You Gotta Be Fucking Kidding
Oct. 17th, 2011 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficI'm a huge fan of The Thing. The ending is perfect, the beginning is perfect, the story has been told. Naturally, the idea of a remake, a sequel, or a videogame tie-in sounded like a crock of shit. Which is why I was a little bit interested in the idea of a prequel centering around the unseen carnage that killed the Norwegians, as The Thing 2011 is. It was at least a more intriguing idea than, say, casting someone from The Vampires Diaries as R.J. MacReady 2.0, even if it's never a good sign when your prequel is covering the story that the creators of the original film found too boring to go into. I mean, what's next, a Die Hard movie that covers John McClane's days as a cop before he started exclusively killing fake terrorists?
License and registration please… yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!
And as it turns out, the exact same thing that happened to Outpost 31 happened to the Norwegians, which was the entire point of the scene in the original movie. There was an anti-Thing test, flamethrowers, someone's chest turning into a giant mouth, people's body parts dropping off and becoming monsters… in fact, that brings me to the remake's most controversial aspect, the CGI. It's not awful, it's just… there. You know it's fake, I know it's fake, yet there it is. Maybe you could get away with that in Skyline 2: Sky Harder, but in a movie that's aspiring to hold the jock of a landmark achievement in practical effects?
I actually read an interview where the director said "hey, Rob Bottin had a whole year to do his practical effects, we only had three months, cut us some slack." Is there anyone who doesn't think "Well then, maybe you shouldn't have made the movie?" It's not like there was a sudden clamor for more thing, unless we're counting True Blood fan boards and they're not talking about the same thing. (Penises.) The fact is, for a movie with thirty years of technical advancement on the original, The Thing 2011 doesn't have effects that look as good. That's embarrassing.
It comes down to a weird paradox, where CGI makes this new team of story-retellers both too creative and not creative enough. They use the freedom of CGI to their detriment, giving the audience lots of clear, full-on looks at effects that can't stand the scrutiny. There's one monster that runs around for most of the second act that's entirely CGI. I couldn't help but think that if they used some discipline and put a guy in a suit, the entire sequence would probably benefit.
Yet, for all the freedom they're afforded, the CGI doesn't really do much that can't be accomplished with practical effects. The filmmakers have The Thing doing the same tricks he did in The Thing 1982. Like instead of a chaotic, cancerous freak of nature, The Thing has a bunch of presets keyed to the numbers on its keyboard, like weapons in Half-Life.
Use chest mouth on the enemies' weak spots for massive damage!
And even if The Thing 1982 wasn't a character study, you could at least tell the cast apart. The Thing 2011 just has a bunch of Norwegians. Perhaps sensing this, the script throws in some college co-eds and American soldiers, just for kicks. No, not kidding.
Speaking of co-eds, let's talk feminism. Now The Thing 1982 – I hate that they couldn't come up with a decent subtitle to identify the goddamn prequel as a prequel instead of a remake – had an all-male cast, so its feminism score is N/A. I actually respect this creative decision a lot more than shoehorning in a female character just to look good in a tanktop and have an (ack!) romance subplot. You can see how it affects the tension to have a bunch of guys crowded together in a remote outpost, even before an alien starts eating people. The Thing 2011, of course, makes the lead character a woman.
Now, that's smart. Finally, something to set it apart from 1982 besides subtitles. Going in, I thought maybe The Thing 2011 would use this to give the story a subtext the original didn't have. Maybe there'd be a "yellow wallpaper" scenario where Kate figures out what the Thing is, but no one believes her. She sabotages the vehicles and gets locked up, and while she's out of action, the Thing takes over most of the Norwegians, so when people trust her, it's too late. There's all-out craziness as the minority of still-humans try to stay alive against a Thing that isn't hunted, but hunter. Right there, a very different story from the original.
Or there could be a rape subtext. Hear me out. What's the big fear when it comes to women? Who is this guy I'm with? Can I trust him if we're alone? Is he nice or is he going to turn into an abuser as soon as he gets some alcohol in him? You can transfer that nearly verbatim to The Thing. Can I be alone with this person or are they a predator? And The Thing 2011 does play with this, a little. Kate is lured into an isolated location by someone, then when they're alone, her supposed friend turns into a monster. Only… it's the one other woman in the cast. So if the audience is afraid of lesbian rape, this would be really disquieting.
I'm not making a joke about lesbian rape. Here's a Corgi.
The only acknowledgment this pretty obvious theme gets is a joke about Kate being alone with a bunch of lonely Norwegians. Then that entire subtext gets dropped. I'm not asking to see Ramona Flowers get violated on a pinball machine, but they could've taken the story in an interesting direction and even had a positive message. Forever after seeing The Thing, maybe guys would start asking themselves "if there were a shape-changing alien monster on the loose, would I be acting in a way to make this nice lady suspect I'm one of them?"
