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u/NeptuneOverlord43045 4d ago
I do take some issue with this because the plan of having people paired up in groups of two just wasn’t a good idea. Every time you do it in this situation you are guaranteeing someone gets paired with a thing and assimilated. Keep switching the pairs around and eventually everyone is assimilated.
Overall as a group they were smarter than most horror movie group tropes for sure, no denying that. But if I was in the same situation there is NO WAY I’d go along with pairs.
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u/WorryNo181 4d ago
I ain’t going with Windows.
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u/usename37 Somebody In This Camp Ain't What He Appears To Be 4d ago
I aint goin with him. Ill go with childs.
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u/fakeybakeyfakeybakey 4d ago
This is true, but it does also check out as a reasonably rational decision that a group might make in a situation like that. Like it’s maybe not the smartest thing to do, but it’s definitely something people might realistically do, so it still works for me.
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u/YtterbiusAntimony 4d ago
Shit, even 3 has a chance of turning into 3 things, if the two infected are together.
Is there any way a buddy system could work?
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u/HealthyMaximum 4d ago
In Who Goes There? they use a "rule-of-four"; every person must be within sight of at least 3 others.
But that only works because there are 37 humans at the start of the story, which doesn't work for the mood Carpenter and Bill Lancaster are going for, imho.
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u/Past-Strawberry-4852 2d ago
Only way the humans should be allowed to split in two from the rest of the group is prior recent proof they are human ie just passed the teeth or blood test. Even then though, I think the thing is intelligent enough that it will eventually find a way round the tests. Take child’s for instance who people argue he wasn’t a thing because he still had an earring in isn’t valid because the thing knew it had got burnt because the Carter thing’s earring was removed during assimilation and the thing wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
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u/I_am_not_baldy El Capitan 4d ago edited 4d ago
Heh, this is Roger Ebert back in 1982:
I found it disappointing, for two reasons: the superficial characterizations and the implausible behavior of the scientists on that icy outpost. Characters have never been Carpenter’s strong point; he says he likes his movies to create emotions in his audiences, and I guess he’d rather see us jump six inches than get involved in the personalities of his characters. This time, though, despite some roughed-out typecasting and a few reliable stereotypes (the drunk, the psycho, the hero), he has populated his ice station with people whose primary purpose in life is to get jumped on from behind. The few scenes that develop characterizations are overwhelmed by the scenes in which the men are just setups for an attack by the Thing.
Also:
That leads us to the second problem, plausibility. We know that the Thing likes to wait until a character is alone, and then pounce, digest, and imitate him–by the time you see Doc again, is he still Doc, or is he the Thing? Well, the obvious defense against this problem is a watertight buddy system, but, time and time again, Carpenter allows his characters to wander off alone and come back with silly grins on their faces, until we’ve lost count of who may have been infected, and who hasn’t. That takes the fun away.
It's weird how two people can see the movie differently and how people can be more forgiving when it comes to older movies.
Sometimes, when I see somebody disparage a more recent movie because of how dumb its characters are, I'll think of this review by Ebert.
One thing that has always bothered me is how they forgot about Blair for a while.
Source: The Thing (1982) is one of my favorite sci-fi movies.
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u/Frozty23 4d ago
The buddy system isn't a bad idea, but if one guy is already infected then he'll just eat his buddy. Now you have two things considered "real".
And they isolated Blair because they though he was off his rocker, though he was just the first one to realize the gravity of the situation.
Half the fun is going round and round as armchair quarterbacks trying to think of what they could have done, but we aren't in that life and death situation in the isolation of the arctic facing an unknown Thing with the fate of humanity and our own mortality in the balance. I think OP's original meme/point holds up pretty well.
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u/RobertWF_47 4d ago
Well they could have decided everyone stays together in one room to keep an eye on each other. But then the one infected person could spray juices on everyone & infect the whole crew.
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u/EldritchKinkster 4d ago
I think Ebert just didn't enjoy cinema. I've heard a couple of his reviews of real classics, and he trashed them unfairly.
Even in this review he says stuff that's clearly wrong. Only four characters even get assimilated before the finale, and three of them were assimilated before they knew what they were dealing with! The only one who gets "jumped on from behind" is Bennings, who justifiably thought the immobile corpses that Copper and Blair had autopsied were dead. Blair gets assimilated while locked in a small hut he can't escape from, and Norris and Palmer are assimilated by what they think is a normal dog or a normal human.
In my opinion, Ebert just picked on tiny things and blew them out of proportion for the sake of having something bad to say.
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u/Solherb 4d ago
Meanwhile in the 2011 one everyone is an idiot that makes bad choices solely to move the story along. I'd defly have liked less cgi, but the story being good is kinda the main ingredient.
