San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec

San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec




San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913

The Daily Aztec

‘The Thing’ reaches for scares and relevancy

The prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 creature feature “The Thing” seeks to answer the burning questions that have plagued absolutely nobody in the last 30 years: What causes a hairy Norwegian to shoot a sniper rifle at an Alaskan malamute from a helicopter? Why does Kurt Russell’s character discover a hollowed-out block of ice in a fire-ravaged Antarctic research facility?

Indeed, the prequel, which has all of the meticulous attention to detail of a fan fiction while lacking any of the original’s message, will finally put these questions (along with a bored audience) to rest.

Although meticulous attention to detail is perhaps an overstatement for professional fan-fictionist and screenwriter Eric Heisserer, whose previous credits include last year’s remake of “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Final Destination 5.”

A helpful opening intertitle tells the audience “The Thing” is set in Antarctica in the winter of 1982. Despite the fact that there is no sunlight during winter in Antarctica, the film opens with a daytime shot of a snowcat discovering a subterranean alien spacecraft.

The Norwegian team driving the snowcat recruits the doe-eyed American paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to exhume an alien encased in ice before a major snowstorm hits, even though Antarctica is the world’s largest desert and therefore too arid to have massive snowfall.

Kate enlists the help of her American ex-military helicopter pilots to transport the block of ice back to the research station. With the ice containing the first alien life-form known to man slowly melting away, how do these researchers and former military officials react to being on the precipice of the greatest scientific discovery in history? By getting drunk in the recreation room, naturally.

However, the drunken revelry is short-lived as the alien breaks out of the ice and begins to absorb the researchers. Even worse, the cells of the alien can spontaneously reproduce and mimic the appearance of any organic material. The researchers reach a stalemate as each one suspects the others of being aliens and subsequently brings Norwegian-American relations to an all-time low. Once lead scientist Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) declares a radio blackout to keep other scientists from learning of their discovery, despite the mounting death toll, the film stops pretending to care about plot and instead devolves into an orgy of flamethrower-induced pyrotechnics.

The beauty of Carpenter’s 1982 film, itself a remake of the 1951 sci-fi movie “The Thing from Another World,” was how it applied the ‘50s Cold War analogy of alien body-snatching invaders for Communist infiltrators and literally set it in the coldest place on earth. Carpenter depicted how mutual distrust between the citizens of two countries will ultimately lead to mutually assured destruction.

Unfortunately, this year’s prequel is incapable of expanding Carpenter’s themes. With the Cold War concluded decades ago, a story too predictable to be scary and a twist ending with no character development, the deepest question “The Thing” asks is: Why does this film exist at all?

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San Diego State University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1913
‘The Thing’ reaches for scares and relevancy