Remakes in Hollywood are commonplace,
but they've ALWAYS been common place. Now when a remake is announced,
a lot of people bitches and moans about it, about how it wasn't
needed or it was taking away from the original. Honestly, I never
bought that excuse. Remakes do not take away from the original movie
anymore than a bad sequel does. After all, there are a ton of movies
that we assume are the 'originals' but are actually themselves
remakes. Such is the case for today's movie, 'The Thing'. And no, I'm
not talking about 1982's John Carpenter's classic... I'm talking
about the recent 2011 remake/prequel movie. Before I begin, SHOULD
the movie have been made? Well, no. It wasn't needed. John
Carpenter's The Thing is one of those movies that are just perfect
for me. (Someday I should compile a list of movies that I actually
consider to be of high quality and art. Carpenter's movie would be on
it.) However, I could say with complete confidence that 90% of the
movies created didn't need to be made. And remakes are going to be
made, whether it's for the best or not. So in the end, all you can
hope for is that the movie can stand on it's own and not try to copy
the original, or try and complement the first movie. I pretty much
feel that the '11 Thing movie does the latter.
The '11 Thing movie was given a lot of
shit from critics for being an unnecessary remake or prequel, which
had the same damn plot as the '82 movie. The thing is, I'm glad it
did. You see, if you're going to do a remake... This is the best kind
of way to do it. It was already established in the first movie that
there was another incident that occurred at a Norwegian site. In the
'82 movie, when Copper and MacReady fly to the site, we're never
given a full picture of what happened there. There's holes in the
walls, the place is burnt down, a dude is there who killed himself
with a razor, and his blood was frozen mid-stream... What the hell
happened there? Well, we KNOW what happened. The monster happened.
And there is a really good argument saying that we should not know
what happen. It makes the first film much creepier and isolating, if
we're sitting here thinking “Who were these 10-12 people?” But I
have to say, after seeing the '11 film... It really DOES make it a
lot creepier. That helicopter gunman in the beginning wasn't some
nameless soul... It was Lars. That poor son of a bitch with the slit
wrist isn't an unnamed ghost anymore... It's Colin. That two-headed
burnt corpse wasn't just some random monster... It was Edvard and
Adam. Now we know these people, we know who they were and what they
were like. And personally, I think it doesn't just compliment the '82
Thing, but now makes it a lot more unsettling. There's a lot to
appreciate about how director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. directed
the film. Instead of shooting the film digitally, he chose to film it
with anamorphic cameras, to better compliment the original movie. The
movie was written at a slower pace, and it feels that way. It
honestly feels like a 1980's horror movie. (And I love those!) He
really strove to replicate the Norwegian encampment from the '82
movie, explaining all these little details, and the do a good job on
it. (How did that ax get in the wall? Oh, Carter put it there!)
With the '11 Thing movie, it was
obvious to anyone who actually watched it that these guys loved the
original Carpenter movie. They weren't trying to outdo the '82 movie,
but compliment it... If you watch these movies back to back, it's
bloody obvious. A comment right from an IGN interview, involving the
producers from the movie:
“...the two convinced Universal to create a prequel instead of a remake, as they felt that remaking Carpenter's film would be like "paint(ing) a moustache on the Mona Lisa". Eric Newman explained; "I'd be the first to say no one should ever try to do Jaws again and I certainly wouldn't want to see anyone remake The Exorcist... And we really felt the same way about The Thing. It's a great film. But once we realized there was a new story to tell, with the same characters and the same world, but from a very different point of view, we took it as a challenge. It's the story about the guys who are just ghosts in Carpenter's movie - they're already dead. But having Universal give us a chance to tell their story was irresistible.”
And I have to agree. Like I said
earlier, I think it adds to it. If you don't like it, then it's
okay... It doesn't detract from the first movie at all.
Now of course the movie isn't perfect.
It's got it's good shares of flaws. In it's efforts to be that
complementary to the first movie, they fail to establish themselves
as their own movie. A few times too many, they end up repeating some
key plot points from the Carpenter movie, as opposed to going into
their own direction with it. And there are times that the special
effect just looks... Well... Bad. And I'm understanding of the
situation, but I just wonder if there may have been another method to
pulling it off.
