I don"t like horror movies. there I said. I really don't, I know that to enjoy a movie/comic/book we have to have a certain os suspension of disbelief. Thing is, horror movies are bad, whether they be intentional or unintenional. There's an emphesis of poorly written characters, killers with god mode activated, or a group of guidos who live in New Jersey. There usually isn't really enything in a horror movie that I feel I should invest in. Now, I may say that but there are some horror movies that do things right. Instead of making dumb characters, they make interesting ones. The creature or person is what's the mystery and instead of showing them murder everyone in an easy fashion; it instead focus' the characters trying to stop it/them from striking. Look at Romero's Zombie films, yes you see the undead and them killing people or turning people; but the movies are more about the main characters trying to survive. It focus' on human nature under stress. The zombies add menace and gore when they show up but the real point of zombie movies are humans coping with their world bruning down; holding onto what they can to keep on going for another day. Some of us brave through it, others crumble and make weak excuses to rob, steal and murder others. That's the charm.
That's an aspect I loved about John Charpenter's The Thing. It was about a shape shifting alien that went on a bloody rampage when discovered, it had amazing effects and really good acting. There was tenstion and mystery. It was more of a who done it as opposed to "I have a machete! Blondes having sex! Murder!" End scene, rinse repeat. No, The Thing was straight up atmosphereic; that was it, it was all about the characters coping with an alien on the loose and worst yet; one of them could be replaced by it. It was as simple as that.
Course, leave it to modern hollywood to ham in on it. See, they have this wonderful idea that they need to remake or make prequesla dn sequels. Sometimes it works (Tron: Legacy) and other times it's . . . .well, not so much. The 2011 Thing is one such instant. They decided that a prequel was in order. So this movie focus' on the norwiegin camp base that was utterly destroyed by the time the cast from the first movie came out. Seriously. The characters go to the camp to investigate and find everyone dead, demolished and half assimilated. Yeah, they made a sequel focusing on that. It's like the Star Wars prequels. We know what happens. we know how it's going to play out. We have the who, what, where, when and how. 4, 5,and 6 gave us the pieces. The only way it could have been a surprise is if the prequel focused on something we weren't expecting. Like if I made a prequel to The Godfather and it was about a chef trying to save the mushroom kingdom from intergalatic spiders. All he had was a batch of exploding cakes and had to ride a velocorapter who also happens to be a unicorn. See? You didn't expect that, it would be the perfect prequel.
So how is the prequel The Thing? Well, exactly what you would expect from a movie made in today's standard. There's CGI everywhere, plotholes and the subtley from the first movie is gone. GONE! that's what the made the 82 movie so good. Instead, if any body forgets to flush, the creature bursts out and kills somebody. It's like the Bayformer movies, the charm is gone, the story is gone and it's one big CGI douche fest. The lead, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (or as I'll refer to her from now on as Ramona Flowers), tries her best but this is a story that didn't need to be told. Or if it had to be, would have been done right. See, it's a Norwiegian base so Ramona is flwon in by the lead Norwiegian scientist FROM AMERICA! Keep in mind the movie still takes place in 1982. See, the saving grace of this movie is that they didn;t want to piss over the original and I respect that.
It's not like George Lucas, they looked at what John Carpenter did and tried to stick to that. Unfortunatly, everything is CGI and while the orginial played around with keeping the creature in the shadows. See, you only saw small glimpses of The Thing and it made it interesting. Same with the Alien movies, oh we saw the whole thing but only in quick flashes. It created tension, it showed something menacing and would cause a panic. Here? It shows up with a boom and doesn't stop. Seriously, they find it in the ice and put in a room where it can't thaw out. There's no heat source, nothing. By all means it should still be hibernating so guess what? FUCK LOGIC! This thing erupts out of the ice and just goes nuts. In all face splitting CGI Lady Gaga on a normal day glory. And from there it's a stroke fest for regular horror fans. With explosions and loud bangs in every scene. While the original slowed down so the characters could breathe before shit hit the fan in the last half; here? I leave my respects to the countless gas stations that had to be blown up. I know they wanted to leave the bas in the state that Kurt Russel found it in the original but a helicopter crash? That wasn't in the original.
One other big problem that arises from this movie t\is that in the end, the alien tries to escape using it's ship. And it gets blown up. Blown. Up. Like Michael Bay blown up, Ronald Emmerick blown up. Death Star blown up. Course there it is, intact in the original. So I take by what I said about them not wanting to piss over the original. They George Lucas'ed this bitch. Then of course, Ramona gets away and they try to leave ambiguity as to whether it;s her or not. Which doesn;t make sense. If she did get away, why didn;t Kurt Russel's character MacCready, didn;t see any tracks leaving the base? I know it's sequel bait but for christs sake we don;t need it. Not everything needs a sequel (Watchmen). Hell not everything needs to be made period (Highlander 2). I mean good god, Hollywood needs to make new ideas. Hell I came up with one about a velocorapter riding chef. It wouldn;t be oscar worthy but they don't matter. In fact they shouldn't matter but that's a rant for another day.
This movie? A lazy story, alright acting and the mystery gone. In it's place is CGI, things blowing up and somewhere John W. Cambell jr is spinning in his grave so fast; electrical friction is supplying third world countries with enough energy to last through forever.
The Thing 2011 gets 3.5 bass beats over the end credits out 10. They slao want to remake Highlander, with the woman who wrote the Twilight movies. Not Stephanie Meyer, I don;t have her name right now but thse's writing it. She also wrote the first three seasons of Dexter. . . .I don;t know how to feel about that.
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