Skip to main content

The Things

The other night I treated myself to a Blu-Ray double bill of "John Carpenter's The Thing" (1982) and "The Thing" (2011), though, of course, the correct order to see them in, given that the latter is the prequel, is the other way round.

A lot has been said against the 2011 film, that it is a pale imitation of John Carpenter's classic horror, but I think it is a great piece of work, and it stands well against the older film, and it is a real joy to see them back to back, to learn what happened to the fated Norwegians before that helicopter came buzzing over the Antarctic ice shelf chasing that dog. And the two films, despite being made nearly 30 years apart, gel beautifully together.


What is especially fun is seeing how well Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr has recreated the living scenes from the ghosts or aftermaths of the scenes in the 1982 film, in his 2011 prequel. It's great to see the continuity of the helicopter, the dog, but also the ice-block and the room it is stored in, the axe in the wall, and the dead man in the chair. The attention to detail is exemplary, and it shows a real reverence for the older film, which, as Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr rightly said, could not be improved upon, so why even attempt to remake it.

If you're a fan of John Carpenter's classic film, I highly recommend a late night double bill.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turning Fifty

I woke up early this morning on my 50th birthday. It was as bright outside as it would ever be at 5am due to it being the summer solstice, the longest period of daylight time. From here on, the nights get longer. Sitting in bed with a cup of tea I started to think about some of the first stories I wrote, and a few memories came back to me. The first thing I remember writing was in my penultimate year in primary school, so we're talking 1983-4. Successfully combining two major phobias of mine, it was called "Tarantursnake" and took up a whopping four pages of my English workbook. I remember getting a decent mark for it, but the only thing I could remember from the story itself was a man hanging on for dear life to a pole suspended over a pit of tarantursnakes. In fact, that may have been the whole thing. I'm not so sure it followed any conventional rules of narrative. Later, in 1987, in high school, a collection of us smuggled copies of the newly published paperback of
Post a Comment
Read more

From "Idea" to "Published Story" in 24 Hours

On Friday 18th November 2011 I managed to do something that I never thought possible. Whilst walking to work I was listening to an old Level 42 album and pondering a new idea I had for a story. When I got to the office, to preserve the idea, I opened up Google Docs and jotted down a couple of sentences. At lunchtime I re-read my notes and decided to turn it into a story. By the time I'd written about 400 words I realised that this would easily work as a 600 word story for 365tomorrows.com, who publish a daily flash-fiction piece in the sci-fi genre. The last time I submitted something to 365tomorrows they rejected it weeks later, on the grounds that there was no narrative to the story (the story was written in pure dialogue). Once this new story was completed I made two changes. I changed the gender of one character and the name of another. By the end of the day I had submitted the story, entitled "Freedom Someday" to 365tomorrows. The usual turnaround response
3 comments
Read more

Interactive Fiction

Proof that the internet has a page for everything (I think we already knew that) is that I found a good many sites full of love for the old Choose Your Own Adventure book series from the 1980s, of which I had a shelf full. Those old books were about 100 pages long and featured a branch-like narrative with multiple endings. With titles like "The Cave of Time", "The House of Danger" and "Journey Under the Sea", these books worked for readers of my age (which was about ten). "You reach a fork in the road and find an old man sitting there. To turn left in the fork, go to page 45. To turn right, go to page 56. To talk to the old man, go to page 80." That sort of thing. Later on, when computers came along, I fell in love with the text adventures of Magnetic Scrolls (yes there's a website for them too). With games like Jinxter, The Guild of Thieves and Corruption, I was hooked by the way that these games built worlds in your head. Even now t
1 comment
Read more