I've done a few entries
here discussing movies, and in some cases bad-mouthing them in terms
that most people would find less than flattering. It's a common
practice on the internet to heap disproportionately gargantuan vats
of bile and venom on anything that even displeases you mildly, often
without taking a few moments to consider the exaggerated nature of
the claims. Sometimes the exaggeration is for humorous effect (such
as when I say Michael Bay should be force-fed his entire filmography
in laserdisc format), and isn't meant to be taken seriously. But,
somehow, I get the nagging feeling that a number of people actually
seem to mean what they say, regardless of how ridiculous and
over-the-top their rhetoric.
Film is definitely one
area of discussion where people show a tendency to let fly with
incredibly negative, dismissive criticism, disregarding in one or two
sentences works that very likely took at least a year, if not several
years, to complete. I still do it myself on occasion, though in
recent times I've tried to tone down the intensity of my words when
talking about movies I didn't like or, what's more likely, failed to
impress me strongly one way or the other.
Movies take a lot of
work to produce. It's hard to see that when you're watching one,
mainly because we're accustomed to passively consuming moving
images—a practice many of us have engaged in from the time we were
old enough to turn on a TV—without giving a thought to the process
required to create those images in the first place. Even
self-identified cinephiles often seem to possess only a vague, cloudy
notion of what it means for a movie to have been produced, written,
directed, or in any way brought into being by filmmakers. Most film
fans do not make movies themselves, so it's easy to forget the
immense amount of labor that goes into a production, from low-budget
indies to mega-budget Hollywood blockbusters.
Watch the
behind-the-scenes featurettes on many DVDs and you see what I mean:
massive sets that require teams of professional tradespeople to
build, working from careful designs commissioned by the producers.
Lighting and camera placements involving tons of expensive equipment.
Costumes, makeup, special effects, stunts, dialogue coaches, script
supervisors, and dozens—if not hundreds—of other tasks and
specialists all have to be closely managed and supervised in order
for any movie to exist. Chances are, the better the movie looks, the
greater the amount of work that went into making it.
The point I'm trying to
make is that, any time you watch a movie, even one that falls far
short of your expectations, you should probably take a moment to
consider all of that time and work, and all of the hopes and
ambitions of the people who went through the trouble to create what
you've been zoning out to while sitting on the couch eating frozen
pizza.
But as with all
endeavors, the results aren't always good. Anyone who has sat
through an awful movie can attest to that. I'm sure Night
Patrol took a lot of effort on the part of everyone
involved to see it through to the final stages, but it's still a
worthless piece of shit. Seriously, watch that movie and tell me you
don't want to beat the Unknown Comic with a crowbar at least a little
bit. (Anyone reading this too young to remember who the Unknown
Comic was, he was a barely-talented stand-up with an act based on
awful puns and wearing a paper bad over his head. He got popular
some time around the late 70's/early 80's, and eventually made one of
the single worst comedies of all time, the aforementioned Night
Patrol.)
Other times—if not
most times—you wind up with mediocrity, which makes this as good a
place as any to take a look at the recent remake/prequel to John
Carpenter's groundbreaking remake of The Thing From
Another World. Considering
it's
a
prequel,
the
filmmakers
made
the
odd
decision
to
give
it
the exact same title
as
the
movie
it's
connected
to.
Wouldn't
The Thing Begins
or
The Birth Of The
Thing or
What The Fuck Is
That Thing have
been
better
options?
Something
to
set
it
apart
from
what
is,
in
just
about
every
way,
a
superior
original?
At
least
it
might
cut
down
on
any
confusion
between
a
classic
and
a
so-so
imitation.
I
remember
when
Carpenter's
Thing came
out
in
'82.
I
was
too
young
at
the
time
to
go
see
it
in
a
theater,
but
my
older
sister
wasn't.
What
she
told
me
of
it—grotesque,
mind-boggling
physical
transformations
of
a
kind
never
attempted
in
a
movie
before—captivated
me,
and
I
had
to
wait
a
few
impatient
years
before
I
was
able
to
see
it
on
VHS
at
the
local
library
(this
was
before
my
parents
bought
a
VCR).
She
didn't
lie—the
effects
were
gross,
outrageous,
surprising,
and
unlike
anything
I'd
ever
seen.
It
was
one
of
those
movies,
like
Jurassic Park about
a
decade
later,
that
opened
up
a
new
world
of
possibilities
for
film,
provided
the
filmmakers
had
the
imagination
(and
access
to
funding)
to
use
the
cutting-edge
techniques
to
their
fullest
potential.
 |
| Yes, this is gross. It's also groundbreaking. |
The
important
thing
to
remember
is
that
special
effects
of
the
sort
featured
in
Carpenter's
film
were
brand
new
at
the
time.
A
number
of
horror
movies
in
the
early
80's
made
use
of
a
combination
of
latex
appliances,
puppetry,
and
animatronics
to
push toward
the
next
step
in
movie
magic,
most
notably
with
Rick
Baker's
Academy
Award-winning
work
in
An American Werewolf In
London and
Rob
Bottin's
no
less-impressive
nightmare
werewolves
in
The Howling.
Like
the
T.
Rex
in
Jurassic,
these
never-before-seen creatures
caused
viewers
jaws
to
drop.
It
was
an
exciting
moment
in
cinema
history.
Also,
Carpenter
being
Carpenter,
he
populated
his
film
with
down-to-earth,
blue
collar
characters,
not
all
that
different
from
the
kind
of
people
encountered
in
the
first
Alien.
