The Thing - 1st trailer - Page 7

MUCH better then I expected. Still its had a JC feel to it. But really did anyone not know how it would have ended?

This movie is more about how it would have started.

They were mostly Norwegians, except the heroine, and the pilots who brought her in.

I agree, but the fact they looked more alike then the typical "Benetton colored" American crew should have nothing to do with this, but rather the script and direction. Clearly the Carpenter film did this more successfully.

Right, this was one of the major fault of this film.

I understand, and yes, the script and the direction definitely played a part, but so did casting every Grizzly Adams lookalike from Oslo. I guess they had to work with what they had.

I finally saw this. It was ok but the CGI just didn't work for me at all which surprised me I guess.. granted the kind of creature effects they were rendering were very complex but half the time it looked so poorly done, at least for a film (there are borderline comparable CGI monster effects in video games being rendered in real time).
Seeing more of the spacecraft was nice and I did really like how the ending tied directly into the original (wasn't that even the score from the original?).

LOL!

...I agree about the cgi mentioned above. While I think the film was more than decent, some shots did look very fake. In a horror film no matter how it's done, cgi imo is never a good thing.

I must have a more keen eye, I had no problem to tell them apart, Oh well. BTW How would you evaluate the Norwegians Carpenter used, one was his associate producer Larry Franco.

The Blain monster[miniature prop] in the Carpenter film was as bad as any badly implemented CGI one can find. As always the tool is not the problem but the execution is. Of course if you think CGI is bad no matter what then, well ........

Yes that was the Morricone score, but they screwed up the goggle on the pilot and should have cast an American [like Carpenter did]instead of a Grizzly Adams lookalike from Oslo.

Well, there were two of them, and one got blown up right off the bat. So no confusion there. BTW, digging through the snow for a grenade with a pulled pen? You deserve to get blown up.

It was a combination of things that made the Norwegians in the new one not work too well, any one of which by itself wouldn't have been that big a deal, but all together gave me the impression that they were just going through the motions to make this film. Casting mostly men with epic beards+not differentiating them in the script+not differentiating them in the direction=me not giving a flip who got et when.

Even the lead Norwegian guy had another guy who sort of looked like him. I could tell them apart, but it was still annoying when an hour in the film I was still trying to remember both of their names. It wouldn't have been a big deal if there was more character work, but as it was, it was just two guys that were under the label of "monster fodder."

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the film, but if anything could have lifted it from "just another monster movie" and actually give it a fighting chance to stand with its predecessor, it would have been that aspect.


Yeah, the Blair monster was the worst, but at least they didn't use the stop motion Blair monster they filmed but then cut. That would have been a bigger cup of fail.

No I don't think CGI is bad no matter what, on the contrary. But no matter how good it looks, 90% it doesn't look "real". The fact that it looks marvelous doesn't make it more real either. Practical effects *exist* in the same environment as the actor. In horror the audience has to feel the danger, sort of, the urgency, the actor has to be in danger and interact with the...thing When a CGI creature shows up, regardless of the film, we instantly know someting's odd, something's missing.

Among recent films, I still think Tron Legacy achieved what I usually never see, a believable virtual environment. The fact that it isn't even in the real world in the film probably helps.

Don't get me wrong, again, I'm more than once amazed when I look at what's possible in CGI nowadays. And at the same time it's like we're still not quite there yet.

You're comparing a scene lasting maybe 90 seconds to just about every shot involving a Thing in the 2011 film. Not at all apples to apples. Where was the creature creation, blood, latex, etc. that created great scenes like the husky transformation? Gone in exchange for lame CGI that looked worse than what they made by hand over 25 years ago.

Agreed. The only creatures I can recall in recent cinema that CGI made look as close to real as I have seen would be the prawns in District 9.

And Davy Jones, and some little tiny shape-shifting robots (then again they're not 'organic') but that's about it I guess the most difficult task is to make the audience forget they're looking at a computer-generated, harmless, lifeless, image. I don't know how it's gonna be possible.

For me horror is unique in this way. Movies like Transformers simply could not have been made 25 years ago. Davey Jones would have looked ok in a rubber mask but you can forget the claw, the dialogue, tentacle beard, etc.

With horror it is like regression IMO. We've already seen the magic of real creature creation in movies like The Thing and An American Werewolf in London and many others. To have something out now that sacrifices the art of good latex and make-up work for CGI just so the movements can be more animated is a total loss IMO. It completely takes me out of the moment almost every time. Take a look at The Descent, there was a film that "got it". The crawlers weren't complex in design but the CGI for their movements was used very sparingly and we had buckets of non CGI blood. Sad but it seems as though it is somewhat of a lost art.

Uhhm, I didn't make that comparison, you just did it now, I simply pointed out that just because it's a real practical effect it doesn't mean it's always good, I simply used the Blair monster as an example, and because it is relevant to the film in question. For the record I don't think that the CGI in this film was very good either, and I found the creatures, less then "imaginative" as well.

CGI is really useful to create environments and backgrounds, when it comes to creatures and characters it's not quiet there yet, I agree.

It's a shame that a thread doesn't exist for Carpenter's film. Gotta post this here because it's one of the coolest pieces of art I've seen in a while. The original is hanging in the Mondo Gallery in Texas and sold last week.

Richey Beckett "Mac wants the flamethrower"

I thought the movie felt simultaneously entertaining and pointless. Entertaining because, how can you go wrong with the story and setting? Pointless of course because it mostly aped a movie so classic and "perfect" in it's own right it seemed uncalled for.

That said, I actually found the mix of CGI/practical effects quite convincing - some of the creature stuff as well.

I think people who moan about CGI FX, especially creature FX, tend to over-sell the quality of practical FX. It's not as if practical FX ...all the men in masks and mechanical creatures we've watched all these years until CGI....were THAT convincing either. I'm pretty much always aware of the seams when it's a guy-in-a-mask or a practical monster effect as well. As much as, say, movement may give away CGI creatures as not quite real, the same goes for creatures created by practical FX (e.g. hydraulics/elaborate puppetry etc). That goes for Carpenters movie, which is beloved to me, as well. Carpenters practical FX images are very graphic, but I'm not fooled for a moment I'm not looking at anything but cool, elaborate puppets.

15 minutes....been there, done that...EJECT.

It wasn't that bad. I think all that Beaver state rain has you water logged.

You may be right about that...
The local newspaper said (a couple of days ago) we had more rainfall during March (in Salem, Oregon) than ANY year since 1894.
And that makes me VERY sad....

Fnck ME.

I just wanted to say Beaver.


It is cool. Make a bowl of popcorn and enjoy.

You always do...

Thanks to oink and others who gave negative review of this movie. Because of it, my expectation was lowered so much to a point that I really enjoyed this movie. Very entertaining.

My complaint is the re-make gave me the distinct feeling I was watching the "same old thing."
Of course...this is the problem with re-makes.

The snow mobiles were a sore thumb, especially that they used the last few minutes to tie up the two pictures. I can overlook the dogs or the goggles, but they didn't do well at all on that one. If there will be a sequel it will be even more redundant then the Alien and Predator films, and don't even get me started on the numb nuts execution of AVP.

I rented this and thought it was a fun ride.Had some clever ideas like the fillings and earing stuff.But unlike many here I do not go into a movie hoping to pick it apart' I Just go with the flow and enjoy and eat popcorn.Well worth the rent.

Here is a Claymation of the original The Thing done to cats. The original Claymation done to Pingu the Penquin was taken down on YouTube. Enjoy.