Got back from The Thing Prequel and, well, here are my brief thoughts.
And here's Liz's longer take, with a lot more details on the film (most of which I agree with)! I overslept (and subsequently missed FallCon, too) so she went without me and I went a little while later on my own to see it.
Sounds like it's just as well that you and Iron Liz saw the movie separately. LOL.
ReplyDeleteBad CGI is always worse than bad practical effects. There's a certain fakeness that is unique to CGI. My brain knows that Ray Harryhausen's skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts are fake, but it still thinks they're real. CGI, even good CGI, can't help but look fake, especially when it's an organic being.
That seems really weird to me that they didn't do the circle to determine the shape since I feel like I recall from John Carpenter's The Thing that when they find the Norweigan camp, they also find a video or image of them standing in a circle.
ReplyDeleteI'll be interested to see this--I'm hoping they did a scene showing where the "partially done" Thing was killed. Maybe that's the two headed one you're referring to--it's been too long since I've seen it.
Learn from Liz, i don't need to watch you to actually listen to you.
ReplyDeleteMaybe her lights were horrible but you gesticulating half-dark half-enlightened was a little bit annoying.
Lessons to learn from this : learn with Spoony, learn with Liz, learn from within and next time please don't overslept, Liz deserves the needed proverbial "shining knight" to at least aid her with those damn teenagers.
There is nothing more helpless than intelligent people surrounded in the dark by brainless soulless creatures in the early cold days of the winter (in this case mid-west north american winter, in Brazil the winter is cooler, humidly and moisturized, Thanks God when it's not raining).
Anyway, did you see Terra Nova ? Has the same amount of science absence as "The Thing" prequel, there is no science fiction in Hollywood anymore, it's all science parody.
I have a theory : the box office in the USA is a dumb-o-meter to check how much the population is coming out stupidified from schools, if the movie is a blockbuster keep teaching the same things and if the movie fails made education dumber and legal and illegal drugs easier to acquire.
Do you want better movies and tv series ? Feed your time machine with torrents and go back to the past or feed your brain with books, comics and radio-novels, those are the best to keep your wits sharp and fit.
Closing arguments, Liz review is more interesting even if it's longer because the absence of her image helps me to get my mind in focus to what she say, there is nothing to distract me from what she said, i have to build the images on my mind and that's food from brain cells.
I tell this once and i repeated again : you should made a talk radio show, you two can do a lot more just talking about than anything else you can do with images because you made me in the audience build the whole show inside my head.
Please think about that in the next 5 to 10 years. There is no need for rush about.....yet.
I know you guys all realize that there was an earlier version of the thing, but it just strikes me wrong every time I hear the Carpenter version being called the original intead of just John Carpenter's The Thing (which is how it is advertised). Sure Carpenter's is closer to the story, and they have the better effects, but the original is actually pretty good and was directed by Howard Hawkes (who was no hack btw). Watch it and just listen to Hawkes use of dialog. I don't know if scientist actually talk this way, but it certainly feels like how they should.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I heard from my brother, the studio looked at the film, and after seeing it, asked the filmmakers to go back and replace alot of the practical effects with CGI (the reason for pushing the release date). So the lack of practical effects maybe due to a studio mandate rather than the filmmaker's first choice.
ReplyDeleteI always said that remakes or prequels/sequels tend to suck. From what you tell me, this actually confirms it. This does to Carpenter what IDW did to Silent Hill with Dying Inside, Dead/Alive, and Three Bloody Tales! The characters are all idiots, even the girl (at least the characters from Carpenter's film actually acted like real people) and the CGI ruins the mood.
ReplyDeleteI expect Phelous or Bad Movie Beatdown will do an episode on this film soon.
Linkara can you start all your future videos by telling us which one, and when you ate your last meal? lol j/k! The randomness of that made me chuckle a bit. ;)
ReplyDeleteWhile I understand it was unintentional I'm glad you hit different points from Brad, and Spoony.
Dammit! How do I keep not noticing these Vlogs! I was bored and cmae on here to see if anything new was up yeat and saw nothing was scroled down to find the Warrior 4 review to see again and saw this one!