A lot of complaints people have about
the movie is the addition of computer generated effects in the
movie... But the truth is, the director and producer chose to use a
lot more practical effects than we think were used. Yes, when they
used digital, it was pretty obvious, and I'm not too thrilled about
how the two-headed monster moved about. But here's my thoughts on CGI
verses Practical: No one ever complains about CGI when it's
Transformers, Avatar or Avengers. They only complain when it DOESN'T
have a billion dollar budget. I hear internet critics praising
practical effects all the time, and for good reason. When it's done
well, it looks real and convincing... Just like CGI. But you know
what? When practical effects aren't well done... Which a lot of the
older horror movies weren't... It looks just as fake as bad CGI. I
remember James Rolfe praising the 1988 remake of the Blob usages of
practical effects as opposed to CGI effects it would have probably
used if it had been made years later. And yes, I won't argue with the
man, because he' truly knows his stuff... But even as a kid, I never
once felt like the practical effects of the Blob was 'real'. Because
whenever they had to interact with people, it was obviously
blue/green screened. And me personally, I feel that's just as bad as
low budget CGI. Maybe worse, I dunno. I'm not too sure why I'm
supposed to condemn one method that looks crappy, but praise another
one that also looks crappy. Nostalgia? Now the '82 Thing was given a
lot of praise for it's special effects, and the way they pulled it
off. And rightfully so, as it was really well done. And yes, the '11
Thing did take advantage of CGI effects for the monsters, but it's
nowhere near as prominent as some of the internet critics would have
you believe. It was used mainly in places where it would have been
financially unfeasible to do so with practical effects. I think
people often forget that a movie budgets are very real things. We're
so used to hearing about directors spending $250 million dollars on a
movie, that we don't realize that for all the James Camerons of the
world, most directors have a very limited budget to pull this movie
off with. The '11 Thing only had a 30 million dollar budget. Yeah, I
know that 30 million is still a shitload of money, and I could do so
very much with even a half a percent of that. But in Hollywood,
that's the equivalent of a dinner at Cracker Barrel. It's higher
quality food than McDonald's, but it's not exactly Outback Steakhouse
either. But you can still get some pretty damn good food there. (I
love their chicken and dumplings!) A lot of movies out there are
actually the Cracker Barrels of movies. And they have to make do with
a decent storytelling. Sometimes, in the cases of District 9 or Pan's
Labyrinth, it's done perfectly. But as movie going audiences, we
often start to do unfair comparisons. “Movie X could do this on a
smaller budget, so why can't Movie Y?” Well, why doesn't all full
color webcomics look as good as other full color webcomics? Why isn't
one musician as good as another musician? I am a strong believer that
no one goes out of their way to produce crap. It doesn't mean it
doesn't happen... Just that I don't believe that they're trying to
purposely make it bad. Sometimes... You just have a bad idea and
you're so close to it, that you can't see it. Hey, even Ridley Scott
eventually made Hannibal.
One of the biggest problems with the
'11 Thing movie is actually on the characters. Kate Lloyd, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead... I just
never really was able to buy her character's decent into paranoia or
even some of the leaps in scientific logic she makes. Granted the
first movie had this issue as well, where I never was able to buy
Blair's sudden snap of sanity either. She seems like a decent
actress, but here, it just seems like sometimes she's either going
through the motions, and other times she's really into the role. It's
kinda polarizing. And I can't be certain if it's her, or if it's the
script. Reason I say the script, is that some of the Norwegian crew,
we never really get a sense of who they are. Some of them, we totally
do. But there's a lot of nameless folks in this movie that never
really get developed. (Unlike in Carpenter's movie, where we got to
know who all eleven of those guys were.) And that may be another
problem, which I think hurts the tension in this movie. In the
original Thing movie, while we got to know and care about the
characters of Site 31... We also knew that they were basically a
bunch of jerks. MacReady not exactly a cuddly individual, Childs has
major anger issues, Garry's a dick... There was tension there,
because no one really liked each other in the first place. They were
kind of alienated before the monster showed up. With the Norwegian
crew, other than Dr. Sandor Halvorson, who's pretty much an arrogant
dick... They all seem like pretty cool guys. Like if you had to be
stuck with a bunch of folks in a snowstorm in Antarctica, they're the
people who you'd want to be stuck with. And that does hurt the
tension some. But I suppose that's kind of the point, as it IS a
different movie.
So is the 2011 Thing movie perfect?
Hell no. It really does feel less like it's own movie, and more like
a set-up. Did it really need to be made? Not really, but I could say
that of most movies. But am I glad it was? Yeah, I am glad it was
made. I did enjoy it, and enjoyed it enough that I bought the DVD of
it. It's not the greatest movie ever, and if you had to watch one of the Thing movies, I'd recommend the '82 or even the 1951 classic film. It's generally a fun movie that doesn't have any noticeable plot
holes. Yeah, it's essentially the same movie made over again. It's better to come up with a new story, but if you gotta do a remake of a previously made movie, this is probably
the better formula to follow. Some will like it and some won't. You mileage may vary, but for what it's worth... I liked it.
STOOGE RATING
Joe Besser
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