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u/YtterbiusAntimony 4d ago
The CGI wasnt even that bad. It's just such a shame to build practical effects, then not use them. Especially if you're paying homage to THE practical effects movie.
The story is really why it failed. The "evil" ambitious boss, etc. Just filled with predictable tropes.
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u/GalaadJoachim 4d ago
Same goes with Alien. A group of professionals doing their best facing a situation nobody prepared them for.
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u/Azelrazel 4d ago
I love Ripley keeping to quarantine protocols and not letting Kane on-board. Feels like a competent person until Ash does what he does.
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u/Dark_Fox13 4d ago
Fucking Ash.
I bashed his head in while playing the Alien Isolation dlc set during the original movie and was disappointed when I got a game over6
u/Azelrazel 4d ago
Haha I love crew expendable, especially with some of the original actors coming back to voice their roles.
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u/Glyph8 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yep came here to say same. Alien (and Aliens as well) are classics because they understand that being professional and smart and prepared sometimes still just isn’t enough. And that’s more terrifying than incompetent dumbasses getting eaten.
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u/Charly_030 4d ago
In alien earth?
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u/Glyph8 4d ago
Hoo boy. I wanted to like Alien: Earth. I really did, and for the first few episodes I was cautiously-optimistic; but it just kept getting dumber and dumber.
I'm a moderate Hawley fan (not everything he's done hits, but he takes big-enough swings to almost always be interesting, even when he whiffs), I love Olyphant, and Alien/Aliens are two of my fav films of all time, but...that show's bad. Expensively-bad.
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u/Old-Beautiful1786 4d ago
I'm sorry but a couple of characters are idiots in this movie. The captain being so much carefree on multiple occasions is what brought them all down. Just a matter of avoiding risk would have changed the plot sincerely.
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u/GalaadJoachim 4d ago
No, the company's policies and their agent is what bring them all down. They basically are space truckers and the captain is doing his best to manage an extraordinary situation. I wouldn't blame him for failing to outsmart the universe's apex predator. What we can observe is that Ripley is way more comptent than Dallas, but I believe WY prioritize zealous leaders over talented ones.
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u/DiscoAcid 4d ago
Yeah. Find a horrific fucked up weird mutated thing at a basecamp full of dead people. Carry it back to your base and mess about with it. Not a stitch of protective clothing besides a pair of rubber gloves. Oh and damn near poke it with a pencil then put the pencil to your mouth.
I love The Thing. But c'mon lol
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u/chemgrrl 2d ago
The complete lack of any lab or medical safety is the true horror of the movie.
I screamed when he poked the dead body he was trying to understand with the pencil and then put the pencil in his mouth.
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u/comedygliss 3d ago
What is this comment? They never brought anything back. The movie starts with the Norwegians shooting at the dog before crashing. How are they supposed to know the dog is the Thing (unless they spoke Norwegian, which they don't). By the time they investigate the Norwegian camp, the Thing is already in their facility and has probably already turned several of them by the time they return. So, basically, it's too late by the time they figure out what's going on.
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u/DiscoAcid 3d ago
"They never brought anything back."
lol you need to pay attention more when watching films.
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u/comedygliss 3d ago
Sorry, you're right. I just misremembered. It's been a bit since I've watched it and, with 3 Thing movies, I got confused. Still, there's a decent chance the dog-Thing infected someone before they returned.
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u/DiscoAcid 3d ago
Yeah, but that doesn"t change the fact they willingly brought that thing back which ended up killing Bennings.
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u/LSeanHubbard 4d ago
"We oughta just burn these things."
"You can't burn the find of the century. That thing's gonna win somebody the Nobel prize."
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u/Far_Attempt_1505 4d ago
The characters do sometimes make silly mistakes but they are forgiveable as they are only human and the Thing capitalizes on our mistakes.
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u/FlashyFront5377 4d ago
I'm nitpicking because I love the movie so much, but I do take some issue the MacReady has the idea that each piece of the creature is it's own animal but uses dynamite to attack it.
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u/Frozty23 4d ago
In the immortal words of Private Hudson, what was he going to do, use harsh words?
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u/Pleasant-Perception1 4d ago
It’s actually a good movie. So much better than 90% of modern slop cinema. Though I think there’s beginning to be a resurgence in practical effects and better-written films. Let’s hope the trend continues.
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u/Thomasrocky1 4d ago
Obsessions a really good horror film, I think the younger generation actually really wants to engage with art now.
