So, first off, apologies to anyone that cares for not having done a post in so long. Been going through a lot of personal crap that has made it hard to really muster up much motivation to write. However, working on fixing that, going to try getting back into writing, maybe also do some Lets Plays that I'd been wanting to do and upload 'em on youtube.
Moving right along.
I saw The Thing 2011 finally. I've been avoiding reading reviews as best as I can, but I've been hearing snippets here and there, like Brad Jones (aka the Cinema Snob, who I'm a gigantic fan of and totally recommend) talking about how ridiculously awful it was. Still, I tried not to go into this with a negative mindset. This is a bit of a problem though, and I want to come clean on my bias here: I'm a gigantic fan of 1980's The Thing. How big of a fan? I'd honestly consider it my favorite horror film of all time.
Still... I tried to keep my head clear, and I just kind of sat there, waiting for it to begin, thinking to myself "No matter what, I'm sure it at least won't be as awful as, say, the remake of Halloween." Hahahaah. ...Hahahahaha.
First off, fuck the casting. It's now a camp of Norwegians AND Americans, because the film needs Americans for it to even be watchable to American audiences, right? I mean there's no way horror fans would sit through a completely subtitled movie like [REC] or Let The Right One In, right?
Our MacReady is a 20-something cute girl who, for reasons the script doesn't care about and I guess we shouldn't either, is brought in with some other young Americans to help some middle aged Norwegians get a Tyranid and his giant swivel fan out of a block of ice. Why do I call it a Tyranid?
Fuck the alien design. It's like G-Birkin mixed with some Zerg/Tyranid shit. It's an amorphous CG blob with random insectoid parts and a lot of teeth. I mean it was spider-like in some parts of the Carpenter film, but for the most part the alien there was an odd combination of various parts, rather than... a fleshy blob with a lot of Zerg limbs.
On that note, it's not even good CG, at best it's on par with the cheapest looking parts of RE: Degeneration, at worst it's more like RE2. Oh god, the CG snow in this movie especially. I cringed, I -cringed-. I've been watching a lot of Hercules The Legendary Journeys lately on Netflix and I laugh at all the horrible screened shots... but this... this stands out more than they do. It's like parts of an early, early PS2 game (not even The Thing PS2 game, that had better snow) were overlayed over parts of the film.
Fuck the tension. First off, you can tell right off the bat who is an alien and who isn't. Why? Because they act it. They act overly suspicious or overly evil, they even get little musical signs that yes, they are most certainly an alien. There is no way in hell to be surprised at any of them. Secondly? The alien repeatedly gives up on sneaking and just roams about in alien form picking off people like I'm watching some shitty Syfy monster slasher flick, the kind of thing John Rhys Davies might pop up in and he'd be the only reason you decided to watch it (I'm looking at you, Chupacabra Terror.)
Fuck the continuity. This movie... God... it tries, it really tries to keep itself in line with some things in the 'sequel', but god it fails, it fails so hard. The alien behaves completely differently, and ...god, there's one thing I have to get out there that bugs me. They make this huge, huge deal out of the fact that the alien can't mimic inorganic material. This becomes such a big deal they use "Do you have fillings?" as a test to see if someone's human. Thankfully the Norwegians were apparently testing the sweetest of experimental arctic candies as most of them do have fillings. This'd be fine and dandy as I can't think of anything in the Carpenter Thing that contradicts that off the top of my head, but... then the movie has the alien randomly getting completely perfect condition clothes that look exactly like the clothes the humans were wearing before they got taken over. This despite y'know, we've seen what it does to clothes. Where the fuck is it getting the clothes? Even out in the middle of nowhere, away from the base? Do the Norwegians just like, bury boxes full of backup uniforms everywhere?
On top of that, the fucking ship.. the ship that crashed, stranding the alien at the start of the Carpenter movie? Stranding him for 100,000 years according to this movie and suggested by the Carpenter movie? Well apparently it's actually 100% fine. The alien just went "Hurpa durp I'm gonna go for a walk" and got frozen for 100,000 years. How do we know it's fine? He starts the ship up just fine, turning it into what, on the outside, looks like a fan from Sharper Image, and on the inside looks like, well, a generic space ship with curvy metal walls, random shiny things, and some tube in the middle that is constantly playing Tetris. This ship starts up, and is fine. In fact, the only thing that powers it down is the alien dying, because I guess it was a load-bearing alien.
This 'prequel' was just fucking retarded, and I'd far from recommend it. I wish nothing but the worst towards those that make it, and I'm glad it was both a critical and financial disaster.
