<\/p>\n
Ranking high on the list of popular cult culture is The Thing<\/em>, almost always in its Carpenter incarnation.\u00a0 I think we’ve finally reached the point in our movie culture where 1951’s The Thing From Another World<\/em> The insidious threat of communism is as alien to the 21st Century as The new Thing<\/em> tackled much larger social issues – the thin In a way, it’s daring that Carpenter takes on a very real social issue The Carpenter version adds to the hopelessness of a decaying society by So the story begins.\u00a0 A creepy build up for about half an hour – It’s the weaving of the story that sets it ahead.\u00a0 That’s Where the screenplay takes us is perfect.\u00a0 Trust no one.\u00a0 We Now, why should you grab this film and get reacquainted with it, or
\nhas faded into Cold War antiquity.\u00a0 The stumbling carrot beast
\nwith the sound ability to punch through paper-thin Styrofoam walls,
\nagainst which only American individualism and know-how can compete, was
\nan undisguised propaganda film.\u00a0 It’s Red Menace filmmaking at
\nit’s worst, made laughable by the hysterical final lines shouted into
\nthe shortwave set to You and Me, Mr. and Mrs. America:\u00a0 “Watch the
\nskies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!”<\/p>\n
\nMeco’s “Empire Strikes Back Medley.”\u00a0 And thank god, too.
\nHell, by the time Carpenter got around to the remake in 1982, the real
\nthreat of communism had already started to fade.\u00a0 Reagan’s “Evil
\nEmpire” and the mythical arms “race” of the 80’s was getting the same
\nhalf-serious dismissal as a second Bush Administration.\u00a0 Despite
\nthe popular media urgings in films like The Day After<\/em> and Threads<\/em>, workaday America had stopped watching the skies.<\/p>\n
\nfabric of trust within our own community and, of course, the onset of
\nAIDS.\u00a0 The creature acts like a virus and, ultimately, we’re all
\ndoomed to catch it.\u00a0 The remake ends with doubt and hopelessness
\ninstead of the original’s preaching that we’ll all be okay if we stick
\ntogether and remain vigilant.\u00a0 What gives Carpenter’s version a
\ntrue and lasting edge is that our team of Everymen can’t<\/em> stick together.\u00a0 It’s no longer in their nature.\u00a0 The revamp Thing<\/em>
\nis one of those movies that, 23 years later, doesn’t get tired.
\nEven in light of the occasionally ridiculous early 80’s plasticized
\ngore-fest effects and the laundry list of Hollywood inaccuracies and
\nimpossibilities.<\/p>\n
\n– groups of people locked in a space together just not getting
\nalong.\u00a0 There are no heroes, no friends.\u00a0 Just mass psychosis
\nwithin the mostly blue-collar skeleton crew manning an Antarctic base
\nduring the long winter months.\u00a0 At the lead is Kurt Russell, a
\ntypical Carpenter anti-hero who’s more sociopath than anything
\nelse.\u00a0 In the original script, he was a half-mad, disgruntled
\nVietnam vet who had fled the real world in favor of a desolate
\nAntarctic research station.\u00a0 That deeper analysis of his character
\nwas dropped, but the mood is still there throughout.<\/p>\n
\nremoving the blood from our crew’s hands.\u00a0 In the original, we
\nwoke up the creature after salvaging a UFO.\u00a0 (The threat of
\ncommunism was our own creation?)\u00a0 In the remake, it’s the
\nNorwegians who have brought the creature back to life.\u00a0 Our boys
\nare simply innocent bystanders.\u00a0 (The elements that tear apart the
\ndelicate threads of our society come from the hubris of weaker
\nnations?)\u00a0 We begin with the most ludicrous chase scene in movie
\nhistory: A husky outrunning a Norwegian helicopter across a couple
\nhundred miles of wasteland.\u00a0 The Norwegians are trying to kill the
\ndog with a high powered, classy-looking rifle and, round after round,
\nthey can’t seem to get a clear shot.\u00a0 Always well behind the dog
\n(which means it’s running at about a hundred miles an hour, right?),
\nall hope is lost when the Norwegians spot the American base.\u00a0 The
\ndog gets to safety and the Norwegians land, fumble a few grenades, and
\nget blown up, all while rifle boy stalks into camp and manages to hit
\none of our team…but, still, misses the dog.\u00a0 If you’re playing a
\ndrinking game, then you’re down for the count in the first five minutes.<\/p>\n
\nvisiting the blasted-out remains of the Norwegian camp and setting up
\nsome spooky stalking dog scenes.\u00a0 Then, the games begin.\u00a0 In
\nclassic Ye Olde Alien Movie style, the rest of the film is buckets of
\nblood, everything falling apart, slime, fire, wild gunshots, unlimited
\nammunition, flamethrowers and everyone getting picked off one by one
\nwhile the final solution becomes clear:\u00a0 Blow everything up.<\/p>\n
\nsomething Carpenter was pretty good at until the late 80’s.\u00a0 The
\nstrong cast helps, as well.\u00a0 Russell, in those early days, could
\nhold his own, but throw in Wilfred Brimley as the mad doctor, Keith
\nDavid as the tough black guy (Chronicles of Riddick, Requiem for a Dream, They Live, Platoon<\/em>), and a few other strong faces you’ll recognize, and you’ve got real movement going on.<\/p>\n
\nhave a brief moment of light when a solution for identifying the
\nchameleonic creatures is discovered, but angry killer aliens looking to
\nwipe out humanity is just the surface issue.\u00a0 Back to the decaying
\nthreads of society theme.\u00a0 Even with a solution, our crew isn’t
\nable to pull themselves together.\u00a0 There’s no sense of leadership
\nand an overwhelming inability to function as a team.\u00a0 Paranoia and
\nanger runs deep, not only mimicking the modern American society, a soft
\nunderbelly exposed, but also the very real psychological evaluations of
\ngroups working together in isolated environments, something that has
\ncome under intense study within the last 15 years.\u00a0 Case workers
\nanalyzing how men and women work together at Antarctic posts, space
\nstations, within biosphere projects and looking towards potential
\nmissions to Mars have created a niche in the head shrinking sciences
\nand, I believe, say some powerful things about where we all stand with
\neach other – running scared, splintered and brain dead in 21st Century
\nAmerica.\u00a0 If anything, The Thing<\/em> becomes more powerful
\nwith age.\u00a0 Looking beyond rubber masks and karo syrup, it’s a
\nfortunate thing that Kurt Russell’s anti-social tendencies aren’t
\nexplained by bad experiences in a dated war, and that his compatriots
\nare all sort of timeless Everymen trying to move independently in their
\nvery closed, very frightened worlds.\u00a0 The secret to the film’s
\nsuccess is that feeling of total detachment and personal isolation,
\nseemingly in conscious defiance of rational behavior.<\/p>\n
\nwatch it for the first time?\u00a0 Because this is the year of the
\nremake.\u00a0 The Sci-Fi Channel is putting a four hour mini-series
\n(with hopes of a regular series) into production.\u00a0 The mini-series
\nwill pick up where the famous final scene of the movie left off.
\nLaunching a series from one of most thought-provoking (and playful)
\nfinales in A-list sci-fi cinema history takes a dark mind and an empty
\nheart.\u00a0 Get this movie into you before it’s ruined forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,352],"tags":[403,353,104],"class_list":["post-2555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cult-culture","category-gsarchive","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2825,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions\/2825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}