ReplyDeleteWell, back to The Thing! I gotta say I agree with you the most on this one, Mr. Lovhaug! My favorite characte rin the whole movie was Lars and it was a little depressing when it turned out to be him that was shot and killed in the beginning of the origional 82 film.
Spooney's review I liked because he remained calm and didn't yell and act like he was about to have a hate stroke over the film like others. I just don't see why people hate this movie so much.
I thought it did an ok job of telling the story of what happened at the Norweigen camp.
To answer a few questions the ship's haul from what I know from wiki and the origional book was suppose to be make of something I forgot what but it is highly explosive. Like the same crap they say the Hendenburg was coated in and so when that one gernade went off it caused the chainreaction that destroyed the ship and made the big hole they find in the other movie.
The gernades they were using were Thermite(sorry id it's spelled wrong spelling isn't my thing) and the thing about that stuff is it don't make a powerful exsplosion or a big one but it does make a very HOT one. That's the same stuff they say you can make with gunpowder and alluminum shavings and when lit on fire burns hot enough it can melt threw an engeine block in seconds. actully it's used to burn threw battle ship hauls by bomber palins. Myhbusters made some and played with it before!
I can't exsplain away with everything they did in this movie but I kind of took the flaps on the ship were not the intake for the engines as much as the ship kind of taking in air to refile the ship or represhurize it. I don't know ya'll can probaly talk up something to make that sound stupider that the fact the ship opens up like that.
Yes, the CGI was bad in it but Ive seen a LOT worse in other films. And a lot of the scenes I heard people compalining about the bad CGI in went by so quick my eye didn't have time to take it all in.. like when the guy on the copter burst open and caused that crash.
The 2 guys murging actaully made me squerm as that did look painful and the guy who was slowly being absorbed by that hand and fore arm thing. Because it was doing it slowly as it didn't have the mass required to incase him and kill him like the others.
Also, I know this from wiki and all but they weren't playing the KAte woman as a McReady style character she was ment to be more of an Ellen Ripley!
I got to respectfully dissagree with Liz's judgement on the film.
I do wish it'd turned out like it was suppose to be when they started this project back in like 2003. As a SciFi channel mini-series that was a sequal to the 82 movie.
This does make me think would you as Linkara like to review the Thing From Another World comics?
I personally like them as a not offishally canon to the movie sequal. Spoiler in it Childs(Keith Davis's ccharacter) was infected!
PS: I like the Underworld movie because they get Vampires and Werewolves a HELL of a LOT better than those damned Twilight films! And the story is simple Vampire want kill Werewolves and Werewolves want ot make hybrids. And humans have nothing to do for the most part! untill this newist movie where they finnally decise to kill both sides!
The best scene in this movie is actually stolen from Hellraiser 4. The merging of the guy between the twins is essentially the same scene.
ReplyDeleteAlso the half digested guy scene was done much better in Deep Rising.
The main problem I had with this is the fact that the thing looks like a bug from Starship Troopers.
The second largest flaw of this film is that the thing in carpenter's version could literally do anything. Every part of it was alive. Oddly the individual parts of this thing on the inside of the carcass do not turn into anything. That would have been a really good establishing scene. Kinda like the end of the reanimator.
They made an action movie out of a sci-fi thriller. The main character (so generic she should have been called science girl) throws a grenade three feet and is not only unhurt but is also not covered in thing juice. So...so...stupid.
BooRat is correct, in the original novel they mention that the hull of the ship has a large magnesium component, making it highly flammable (I'm guessing there must be less oxygen in the air of the Thing's planet).
ReplyDeleteThat's an explanation, but I don't think it's an excuse, because anyone who hadn't read the book would totally miss that when they saw the movie. They should have had them insert some line in the exposition at the beginning like "we've analyzed samples of the hull and it appears to be a magnesium alloy, highly flammable." That would have foreshadowed the grenade thing adequately.
That, or they could have had the final battle take place in the reactor instead of the control room.