Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog
MTV has gotten their hands on a clip from Universal’s upcoming remake/prequel/whatever of The Thing, and, to be honest, I don’t have much hope for this being a good film after seeing it.
Our own Michelle Hassenstab posted her brief thoughts on Hollywood’s insistence on remakes, and I gotta say I’m at the point where I accept remakes as a necessary evil. Some remakes can be excellent (technically, John Carpenter’s Thing is a remake as well) and some are terrible, but more often then not it depends on what the filmmakers behind the remake are bringing to the table.
I see no problem with using an established property or idea to explore new ground, just as John Carpenter used his Thing to explore humanity’s self destructive, untrustworthy nature. However, this remake seems to be the opposite: an easy cash-in on a vaguely known title so Universal can make a quick buck. This clip proves it.
How, you may ask?
Well, let’s look at that clip again. The alien being is frozen in ice, there’s a cheap scare, and then an explosion followed by a CGI creature screaming and wriggling around.
Compare that to the original, where we were lead to believe the creature was slowly removed from the ice and rehabilitated before killing the Norwegian crew. I know this is a nerdy discussion of a movie many haven’t seen,* but that abuse of trust plays into the whole point behind Carpenter’s film. This new production seems to have missed the point entirely.
Oh well.
The Thing hits theaters on October 16th
*Although, come on people, it’s on Netflix Instant and also a mere $10 on BluRay!
Yeah… that clip of how The Thing comes out of the ice is unbelievable.. not a good ‘cool, unbelievable!’… but in a bad ‘seriously not cool, unbelievable’.
I saw the original ‘remake’ that is John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’. And wow, did that cheesy clip solidify why I am not going to see this ‘thing’.