The Thing (2011) trailer

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Marco Beltrami did the music. He's good at imitating the style of other composers without copying them outright – although he did use some of Michael Kamen's themes from Die Hard for his Live Free or Die Hard score, and from what I've read, his score for The Thing will use elements of the original score from Ennio Morricone (who, amusingly enough, was imitating John Carpenter's style).

Not really feeling it from the clips. And I hate prequels. Still, I enjoyed the original.

I was thinking about trying to get out and seeing Contagion this weekend. Anyone have any criticism on it so far?

^ I don't really like the false scare in the first clip, but I think the second clip captures the paranoia of Carpenter's film pretty much perfectly.

I haven't seen a movie in a theatre since... jeez... Iron Man 2? Yikes. If Contagion is anything like Steven Soderbergh's other movies, it's pretty good but way too pretentious.

The Russian trailer has some new creature footage:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZbXr61vsiI[/youtube]

^ I've been trying to piece together things like that by watching these clips. The filmmakers have said that they're being very meticulous about this film matching up with Carpenter's. Everything you saw in the Norwegian camp will be in this film, from the half-human half-Thing creature to the human with the cut throat to the axe in the door. And clearly, one of the bearded Norwegians is going to be the guy who shouted at the Americans at the beginning of Carpenter's film before meeting his end. Normally I don't like the idea of prequels, but the way that this one is going to match up with the original is giving me a geek hard-on. They've said that it'll end right where the original begins, so they fit together like a puzzle piece, and you can watch them back to back.

Two more clips!

These aren't on YouTube, and whatever video format this is, it won't embed when I try it, so I'll just post the website link. It also has the two previous clips I've posted here.

http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/47662/ ... lips-thing

Antarctica has a hell of a cockroach problem...



(link to new pics)

You simply can't top the original. The mechanical effects by Rob Bottin were truly frightening. The temptation to use CGI is too great, as evidenced by the scene where the thing breaks out of the ice and leaps to the ceiling. CGI will totally ruin the whole movie. Interestingly, John Carpenter is quite bitter about the movie. The original was a flop in theaters and Ebert called it "a barf bag of a film."

Even more new footage from a short featurette. This one has some comparison shots to show the film matching up with Carpenter's.

http://www.empireonline.com/news/feed.asp?NID=32146

The "CGI is ruining movies!" crowd is honestly starting to sound like Glenn Beck’s Chicken Little apocalypse cult at this point. None of the CGI that I've seen in any of these clips has looked any more fake than the puppets used in Carpenter's film. Would the use of practical effects really have satisfied the naysayers? Not a chance.

What's funny to me about the fanboy negativity surrounding this movie is that it's exactly what happened to Carpenter's film. A classic film was being remade and critics and fans were biased against it from the beginning. When it came out, their hatred blinded them and instead of seeing what was so good about it, they just saw the effects and criticized it for being nothing but "gore for gore's sake."

This is going to be 1982 all over again. The reviews are going to be terrible. They're all going to complain about how the movie relies too much on effects and why must these new filmmakers ruin my favorite classics movies and blah blah blah. And a decade from now, these very same people will be calling it "an underrated gem" or something and claiming to have always liked it.

I think the primary objection I have is that you can't do something for the first time twice. The premise of Carpenter's movie, that the Thing can assume any shape, is a stand out. It certainly wasn't in the original with James Arness looking like a halloween Frankenstein. So I can't get all excited at seeing that again, although I must admit some of the glimpses of the Russian trailer are pretty scary. Carpenter's version is soooo claustrophobic, so intense, it really can't be matched. Come now, the snowcat falls into a hole? Really?
I was one of the few to actually see it in theater back in 1982, and it was really frightening. His moments of humor bear mentioning, also. My favorite is when the guys are tied up on the bench and McReady does the hot wire blood test. After the creature breaks loose, the chief has the funniest line in the entire movie.