Anyone care for a The Thing thread...

Anyone care for a The Thing thread? I just finished reading the novelization after finding one for a more or less reasonable price, and I gotta say it's kind of... drastically different. If anyone out there's a big fan, you've gotta hunt down a copy

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thething.wikia.com/wiki/The_Thing_from_Another_World_(comic)
huffpost.com/us/entry/us_56883db0e4b014efe0daaaff
youtube.com/watch?v=1HIgZ8kGUT8
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Nah, there's nothing left to discuss about it. Childs was The Thing, it was gasoline, etc etc.

That's one of the differences in the adaptation, the makeshift pub was one of the structures more or less standing with some bottles of booze still around that Macready was downing. I know it's not actually cannon but it does throw the ending more into question.

Plus instead of just throwing a stick of dynamite at Blair, he plows the tractor through the compound while downing a bottle of whiskey daring the Thing to come get him. Much better ending IMO

but no kurt rusell in the book desu senpai

novelization? what?

i read the original story by John Campbell, and the film was remarkably close to that text, even down to the names of the characters.

Did it take anyone else way longer than it should have to realize the poster depicts someone in a parka and not an old timey diving suit?

The ending is much better if they're both human and that gasoline theory is stupid.

I wouldn't say the novella is drastically different. It's mostly the ending that was significantly changed in the Carpenter version. Otherwise it's pretty faithful.

Nigga are you retarded? That's what makes The Thing so good. Kurt Russell did everything he could and he will only end up a "thing" in the end.

That's true horror. No feel good ending.

Them both being human would be far from a feel good ending. I like to think they're both human but can't trust each other. Plus it's all futile anyway since no rescue is coming.

Yeah, Alan Dean Foster wrote a novelization based on the original screenplay, so there's quite a lot of difference. Like the order of who dies off and when, and whole sequences that are absent from the film (going after the surviving sled dogs that escape, repairing the outpost generator after it's sabotaged before the all freeze) and the ending is almost completely different. Plus it goes into some detail of why exactly each character is even there, even Plamer, who was actually apparently Macready's assistant and a back up pilot.

Nope

No way man, I really feel like it different enough to mention. Maybe 'drastic' is a bit of an over-reach but it a lot different than most reviews led me to believe. Which I kind of thought was a weird, unspoken idea to not spoil the book. But F that, if people know it's different they're more apt to try to track it down and read it

Just to clarify, are you talking about the original novella 'Who Goes There?' or is there a novelization of the 1982 movie that I'm not aware of?

Technically both endings are wrong because the comic sequels

Are they any good?

Damn, reallly? Fuck that. I would rather have them all die and let The Thing infest the world once being discovered.

There's a novella that's been out of print since the movie came out, pretty much. The copy I picked up from eBay is in surprising condition for being 35 years old.

Oh cool. I wonder if the differences come from it being based on an earlier draft of the screenplay or something.

How do people come to this conclusion that Childs was a thing? I remember someone saying something about not being able to see his breath.

I haven't been able to read them myself, but I also haven't looked very hard to find them.

And being early 90s comic adaptations of a horror movie from 10 years prior, no I'm betting they're not very good. But here's the synopsis:

thething.wikia.com/wiki/The_Thing_from_Another_World_(comic)

Also the video game confirmed Macready survived anyway

They get found by some freighter ship, or something and then the thing gets exposed to the jungle. It's been a while since I've read them.

Not him, btw.

Who destroys the blood supplies?

It's all mostly circumstantial.
He left his post because (he says) he saw Blair outside. He may be wearing a different jacket, I don't remember if it was just the light making it look different though. Many people say that you can't see his breath but it's definitely there, it's just hard to see.

Yeah I'm pretty sure that's pretty much the reason for the differences. I really do prefer the ending in the novella, though.

A few reasons. The biggest one is that he was gone for so long before suddenly just showing up. Also the breath thing, but I feel like that was more a flaw in the camera/lighting more than anything. Also someone came out recently and said that in the blood test scene the subtle trick they used was to put lighting on the eyes of everyone that was human, with Palmer's eyes being in shadow to make the audience unconsciously off put. Some people then claimed that in the end Macready has lighting in his eyes where Childs doesn't. And finally the prevailing theory was that the only bottles they had left were molotovs, and you never actually saw Mac drink from the bottle he had before he gave it to Childs, so "clearly" he gave the Childs Thing gasoline to drink and it didn't seem to notice, with Mac having the resigned laugh after he take a drink

Also that after leaving his post, he's gone for a good amount of time so while off screen there's plenty of time for him to be Thing'd.

