We don’t want to be the guys crying “foul” over remakes, given that there have been a few good ones, so we don’t want to shit on Strike Entertainment’s revamp/remake/whatever of “The Thing” considering it was already a remake of “The Thing From Another World” which itself was derived from a sci-fi short story. Honestly, we want to be on their side, because even if they did put out the intellectually bankrupt “Dawn of the Dead” remake, they also made “Children of Men” and are promising another interesting remake somewhere down the pike with a redo of “They Live,” which holds so so so much promise as a concept.
Their hopefully strong production of “The Thing,” which is actually somewhat of a prequel (more on that in a bit) just added Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the lead as a PhD candidate working with a Norwegian research team in Antarctica. The “Death Proof” and “Final Destination 3” star definitely has the genre pedigree, though supposedly she earned the job by turning heads in the upcoming “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.” The male lead will be played by bruising character actor Joel Edgerton, who plays a helicopter pilot forced to team with Winstead’s young academic whiz. The pair will be working with first-time director Matthijs Van Heijningen.
If all this sounds familiar for “Thing” fans, that’s not a coincidence. The film has actually been reverse-engineered to fit into the beginning of John Carpenter’s moody horror classic, detailing the exploits of the doomed Norwegian research team found by Kurt Russell’s MacReady and his American cohorts. For those of you who haven’t seen it, a large chunk of the beginning of Carpenter’s film finds the cast slowly assembling the truth from their gruesome gory findings, which involves several mutated and un-mutated corpses in the wake of the violent death of a (yes) rogue helicopter pilot trying to kill a dog disguised as the creature.
In an interview at Bloody-Disgusting, co-writer Eric Heisserer talks a little bit about re-writing a draft of the script from “Battlestar Galactica” creator Ron Moore. “It’s a really fascinating way to construct a story because were doing it by autopsy, by examining very, very closely everything we know about the Norwegian camp and about the events that happened there from photos and video footage that’s recovered… from a visit to the base, the director, producer and I have gone through it countless times marking, you know, there’s a fire axe in the door, we have to account for that…were having to reverse engineer it, so those details all matter to us ‘cause it all has to make sense.”
So, for those of you keeping score… first, the prequel to a film with one of the most badass macho casts in history (Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford muthafuckin’ Brimley) is going to star teenyboppin’ cutie Mary Elizabeth Winstead. This also doesn’t work because putting a hottie in a parka will just remind us of “Whiteout” and having a female lead somehow tackle a problem it’s taken more than one macho tough guy to battle brings forth memories of “Alien Vs. Predator.” Second, the film is going to effectively try to eliminate all the suspense of the first half hour or so of one of the greatest horror films in history in order to tell their story. And finally, we know exactly what’s going to happen to these people, so we’re watching one of those prequels where there’s absolutely no mystery as to how it ends up, no?
Filming on the project, which is still being called “The Thing” because it will probably shamelessly ape set pieces from Carpenter’s film but with CGI instead of the all-time greatest ever practical effects, starts on March 15th in Toronto.
Credit to Universal, they've worked out the only way I would ever see a remake of one of my all time favorites is by putting Ramona Flowers in it.
Way to go discrediting a film based on the fact that is has a female lead. I know there are concerns about this project, but how about we give a bit more support to women in film.
This project sounds like it's gonna blow big huge chunks of crap all over the audience. First off, one of the ways the Carpenter remake of The Thing stood out was that it was about a bunch of guys (all guys, mind you) stuck out in a vast frozen desert, holding down the fort as a team of research scientists. All of them had that grizzled look of actually having been in a frozen wasteland for months on end (Carpenter filmed in in Hyder & Stewart, Alaska and the cast got quite chummy with the blue-collar locals).
Sorry but the under-30, CW casting of this "prequel" doesn't cut it for me. I find it hard to believe that fresh-faced kids who look like models do any kind of science under miserable conditions.
"The Thing" in 1982 was believable for the fact that it starred a bunch of old, grizzled guys and not a bunch of cutsie kids pretending to be experienced scientists, mechanics, kennel keepers and flyboys. Since this is a prequel, how does women's lib enter into this conversation?? The Carpenter film showed nothing but male corpses in the Norwegian camp (and hey, the were ALL Norwegian, too… so WTF?!? American kids are suddenly part of the team?!?), and if the US camp was any indication, it was all staffed by guys before the Thing appeared, too (this was 1982, after all).
That's the reality of the South Pole stations, btw…
In a recent Kansas City Star article on McMurdo station, the journalist pointed this out: "Some South Pole realities set in quickly. Consider the dating scene. Of the 58 people at the pole that winter, [out of a 2010 winter population of about 250 people] just 11 were women." In 1982, that was probably far, far less (probably zilch). Not that I want to slag women in film, I don't… but let's be considerate to the story here as Carpenter's film was.
Closely based on the "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr., Carpenter's film carried over most of the 1938 story's characters (again, all men) and closely identified them with their setting… again, a vast, frozen wasteland. These guys all looked like they'd been hanging around the Ross Ice Shelf for too long even before the creature started to create havoc. They were believable (the actors all do a heckuva job… especially Russell and Brimley) and that made the unbelievable events that followed ("you gotta be fucking kidding me") more horrifying.
This reboot/prequel is already doing Carpenter's (and, Campbell's) vision a disservice, but as it's only goal is to make a ton of money quickly on its first weekend (good luck with that, Universal), I really should just let this one go and not get so riled up… It'll be trash, that's a given and that's good enough for this generation of filmgoers apparently.
I'm totally with Xian unless Mary ELizabeth Winstead grows a big fat beard for the role.
This is kinda presuming that everyone dies in the prequel. But it might only just be the Norwegians.
Maybe the cute American chick gets away because The Thing has a 'thing' for her. And so blossoms a wonderful against the odds love story.
I can't wait.