There are two ways to create a remake; you can focus on the parts that made the movie so great in the first place, and then expand on those while adding new elements which salute the original yet also make it perfect for today's audiences. Then there is the other way, is to just remake it the same way, including the bad bits, without taking time to wonder why they were there in the first place, and throw in new stuff that doesn't belong there, resulting in a pretty poor movie. The Thing falls into the second category.
The version most of us remember is John Carpenter's from 1981, and this itself was actually a remake, albeit radical, of an original from 1951. You will recall that aUSbase in the Antarctic was besieged by an alien that was a shape shifter, but they didn't actually discover it, that honour went to the inhabitants of the Norwegian base, situated kilometres away. In telling the story of the Norwegian base should actually be a prequel, but the fact this version is identical to Carpenter's makes it a remake in the truest sense of the world.
A couple of Norwegian scientists crash their snowmobile into a crevice and find an alien spaceship there they, obviously, run to some US Grad students, Eric Christian Olsen and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, to help them. This kind off pandering between nations doesn't exactly inspire any confidence especially when you discover there is already an American pilot at the base, but this could just be the directors way of laying the groundwork for some forthcoming paranoia of the us VS them kind.
Having in their possession an alien in a giant ice cube proves far too tempting for these scientists and they decide to drill into it for some tissue samples, which, as anyone with half a brain cell would realise, never mind supposed boffins, that drilling into an alien is a pretty good way of waking them up. These guys think they have taken care of this menace but have they? The tissues reveal that the alien can take on the form of humans as well as others, they realise they can't trust anyone, sure didn't see that coming!
One positive from this whole debacle is the special effects, particularly regarding the shape shifting capabilities of the alien. They are pretty nasty, but some of them look somewhat familiar, and those who are fans of David Cronenberg will see some parts which are same old, same old. The real let down in this movie are the humans, all the Norwegians are stereotypically big, bearded, blonde and unwashed, and nobody has bothered to give the different characters any kind of personality.
This creates problems when we have to try and work out is somebody is really an alien, as we haven't got a clue who they were anyway. There is one stand out scene when they are trying to figure out how to differentiate between human and alien, but one good scene doesn't make a good horror movie. A highly disappointing movie that won't be remembered for the right reasons.
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