Never says, but it would have had to have been Norris, Palmer, or Blair. Everyone else was human or dead before.

Could have been the dog .

In the book Childs is when them when they go check on Blair, and the guide rope gets cut on the way back with Childs getting lost in the storm. Then the Thing ends up chasing Macready from the same direction Childs was in so it could have gotten him then

So what exactly happened after Mac noticed the light on in his shack?

Interesting. I've heard that John Carpenter considers the 2002 video game sequel to be canon. In the game, Childs is found dead of hypothermia and MacReady is missing.

The best ending is them dying without even being sure of anything.

I mean that's pretty much what the ending is.

Who cares? The movie is the movie, and it ends where it ends. Fuck "canon" bullshit.

Exactly, yet you still get all these retarded threads about whether Childs was The Thing or whatever retarded theories are there. The reason is left ambiguous is because it's supposed to be left that way.

Kurt Russell agrees.
huffpost.com/us/entry/us_56883db0e4b014efe0daaaff

We were talking about whether or not Childs was a Thing. If Carpenter considers the game to be canon and Childs is dead in it, that sheds a bit of light. IDGAF about the game either.

Are you asking about the movie, the book, or in general?

But again, the game came many years after the movie and Carpenter just likes videogames, so he gave them their ok, just like he was ok with Metal Gear Solid taking stuff from Escape From NY. He gets free games and free money (in case of The Thing). He obviously doesn't give a shit.
The movie is what it is and that's all there is to it.

no

Oh sorry, the movie. That's the only point wher the viewer loses track of Macready.

Isn't it kind of boring to not even speculate on a story that's intentionally left ambiguous for audience speculation?

carpenter tweeted that one of them was the thing

I mean we pretty much have to just take at face value that Nauls cut the line and Macready scrambled back to the outpost somehow, right?

There's nothing more boring than all the pedestrian speculations you can read on these threads.
Uncertainty is great, you need to learn to embrace it instead of forcing closure.

Kek. In my defense, I was a little kid and was just going by the cover I saw at video stores. It looked like a guy in a diving suit to me for some reason.

Must've been MacReady since, in the canon video game sequel, Childs is found dead and Mac is missing.

...

Again, at the end of the day, the movie is what it is, read Kurt Russell's statements on the matter.
Whatever Carpenter said on twitter is not important because he didn't put it in the movie.

Actually, there's nothing more fedora than to force movies into bullshit theories. If a movie is left ambiguous, accept its ambiguity instead of coming up with an explanation that kills it.

mac is flying the helicopter at some point in the vidya. but is the game truly cannon to carpenter's original intent?

For some unknown reason, Sup Forums is obsessed with stupid 'it was all in their head/they were crazy the whole time' fan theories. I don't get it.

I honestly have no idea. I'm just going off of what I've heard and mostly just fucking around right now.

i appreciate you, user.

I just hope they're all teenagers, otherwise it's just fucking embarrasing.

Thanks, I appreciate you too.

You know why its left ambiguous? In the event they make a shit ton of money they can make a sequel, its to benefit the studio, not fans. Its always about money

What kind of a stupid retard are you? The ending of The Thing is not sequel bait, it's the ending that makes more sense for the narrative of the film. It works to make the feeling of paranoia even bigger since it doesn't give you an answer about whether one of them was The Thing or not.

Been rewatching the Thing almsot daily lately. Well, less rewawtching and more relistening to it on the phone, while going to work and going home.

Its surprisingly comfy.

~

I think the ending should be kept ambiguous - Childs could or could not be a Thing, the real theme of the ending was distrust.

The real ambiguity, for me, was when Blair got assimilated, and which Thing was responsible for the machinations/conspiracies throughout the movie. It could have been Blair-thing that ruined the blood and killed Fuchs, but it could have also been someone else.

Sure fella, sure

i like this guys idea for a thing sequel:
youtube.com/watch?v=1HIgZ8kGUT8

Well Carpenter did shoot an alternate ending with a 'happy' ending but never released it. Macready gets picked up and passes a blood test, so the option of wrapping it up was on the table.

Directors of movies with ambiguous/unhappy endings shoot more conventional endings all the time to cover their asses in case the studio throws a fit or something. Not everybody's willing to go through what Terry Gilliam went through with Brazil (which still got a shitty happy ending edit anyway). Carpenter's choice was obviously the one that stayed in the film.

Brazil had a happy ending...? Didn't he get lobotomized?

Yeah, that's the original ending. In the US, it got released with an alternate happy ending that got shitted on by everybody, including Gilliam himself and it's pretty much forgotten by now.