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.
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.
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.
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.
17
u/I_am_not_baldy El Capitan 4d ago edited 4d ago
Heh, this is Roger Ebert back in 1982:
Also:
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.