The movie also introduces a dickish scientist, sort of like the antagonist in the Howard Hawks' version, The Thing From Another World. If they weren't going to play with gender dynamics, they could've at least done something interesting here. Maybe he's convinced the Thing is benevolent and injects himself with some cells from it to get its knowledge. You could have a scene of him slowly being taken over, translating the Thing's motivations to our heroes in a fashion. There's a risk of it coming off lame, but that's the kind of risk a movie like this has to take if it's not going to be pointless. A follow-up should expand the story, not just regurgitate it. There should be something to match the Alien Queen in Aliens or the Shriekers in Tremors 2.
I'm a little surprised Google turned up the actual monster on this image search and not pornography. Surprised and disappointed.
Okay, so the prequel doesn't do anything to expand the mythology or present a new theme. It's just a monster movie. Well, some of the effects are good and I like the dynamics of the filling test, where they can rule out who isn't a Thing but not determine who is. So, grading on a curve, let's take a look at our heroes, then and now.
In The Thing 1982, we have R.J. MacReady, played by Kurt Russell. Look at this motherfucker. Take a moment, look directly down, and tell me what you see.
Guy looks like a badass, right? Yet he's not super-handsome, he looks like a guy you might run into on an Arctic research base. But he's also a well-rounded character. He's introduced as a loner, yet he shows compassion. He makes mistakes, yet the camp comes to rely on him. Now, how's our new heroine? Surely, she's a strong female character?
Don't mind me, I'm just another twenty-something scientist who manages to look like an underwear model when I'm not being so brilliant that I'm the first choice to examine an alien lifeform.
Uh-huh. Let's go back to The Thing 1982. What does a scientist, one who's not even that brilliant, but who just happens to be on hand when an alien is discovered, look like?
I'm an underwear model too!
And what's that? Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Kate Lloyd never shows any character growth, let alone a distinctive personality? She's just a rip-off of Ripley by people who have no clue what made Ripley great? Her big characterization is that her professor is a bit of dick to her, and then he turns into the final boss and she blows him up, without so much as a pithy remark relating to how she dislikes him (hey, if you're going to pander, fucking pander)?
Well. It sounds as if R.J. MacReady is a stronger character, and Kate Lloyd is weaker. How can The Thing 2011 have a female character in the lead and yet be less feminist than a movie with no women in it?
License and registration please… yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!
And as it turns out, the exact same thing that happened to Outpost 31 happened to the Norwegians, which was the entire point of the scene in the original movie. There was an anti-Thing test, flamethrowers, someone's chest turning into a giant mouth, people's body parts dropping off and becoming monsters… in fact, that brings me to the remake's most controversial aspect, the CGI. It's not awful, it's just… there. You know it's fake, I know it's fake, yet there it is. Maybe you could get away with that in Skyline 2: Sky Harder, but in a movie that's aspiring to hold the jock of a landmark achievement in practical effects?
I actually read an interview where the director said "hey, Rob Bottin had a whole year to do his practical effects, we only had three months, cut us some slack." Is there anyone who doesn't think "Well then, maybe you shouldn't have made the movie?" It's not like there was a sudden clamor for more thing, unless we're counting True Blood fan boards and they're not talking about the same thing. (Penises.) The fact is, for a movie with thirty years of technical advancement on the original, The Thing 2011 doesn't have effects that look as good. That's embarrassing.
It comes down to a weird paradox, where CGI makes this new team of story-retellers both too creative and not creative enough. They use the freedom of CGI to their detriment, giving the audience lots of clear, full-on looks at effects that can't stand the scrutiny. There's one monster that runs around for most of the second act that's entirely CGI. I couldn't help but think that if they used some discipline and put a guy in a suit, the entire sequence would probably benefit.
Yet, for all the freedom they're afforded, the CGI doesn't really do much that can't be accomplished with practical effects. The filmmakers have The Thing doing the same tricks he did in The Thing 1982. Like instead of a chaotic, cancerous freak of nature, The Thing has a bunch of presets keyed to the numbers on its keyboard, like weapons in Half-Life.
Use chest mouth on the enemies' weak spots for massive damage!
And even if The Thing 1982 wasn't a character study, you could at least tell the cast apart. The Thing 2011 just has a bunch of Norwegians. Perhaps sensing this, the script throws in some college co-eds and American soldiers, just for kicks. No, not kidding.
