The Thing

I must give credit to Matthijs van Heijningen Jr’s remake/prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing for its attempt to do something different from the countless other reboots and remakes of old films that Hollywood seems to be churning out these days.  Rather than attempt to remake what I and many others consider to be the greatest remake ever made, this new The Thing is ostensibly a prequel to the Carpenter film rather than another adaptation of the John W. Campbell short story, “Who Goes There?”.  Of course, this new film is a remake, as pretty much everything that happens in the Carpenter film happens in this version as well, but setting the story at the Norwegian Antarctic outpost that the alien of Carpenter’s film had destroyed and escaped from, is a clever idea.  If only this movie had the guts to actually be a Norwegian film with a primarily Norwegian cast, and attempted to look and feel like a film from 1982, they really might have pulled something off.  But, unfortunately, that would never happen in Hollywood. What studio would release a big budget action remake that was mostly subtitled?

This remake/prequel is very respectful of the Carpenter film; almost a fetishistic homage. But like the Thing itself--a fraudulent imitation that should be burned on site--there is no reason to see this movie when you can just watch the John Carpenter’s The Thing over and over and over--as I do at least once every 5 years (it is one of my 20 favorite films).  This new movie falls into many of the usual prequel traps.  It attempts to expand and define the world created by the first film, but in the end only succeeds in making smaller the vast expanse created by the original in the viewer’s imagination.  However, as prequels go, The Thing is not terrible and it does not diminish the Carpenter movie as much as most films of this ilk do to their sources.  In fact there are a few things learned about the Thing in this movie that shed light on some questions and debates that fans of the Carpenter film have argued about for decades, and that’s kind of fun.

Some may claim that it is absurd to complain about a remake of a film that is itself a remake of a film, but I am not one of those people. I consider John Carpenter’s The Thing to be not only the best remake ever made, but one of the 5000 greatest films ever made--and I think I will still feel this way when the Film5000 project has reached its conclusion 40 or 50 years from now.  In many ways, attempting a remake of a film this special is like attempting a remake of 2001--it’s a fool’s errand but someone did it, and I do give these filmmaker’s credit for not embarrassing themselves.  The film is not as successful as Peter Hyams’ surprisingly good sequel to 2001, but is a damn sight better than almost any prequel I have yet seen.