Home Video Hovel: John Carpenter’s The Thing, by Tyler Smith

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3 Responses

  1. FictionIsntReal says:

    I think one major reason it didn’t get a sequel (until the recent unfortunate quasi-remake) is that it wasn’t very commercially successful on initial release. Blade Runner didn’t get one either (although Denis Villenueve is working on one now).

    • Battleship Pretension says:

      That’s a good point. And while the film was considered a success (at least culturally) by the 1990s, I’m sure executives didn’t see much need for a sequel so many years after the original. But, of course, by the late 2000s, when any known property was ripe for a sequel, prequel, or reboot, suddenly a follow-up to THE THING sounded like a great idea.
      Incidentally, I just re-watched the 2011 film and, no, it was not a great idea.

  2. JoeViturbo says:

    You know, something that you wrote struck a chord with me. Carpenter’s earlier films, like “Assault on Precinct 13”, “Halloween”, and “The Fog” focus on attacks from without. “Assault on Precinct 13” and “The Fog” being literally “Siege Movies” in the same vein as “The Alamo” and “Zulu”.

    With “The Thing” and extending into “Christine”, Carpenter brings the attack from an external force to an internal one. Those we once trusted are no longer reliable sources of safety and protection.

    Finally, you have “Prince of Darkness”, “They Live”, and “In the Mouth of Madness”, where the “heroes” are beset on all sides, both without and within by horrors and dangers.

    Now, I’m surely overgeneralizing here and each of these films have nuances and story elements beyond the descriptions I’ve provided but it does seem to fit a logical (and chronological) progression and intensification of horror elements (or avenues of attack) within Carpenter’s filmography.

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