The Thing (1982) is a movie that seriously does NOT need to be remade. Carpenter closed the book on it, even with the latex critter technology of the time. Throw the movie through a digital clean-up and rerelease it, and it still stands strong.
OTOH the references to BSG not needing to be remade are completely off the mark. I just sat down and watched a bunch of original '78 BSG episodes with my wife (who loves the OS) and just couldn’t immerse myself in the cheezy '70’s goodness.
Our home and everybody we know has just been destroyed… LETS GO GAMBLE!
Since “remake” is being tossed around a lot in here, I should remind everyone that both films are adaptations of John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella, “Who Goes There?”.
And agreed that we don’t need another adaptation. Ron Moore should clearly be working on a remake of Robot Monster.
You’re thinking about this all wrong. Of course it doesn’t NEED to be remade. No-one who is financing this movie is thinking about it in those terms. They’re doing it because they believe there is a good probability that they will make money out of it. That’s it and that’s all.
As much as I hate to admit it, those great 80s classics are starting to look a little dated. I rewatched Aliens a couple of days ago, which is still as ass-kicking a movie as ever, and I was stunned by how flat-out bad a lot of the effects shots were. The models were good, but the back-projection shots stood out like a sore thumb.
Now, that kind of shit doesn’t matter to me personally anymore than it matters to me that the original King Kong is all stop-motion work, because I saw all this stuff when I was a kid/teenager and therefore it will always remain cool to me. But did you ever try to watch, say, Escape From New York with anybody under the age of 21? They will laugh their asses off at the incredible lameness of the effects work. (To say nothing of that MASSIVE FUCKING DIGITAL WATCH Snake wears for most of the movie.)
With regards to The Thing - I still think it looks great, but then again I love latex model work. I’m sure if I was a snotty teenager I would probably think it looked as laughable as The Brain That Wouldn’t Die or something.
you shut your fucking mouth about escape from new york.
It’s not just a watch, it’s a GPS tracker. Plus it has a fucking cool Hawk-shaped flipcover.
The models were good, but the back-projection shots stood out like a sore thumb.
Hell, I chuckle during Terminator 2’s ‘driving at night’ scene. Stupid people before 1995.
I also never understood why people get so upset about remakes(I was way psyched for the new Dawn of the Dead, for example).
I really think Carpenter’s version did it right, turning a movie with solid but slightly dated SFX into a modern “$40M shot in Vancouver/Prague piece of shit” doesn’t sell me.
IOW, this better be a reimagining on the level of BSG. I want Mac to be a hot Asian chick. And the monster should be a hot Asian chick. And instead of killing each other, they should make out.
What FX were in Escape from NY?
todays tech couldn’t do The Thing much better, maybe in another 20yrs, but not now.
I’m also a sucker for “Dead” movies, but “dawn” didn’t capture the 'feel" of the original…And BSG is just plain unwatchable, even compared to the low budget 70’s tv version.
And BSG is just plain unwatchable, even compared to the low budget 70’s tv version.
To paraphrase Moore’s post, above: “You shut your fucking mouth about the new BSG.”
:)
Is that a joke? You thought maybe the scene where he glides into the prison island of Manhattan was real?
god the EFNY theme song is soooo good. it’s stuck in my head now…
So what pops into the Movie Moguls head to make them want to “remake” The Thing. Shouldn’t we expect “The Thing 2?” Not that doing a sequal is original but it’s more original than just doing the same story over with the chairs shuffled around on the deck. Wouldn’t it be cool to see the rescue team try and make sense of what they find at the camp? Maybe Mac’s made himself an increadible shelter out of the alien flying saucer and survived!
The problem with The Thing 2 is that it requires some familiarity with the original, and the 18 year old kids for whom these movies are being made today have no idea what the original film is.
You don’t need me to tell you that Hollywood is obsessed with remakes right now, but you may not know just how bad it is. Almost every open writing assignment list in town is lousy with them. There is virtually no horror/thriller genre movie from the 50s onward that hasn’t been optioned for a remake.
It’s becoming a generational thing now, where every 20 years or so Hollywood will hit the reset button and make the same shit all over again, because there’s a whole new audience of eager young kids who don’t remember the last version.
You know what I got sent for remake consideration the other day? The Crow. The fucking CROW! That movie is barely 10 years old. And they’re remaking it.
I’m beginning to realize that it sucks to get old. Oh, well. Thanks for the insight into how the machine works.
So when Lucas remakes Episode IV I wonder if Han will shoot first this time?
Yes, the twist will be that this time Han shoots first.
And that Greedo is a hot Asian chick.
“I dunno what the hell’s in there, but it’s weird and pissed off, whatever it is.”
It’s my favorite horror movie, because it’s so damn tense and that scene with the blood… it still makes me jump years later. Wilford Brimley with his Quaker Oats voice saying, “C’mon guys. It’s me. You can let me out of here, ok? I’m alright. I’m telling you.” What a film. Such a fantastic cast.
what? i though the john carpenter thing was killed(“yeah, fuck you too”). and the burning base took care of any leftovers.
Not so much a generational thing as the single greatest creative crisis Hollywood has ever faced. Even seven or eight years ago I was totally into movies and always informed on new arrivals. Now I’m plain indifferent to anything being produced there. The studio system with their skyrocketing budgets have turned so absurdly risk-averse that now they don’t even dare to produce a movie that hasn’t already succeed in the theaters at least once. And if they do make a movie with a new script it’s so formulaic or effects driven it would rather work as a parody. Right now the peak of Hollywood’s creative venture is doing another James Bond, but with an edge. It’s sad and depressing like the PC video game industry, only much much more so.
Oh, and Carpenter’s Thing is among the best horror movies ever, and neither a remake nor a part 2 can ever damage it.
Thing Spoiler ahead:
Russelmz: Remember Blair dragging the corpse of the former third surviver around by melding his hand into his fucking face? We don’t see him get taken care of after that. Also there’s a long time span when we don’t see anything of what’s happening to Childs before he meets up with MacReady by the burning base. His account of what happened during that time is pretty scanty. So it stays pretty unclear if the thing was in fact destroyed.