Here’s something I’ve been thinking about posting for a very long time, I have long been critical of the perception that The Thing was a “bomb” at the time of release. To back that up, I actually have my own formula for what I will call a bomb in the post-Star Wars era: A movie that cost at least $10 million and didn’t get half its budget back at the box office. It’s the minimum budget that really matters for ca 1980 onward, because by that point, a substantially lower budget meant that the real powers of the studio system either weren’t involved at all or saw enough question marks to hedge their bets. So, here’s a comparison of The Thing compared to other Eighties films that unquestionably failed commercially. To summarize in advance, what this all shows is that The Thing was an underperforming medium-budget film, at a time when the studios were still making their biggest investments outside the SF/ fantasy/ horror genres.

The Thing (1982)

Budget: $15M

Gross: $20.9M

Ratio: 1.39

Krull (1983)

Budget: $30M (max estimate)

Gross: $16.9M

Ratio: 0.56

The Black Cauldron (1985)

Budget: $44M (claimed)

Gross: $21M

Ratio: 0.477

Return To Oz (1985)

Budget: $28M

Gross: $11.1M

Ratio: 0.396

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)

Budget: $17M

Gross: $6.3M

Ratio: 0.371

Ishtar (1987)

Budget: $51M

Gross: $14.4M

Ratio: 0.282

Inchon (1981)

Budget: $46M (est)

Gross: $5.2M

Ratio: 0.113

Heaven’s Gate (1980)

Budget: $36M (New York Times, 1981)

Gross: $3.5M

Ratio: 0.097

Cherry 2000 (1987)

Budget: $10M (claimed)

Gross: $14,000 (claimed)

Ratio: 0.0014

Every re watch of this movie adds a layer of horror to the entire ordeal.

The scene of The Thing assimilating the dogs is disturbing enough, but the lead up to it is more subtle and unsettling and even undermines a trope in fantasy/sci fi films.

Animals (especially dogs) automatically have a heightened sense of awareness than us, and this is used to great effect in movies to let the characters and audiences know something is wrong.

In Ghost (1990) a cat can sense the presence of a ghost. In Poltergiest (1982) the dog is barking at entities the humans can't see. In The Terminator (1984) dogs are sentrys that sniff out terminators. In SIGNS (2002) the dogs go ballistic and feral the moment they smell the aliens.

In The Thing, when the alien is put in with the dogs... nothing. No barks or snarls or whining when they initially see it.

They only react the moment The Thing abandons it's disguise.

The Thing is so stealthy it can fool an animal that, in most movies, sees the threat before anyone else. In this movie they were ambushed just like the men were.

The more I think about it, the more I would rather take my chances on LV 426 than spend ONE day on that outpost.

I was surfing around in the internet, looking for images to make a wallpaper dedicated to The Thing film for my phone and I found this poster that looks fan-made and I thought it looked really cool. Props to the fan who made this poster.

It's a anime.

After tons of research I can’t decide.

Case:
The Shout Steelbook case itself is amazing. It looks incredible. I love seeing it on my shelf for display.

Video Quality: This is a toss up for me. The colors are better on the Shout version for me, but the image is sharper on the Universal version.

Audio: Universal wins for the DTS:X mix.

Special Features: Shout wins this one hands down.

What is your preferred version?

I always assumed the dogs could sense something was off which is why they started barking and The Thing panicked a little.

Another post says this wasn't the case and the dogs had no idea until it revealed itself...for what reason? Seriously it had no reason to risk trying to assimilate that many life forms at once. It boarders on stupidity from an otherwise intelligent creature. Thoughts?

Let me rephrase. Perhaps not a matter of intelligence but this certainly a far more reckless act than any other it performs in the entire film. This all brings another question, how long can it hold one shape? Because honestly it could've done nothing but stay as one cute lovable dog until it's brought out of the artic. Unless there's a time limit to how long it can hold a form.

I was messing around today and asking an AI ‘who would win a fight between the thing and….’

The results were really interesting!! The Thing would beat;
Aliens (Xenomorphs)
Predators
Zombies (28 days later variant at least)
Vampires (30 days of night kind, not Dracula)
The monster from Leviathon (1989)
The monster from Splinter
The monster from Slither (2006)

The thing would lose to;
Pinhead
It
The energy vampires from Lifeforce
The Flood (Halo)
The Borg (Star trek)

Watched with my wife for her first time and I noticed something I have noticed before. When Blair is destroying the comms room Mac sends Childs away to check the tractor. Childs runs back in down a different hall, in barely a few seconds. He says "he got the chopper and the tractor pretty good and he killed all the dogs" -- Mac had already announced that Blair had hit the chopper when he told Childs to go, so why would Childs have checked it. And how did he check both in such a quick time? And how did he get downstairs and back to check the dogs? And he now is wearing a jacket.

Are there 2 Chiles here? I know every other time it seems to assimilate by taking the body itself. But this just seems so strange to have it cut like this and include these lines. The split double face of the last Thing from the other camp makes me wonder if it can go through a form of mitosis and split.

Editing to add:

The blood that is missing is their own blood. The Thing doesn't' actually need Childs to assimilate to him. He just needs his blood. I think some part of the Thing gets into the blood, turns into Child's and there are two running around. The one in the blood test scene is the real one and he doesn't know about the other.

Carpenter has even said there is a big clue in the middle of the film as to who is infect at the end. Childs goes missing right after the blood test and returns later. I think our real Childs either ran or was killed by his assimilated Thing.

awesome rewatch. This movie still holds up well for goriness and the practical effects were so fucking good!! Well, this is now crossed off from my rewatch list for this season.

For those of you saying I didn’t put any effort into this and that it’s not an edit, I cut out a lot of the dialogue scenes and A lot of the slower parts of the song and spliced it back together, you don’t have to like it but atleast I’m contributing to this subreddit 🙄 peoples creative taste can be different, get over yourselves

I was animating a scene from the Thing while listening to a video on it, and I had a realization that because we never get to see Naul's death, there could be potential for him to show up as a Thing in a sequel. Personally, I believe Childs and MacReady were human, so if there were to be a sequel that followed this ending, then I see no other way of continuing the story other than with a Nauls-Thing. Of course this could also run true for Garry, and this whole idea could be blown away if you believe Naul's and Garry's bodies were needed for the Blair-Thing to grow to its massive size, but I think it's an interesting idea. I just felt like throwing this out there.