They're
easy
to
relate
to.
It
helps
immeasurably
that
he
put
together
a
cast
that
could
lend that quality
to
the
characters
through
screen
presence
alone—there's nothing more
folksy on this Earth than “Quaker Oats” Wilford Brimley, and no
one who looks more world-weary and fed up with peoples' bullshit than
Keith David.
 |
| He's had it up to here with this Thing bullshit |
These kinds of characters, along with the completely
unknown nature of the alien creature they're forced to battle, adds a
natural and uncontrived layer of suspense to the film. The Thing can
look like any person or animal, it could be one of the very people
upon which your life depends. The film does a lot with this idea,
and it works because it's easy for viewers to put themselves in the
situation and feel the same all-consuming paranoia.
When
we come to the remake, the circumstances have changed. Here we are
in the early 21st
century, and movies make such ubiquitous use of CG effects that it's
more noteworthy when you don't
see them. In the case of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, you
fully expect it. Why wouldn't you? It's how movies are made now.
There's nothing very special about it, and the more time goes by, the
less impressed moviegoers tend to be with the sight of digital white
noise flailing around onscreen. I found that to be the case
with the first two Transformers
movies: the action looked like a lot of cubist shapes mating with
Legos. Sure, a ton of work goes into creating digital effects, and
some of it does look
damn good, but market saturation has significantly devalued the
product.
The
creature effects for the new Thing
are, as far as I could tell, entirely digital—at any rate, if there
are any physical
effects, they get lost in the shuffle. This allows for scenes not
possible in the Carpenter version: grotesquely deformed and
misshapen human beings walk around on their freakish appendages in
full view, and chase after their prey. The Thing designs borrow
heavily from the older versions, and this winds up being a problem.
They hew so closely to Rob Bottin's ideas that they don't really
bring anything new to the concept. On top of that, the designers
don't seem all that inspired by what they've borrowed. In
Carpenter's Thing,
part of the horror one feels at the sight of these monsters is that
they seem capable of turning into any and all combinations of organic
life, as if somebody stuck parts of every animal on Earth in a food
processor and spiked them with mescaline. Here, we get spider legs,
crab claws, tentacles, and toothy vagina-mouths. That's pretty much
it, unless you want to count the fact that some of these squiggly
monsters have the faces of Thing-ified characters poking out of them.
There
are some problems with the writing as well. None of the characters
really stand out (although this may be as much a problem with the
casting), and so there's no reason to be very invested in what's
happening onscreen. There's a young scientist invited by her boss to
come out to Arctic and see this weird block of ice found by a group
of Norwegian researchers (all of the action takes place at the
abandoned base explored by Kurt Russell in the original), a subject
about which he insists on being unnecessarily cryptic. I mean, why
not just come right out and say, “They found some crazy shit in the
Arctic and it might be an alien!”
I know I'd be
excited. Even if he feels he shouldn't divulge too much for fear she
might blab to her boyfriend or mom or somebody, does he have to keep
her completely in the dark like this is some kind of Special Forces
Black Ops mission? It's a tactic the writer employs to make him
appear shady, untrustworthy, and arrogant, and that's about as
interesting as he gets. This is a stock character in any number of
horror/sci-fi movies, going at least as far back as Paul Reiser's
weaselly corporate lackey from Aliens, though
I detect some elements of the mad scientists from 50's sci-fi movies
in there too.
Our
young scientist, in the course of events, figures out the nature of
the alien creature that is overtaking them. In fact, she figures it
out in no time flat, almost as if she's seen the first movie. I had
a really hard time suspending disbelief on this point. Wilford
Brimley's character took a while to come around to his final
conclusion that the alien took over the cells of its host and copied
them flawlessly. We even see him watching a computer simulation and
trying to work it out, giving us the sense that all of this is just
too strange and otherworldly to understand without some serious
thinking. Yet this character just snaps her fingers and says “I've
got it! The alien takes over its host and copies its cells!” after what appears to be a few minutes of lab work. She
doesn't fiddle with any test tubes or bunsun burners, doesn't agonize
over her hypothesis, she just figures it out and the film goes on about its business. I understand that the filmmakers don't
want to waste much time explaining something to the audience that
they might already know, but still, couldn't they have made these
scenes a little more convincing? Is she that much smarter than
Wilford Brimley? Is anybody?
 |
| Wilford says no |
A
lack of engaging characters means most of the movie hinges on the
Thing effects, and as I've said, there's not much new going on there.
Images such as these have been a staple of horror and science
fiction, as well as many video games, for decades, and I can't help
but think that relying on computerized monster squids with crab legs
and vaginas was something of a miscalculation. In a way, the new
Thing suffers from the
same disadvantages as the Star Wars
prequels. Instead of pushing the boundaries of fantasy filmmaking,
they offer up the same thing you can catch any day of the week at the
multiplex, on Netflix, or in the Redbox. Shit, The Phantom
Menace came out in the wake of
The Matrix,
probably the first movie since the original Star Wars
to have such a profound and lasting effect on popular culture. When
big-budget, video game special effects are so commonplace, a good
story and strong characters become more important than ever, and a
failure to recognize that means running the risk of having a very
expensive, very labor-intensive project disappear from the popular
consciousness like a puff of smoke in a high wind.
 |
| Or a vagina-mouth in a hurricane of tentacles |
