series was renamed "The Thing from Another World" (the 1951 Howard Hawks original film title) in order to avoid confusion (and possible legal conflict) with Marvel Comics' orange rock skinned Fantastic Four member also known as The Thing.

External links

• Outpost #31 - The Ultimate THE THING Fan Site
• The Thing at IMDb
• thething.ca The world's largest The Thing memorabilia collection.
• The Thing at theofficialjohncarpenter.com
• The Thing: Between arrival and spontaneous emergence (The Thing and pulp-horror)
• Review of The Thing video game at Something Awful