Wow, my blog has so
far been inundated with remakes galore.
I just can’t help myself though; I have this false sense of hope that
I’m going to be impressed with a story I love adapted into modern times. That’s why I just had to see ‘The
Thing’, which is a 2011 prequel (supposedly) to the original 1982 movie. We had to toss a coin between that and ‘Red
State’ though, another must see. But we
saw ‘The Thing’. And? One thing to sum it up: I’m damn glad I saw the movie on Cheap
Tuesday.
Ignore the supposed
synopsis of the film – The Thing is literally a scene-for-scene remake of the
original, minus Kurt Russell (boo!) and with a chicky babe in the main
role. Mary Elizabeth Winstead isn’t a
bad actress, but she isn’t given a whole lot to run with in this film.
So, to set the scene,
it’s Antarctica 1982 (a wee bit before Kurt Russell arrived). Winstead’s character Kate Lloyd, a graduate
paleontology student, has been enlisted by the world’s dodgiest scientist Dr.
Sander Halvorson, to investigate a top-secret life form frozen in Antarctic
ice. The two, along with a team of
fairly unmemorable characters, dig the creature out of the ice to study it,
whilst frozen. Of course the mayhem begins
when it breaks out of the ice one night.
Turns out, the creature can absorb other life forms and clone itself to
replicate anything and anyone.
From here on the film
takes the original’s lead of paranoia, where the team spend the remainder of
the film considering the trust the have of each other and trying to work out
who is still human and who is an alien clone.
It does everything wrong what John Carpenter did so right in the
original. My biggest bug bear was how
the ‘Thing’ was quite happy to reveal itself to groups of people at a time;
this is something that didn’t occur in the original as it was considered to be
vulnerable in these circumstances.
However, my bug bear was soon overshadowed by a giant spaceship. I won’t say any more…
See the film if you
want. It’s even annoying to write about;
I promise my next entry won’t be a disappointing rant about a remake of a film
that never needed one. Say what you
will, I refuse to call it a prequel because it simply isn’t that. Definitely one to wait for DVD though. Even spunky Eric Christian Olsen couldn’t
save it for me. Kinda wish I had’ve gone
to ‘Red State’ now… stay tuned for that one.
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