Speaking of co-eds, let's talk feminism. Now The Thing 1982 – I hate that they couldn't come up with a decent subtitle to identify the goddamn prequel as a prequel instead of a remake – had an all-male cast, so its feminism score is N/A. I actually respect this creative decision a lot more than shoehorning in a female character just to look good in a tanktop and have an (ack!) romance subplot. You can see how it affects the tension to have a bunch of guys crowded together in a remote outpost, even before an alien starts eating people. The Thing 2011, of course, makes the lead character a woman.
Now, that's smart. Finally, something to set it apart from 1982 besides subtitles. Going in, I thought maybe The Thing 2011 would use this to give the story a subtext the original didn't have. Maybe there'd be a "yellow wallpaper" scenario where Kate figures out what the Thing is, but no one believes her. She sabotages the vehicles and gets locked up, and while she's out of action, the Thing takes over most of the Norwegians, so when people trust her, it's too late. There's all-out craziness as the minority of still-humans try to stay alive against a Thing that isn't hunted, but hunter. Right there, a very different story from the original.
Or there could be a rape subtext. Hear me out. What's the big fear when it comes to women? Who is this guy I'm with? Can I trust him if we're alone? Is he nice or is he going to turn into an abuser as soon as he gets some alcohol in him? You can transfer that nearly verbatim to The Thing. Can I be alone with this person or are they a predator? And The Thing 2011 does play with this, a little. Kate is lured into an isolated location by someone, then when they're alone, her supposed friend turns into a monster. Only… it's the one other woman in the cast. So if the audience is afraid of lesbian rape, this would be really disquieting.
I'm not making a joke about lesbian rape. Here's a Corgi.
The only acknowledgment this pretty obvious theme gets is a joke about Kate being alone with a bunch of lonely Norwegians. Then that entire subtext gets dropped. I'm not asking to see Ramona Flowers get violated on a pinball machine, but they could've taken the story in an interesting direction and even had a positive message. Forever after seeing The Thing, maybe guys would start asking themselves "if there were a shape-changing alien monster on the loose, would I be acting in a way to make this nice lady suspect I'm one of them?"
The movie also introduces a dickish scientist, sort of like the antagonist in the Howard Hawks' version, The Thing From Another World. If they weren't going to play with gender dynamics, they could've at least done something interesting here. Maybe he's convinced the Thing is benevolent and injects himself with some cells from it to get its knowledge. You could have a scene of him slowly being taken over, translating the Thing's motivations to our heroes in a fashion. There's a risk of it coming off lame, but that's the kind of risk a movie like this has to take if it's not going to be pointless. A follow-up should expand the story, not just regurgitate it. There should be something to match the Alien Queen in Aliens or the Shriekers in Tremors 2.
I'm a little surprised Google turned up the actual monster on this image search and not pornography. Surprised and disappointed.
Okay, so the prequel doesn't do anything to expand the mythology or present a new theme. It's just a monster movie. Well, some of the effects are good and I like the dynamics of the filling test, where they can rule out who isn't a Thing but not determine who is. So, grading on a curve, let's take a look at our heroes, then and now.
In The Thing 1982, we have R.J. MacReady, played by Kurt Russell. Look at this motherfucker. Take a moment, look directly down, and tell me what you see.
Guy looks like a badass, right? Yet he's not super-handsome, he looks like a guy you might run into on an Arctic research base. But he's also a well-rounded character. He's introduced as a loner, yet he shows compassion. He makes mistakes, yet the camp comes to rely on him. Now, how's our new heroine? Surely, she's a strong female character?
Don't mind me, I'm just another twenty-something scientist who manages to look like an underwear model when I'm not being so brilliant that I'm the first choice to examine an alien lifeform.
Uh-huh. Let's go back to The Thing 1982. What does a scientist, one who's not even that brilliant, but who just happens to be on hand when an alien is discovered, look like?
I'm an underwear model too!
And what's that? Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Kate Lloyd never shows any character growth, let alone a distinctive personality? She's just a rip-off of Ripley by people who have no clue what made Ripley great? Her big characterization is that her professor is a bit of dick to her, and then he turns into the final boss and she blows him up, without so much as a pithy remark relating to how she dislikes him (hey, if you're going to pander, fucking pander)?
Well. It sounds as if R.J. MacReady is a stronger character, and Kate Lloyd is weaker. How can The Thing 2011 have a female character in the lead and yet be less feminist than a movie with no women in it?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-10-17 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 09:55 am (UTC)I just lost twenty minutes of work time looking up videos of Corgis. Thanks a lot.
>Surely, she's a strong female character?
Apparently yes, but in the worst sense of the phrase. Strong Female character instead of Strong female Character.
>Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Kate Lloyd
I don't think that's exactly fair. Winstead can act, but it takes an excellent actor to make gold out of straw. Not everyone is Tom Hanks, or Cary Grant, or Megan Fox, you know.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 01:16 pm (UTC)