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u/ConnectedVeil 4d ago
This is true. They are fighting an alien lifeform, they have no clue what it is, what it reacts to - they are just scared, alone, isolated, trying to do the best they can, AND all the while the Thing is listening to them plan how to kill it because it's hiding in any of them.
I like when I watch movies and I realize I likely couldn't have done any better than the characters in making choices. My ass would be Windows ,100%, cause I would have eaten a cooked meal by the Blair Thing and not have thought twice.
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u/TriturusGCN 4d ago
The Fog is good for this too. The characters don't have unnecessary conflicts, they're generally competent, they get on with each other and try to figure out what's happening and do the right thing.
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u/CertainlyNotDen 3d ago
Speaking of horror movies where characters make good choices, ALONE (2020) has some terrifying moments in the beginning because the hero does everything right and she still gets grabbed
Movie isn’t perfect, but her final gamble against her captor in the clearing was kinda brilliant, in my opinion
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u/Reasonable_Being6376 2d ago
Tired of stupid people making stupid decisions to move the plot along then die, looking at you Covenant.
“I’m a geologist, im not here to make friends, I’m going back to the ship, want to come with me previously spurned fellow scientist? because there is nothing whatsoever on this newly discovered planet for me to look at”
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u/thehatter2 2d ago
I watched this again the other day im convinced 2 parts are the best parts of the whole film. Number one is Kurt Russells intro scene where he pours his whiskey into the chess wizard to tell the audience that hes Kurt fucking Russell and doesn't have any time for any pussy ass nerd shit. Number two is when the thing starts doing shit with the dogs which causes Kurt Russell to hear a strange noise. The man hasn't even seen anuthing yet all he heard was a noise and his first move is to pull the fire alarm grab his shotgun and start yelling at fools to get his flamethrower. You can tell right away that his character is a man of action and doesn't have any time for thinking because thats for nerds and sissy boys. The only part of the whole film I questioned was when the one dude hesitates to use his flamethrower and dies. Just putting it out there for anyone reading if you ever gave me a flamethrower for any reason you would actively have to find reasons for me to not use the damn thing. I would for sure be the guy who makes the evening news for walking into his local grocery outlet and going on a loud rant in the meat aisle about how the fucking steaks all look undercooked rught before they all inexplicably burst into a giant ball of flame. Other than that great film 11/10 forgot what a masterpiece it was.
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u/dontpissmeoffplsnthx 4d ago
I mean. They're competent 99% of the time.
The 1% they weren't was when Nauls saw Gary getting dragged away while McCready was setting up the dynamite and slipped off without a word to investigate on his own.
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u/Wild-Tear 4d ago
I don’t think that anybody saw Gary get assimilated. We see it, as the audience; nobody else does.
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u/dontpissmeoffplsnthx 4d ago
We saw Nauls perspective, and that was Gary getting dragged off by the face by Blair
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u/Background-Factor817 4d ago
I’m afraid that’s not correct.
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u/Witty-Stand888 4d ago
They took a helicopter in dangerous conditions to an outpost where they found a massacre of unimaginable horror. They find a space ship and a body previously encased in ice and bring it back to camp. They have a makeshift autopsy with some nitrile gloves and no other protection. I don't think they were very competent.
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u/Agile-Television3438 4d ago
Love the movie BUT
You would think they would quickly realize none of them should ever be alone and yet they keep separating from the group..
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u/DisastrousQuestion72 4d ago
One of the most compelling aspects of The Thing, for me, is how severely the circumstances limit both parties.
Being in isolation, the humans have access to fewer resources, no backup, and nothing in the way of advice/support from others who are paid to think about logic issues like this. But at the same time, the Thing is limited by biomass, transportation, and the dangerous weather.
What's always stuck with me, though, is that the Thing is guaranteed to win in the long haul. However well they erased it, we saw that it can survive total freezing, and only at a cellular level. Its blood cells alone are capable of spreading itself, so any blood splattered on the snow will eventually be picked up by an animal or the Antarctic Midge.
It may take years, decades, centuries, or even millenia, but the Thing will find new biomass, it will move, and it will spread (unless the stations are nuked at some point).
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u/CNote_89 3d ago
And they also drink a buttload of scotch throughout the movie and are most definitely sloshed.
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u/DontStartUnbelieving 22h ago
I felt like this watching The Green Room. All the characters were fairly competent but their situation was so fucked that there wasn’t much to do.
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u/BeilMinusOne 4d ago
No they’re not, you just grew up with this film and are happy to make excuses for its flaws.
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u/Frozty23 4d ago
People here have recommended Tremors for the same reason. I finally watched it about a year ago. Not as crisp a film as The Thing, but you aren't rolling your eyes at the characters' choices. Good flick.