Film of the Book: The Thing
Sep. 28th, 2013 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glitter_n_goreThere have been three feature-length films--the 1951 version with James Arness, the 1982 version with Kurt Russell, and the 2011 version with Mary Elizabeth Winstead--adapted from John W. Campbell's short story, "Who Goes There?" All have enjoyed varying degrees of success, although the best-known is of course the 1982 version directed by John Carpenter. It's also the most faithful to the source material, possessed Huskies, gooey gore-effects and all. What I find fascinating about this story is how long it's endured over the years, and how many people have revisited it. It stays relevent and paranoia-inducing no matter how many incarnations it goes through. I have a theory as to why.
Title: The Thing From Another World, The Thing, Who Goes There?
Author: John W. Campbell, Jr.
Directors: Christian Nyby, John Carpenter, Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr.
Rhoda's First Taste: Carpenter's movie
The basic gist of the story is this: a team of scientists in the Arctic come across what appears to be a spacecraft trapped in the ice, along with a humanoid form flung some distance away from it, as if the inhabitant of the craft crash-landed. Over the course of the next few hours, the alien disappears, then emerges as perfect clones of the other members of the team, killing them off one by one. In varying degrees of nastiness, depending on which version you're watching.
I'm going to focus on the Carpenter movie for the most part here, but first let's break down the other two movies and why I wasn't terribly impressed by them: The 1951 movie is cheesy and stupid, very monster-of-the-week-ish. Normally, that isn't a dealbreaker for me. There's a well-loved corner of my DVD collection dedicated to cheesy and stupid, and it includes things like a boxed-set of the original Godzilla, another boxed-set of Ed Wood movies, and way more vampires movies than can possibly be healthy for me. The problem is that, in creating something for the B-movie cheese-fest, The Thing From Another World bypasses the allegory in Campbell's short story and completely ignores everything about it except the location and the fact that there's a murderous alien around somewhere. There's a time and a place, is all I'm saying.
The 2011 movie is . . . fine. I have nothing against it. It's well shot, well acted, and well scripted, but it doesn't bring anything new to the landscape. It was pitched as a "prequel" of sorts to the 1982 movie, but eh, I'm not sure I buy that. In order for something to be a prequel, it needs to set up the scenario that unfolds later on. In this case, both movies have the exact same set up, go through the exact same motions, and come to the exact same conclusions. It's a rehash of the same story, whether one chronogically came first or not.
So, moving on: the reason the John Carpenter movie strikes such a chord with myself and other fans of horror generally isn't just because the special effects were substantially disgusting and innovative for their time. (This is a mistake non-horror fans make a lot I think--some of us are gore-hounds, yes, but that's not really the basis of the appeal for these things. Just a perk.) It's because of the universally relatable sense of dread that comes from knowing that your friends, colleagues, neighbors, etc. are not who they seem, and out to get you. This idea comes up elsewhere in fiction--like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and several episodes of The Twilight Zone--and in real life, if you can believe it: the reason the Salem witch trials in the 1600s, and later McCarthy's "Red Scare" in the 1960s, were so frightening and became such notable chapters of history is because of that same idea. When a foreign--or alien--threat is perceived, whether the threat is substantiated or not, people have a tendency to suspect the people closest to them and become panicky and paranoid.
Panicky and paranoid is exactly how Kurt Russell and company react to the alien threat that befalls them in The Thing. Yes, this is essentially what happens in the short story as well, but I think the sense of dread and isolation comes across much heavier in the film. The characters are all more distinctive, with memorable personalities and understandable motivations behind their actions--even if said actions include obliterating their communication equipment so the threat will stay contained and not spread to the rest of the world. Also, I think this particular kind of monster-in-the-house set up just lends itself well to a visual medium--you see the dogs acting weird, you see the cold and the darkness, you see the sanity slippage of characters who honestly have no idea which one of them has been taken over by an alien doppelganger. While there's plenty of action and violence, there's a hush to the atmosphere that doesn't come across as effectively in the short story, which is extremely dialogue-heavy.
One thing has always bothered me about this scenario, however: In the story, and all the movies, no one ever attempts to communicate with the alien. And there's really no reason not to. If it can imitate human beings perfectly enough to talk to them in human form before they figure out it's faking, which it does, then why not just ask what it wants? The fact that it crash-landed--and there's only one of them--indicates that it came to the planet by mistake, as opposed to plotting some sort of hostile takeover. Maybe trying to talk to it wouldn't do any good--we don't know. But I've watched enough Doctor Who to know that, if he were there, that's the first thing he'd do. As a matter of fact, if we read this situation as an allegory for the fear of a foreign invasion, or just fear of the Other in real life, then isn't it obvious that a lot of the problems that arise from those situations would be so much easier to fix if we tried talking to each other?
Eh, maybe I'm reading too much into it. But I do wonder why this type of story gets recycled so many times, in so many different mediums, and remains so popular with the masses. Just something to think about.
Title: The Thing From Another World, The Thing, Who Goes There?
Author: John W. Campbell, Jr.
Directors: Christian Nyby, John Carpenter, Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr.
Rhoda's First Taste: Carpenter's movie
The basic gist of the story is this: a team of scientists in the Arctic come across what appears to be a spacecraft trapped in the ice, along with a humanoid form flung some distance away from it, as if the inhabitant of the craft crash-landed. Over the course of the next few hours, the alien disappears, then emerges as perfect clones of the other members of the team, killing them off one by one. In varying degrees of nastiness, depending on which version you're watching.
I'm going to focus on the Carpenter movie for the most part here, but first let's break down the other two movies and why I wasn't terribly impressed by them: The 1951 movie is cheesy and stupid, very monster-of-the-week-ish. Normally, that isn't a dealbreaker for me. There's a well-loved corner of my DVD collection dedicated to cheesy and stupid, and it includes things like a boxed-set of the original Godzilla, another boxed-set of Ed Wood movies, and way more vampires movies than can possibly be healthy for me. The problem is that, in creating something for the B-movie cheese-fest, The Thing From Another World bypasses the allegory in Campbell's short story and completely ignores everything about it except the location and the fact that there's a murderous alien around somewhere. There's a time and a place, is all I'm saying.
The 2011 movie is . . . fine. I have nothing against it. It's well shot, well acted, and well scripted, but it doesn't bring anything new to the landscape. It was pitched as a "prequel" of sorts to the 1982 movie, but eh, I'm not sure I buy that. In order for something to be a prequel, it needs to set up the scenario that unfolds later on. In this case, both movies have the exact same set up, go through the exact same motions, and come to the exact same conclusions. It's a rehash of the same story, whether one chronogically came first or not.
So, moving on: the reason the John Carpenter movie strikes such a chord with myself and other fans of horror generally isn't just because the special effects were substantially disgusting and innovative for their time. (This is a mistake non-horror fans make a lot I think--some of us are gore-hounds, yes, but that's not really the basis of the appeal for these things. Just a perk.) It's because of the universally relatable sense of dread that comes from knowing that your friends, colleagues, neighbors, etc. are not who they seem, and out to get you. This idea comes up elsewhere in fiction--like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers and several episodes of The Twilight Zone--and in real life, if you can believe it: the reason the Salem witch trials in the 1600s, and later McCarthy's "Red Scare" in the 1960s, were so frightening and became such notable chapters of history is because of that same idea. When a foreign--or alien--threat is perceived, whether the threat is substantiated or not, people have a tendency to suspect the people closest to them and become panicky and paranoid.
Panicky and paranoid is exactly how Kurt Russell and company react to the alien threat that befalls them in The Thing. Yes, this is essentially what happens in the short story as well, but I think the sense of dread and isolation comes across much heavier in the film. The characters are all more distinctive, with memorable personalities and understandable motivations behind their actions--even if said actions include obliterating their communication equipment so the threat will stay contained and not spread to the rest of the world. Also, I think this particular kind of monster-in-the-house set up just lends itself well to a visual medium--you see the dogs acting weird, you see the cold and the darkness, you see the sanity slippage of characters who honestly have no idea which one of them has been taken over by an alien doppelganger. While there's plenty of action and violence, there's a hush to the atmosphere that doesn't come across as effectively in the short story, which is extremely dialogue-heavy.
One thing has always bothered me about this scenario, however: In the story, and all the movies, no one ever attempts to communicate with the alien. And there's really no reason not to. If it can imitate human beings perfectly enough to talk to them in human form before they figure out it's faking, which it does, then why not just ask what it wants? The fact that it crash-landed--and there's only one of them--indicates that it came to the planet by mistake, as opposed to plotting some sort of hostile takeover. Maybe trying to talk to it wouldn't do any good--we don't know. But I've watched enough Doctor Who to know that, if he were there, that's the first thing he'd do. As a matter of fact, if we read this situation as an allegory for the fear of a foreign invasion, or just fear of the Other in real life, then isn't it obvious that a lot of the problems that arise from those situations would be so much easier to fix if we tried talking to each other?
Eh, maybe I'm reading too much into it. But I do wonder why this type of story gets recycled so many times, in so many different mediums, and remains so popular with the masses. Just something to think about.