John
Carpenter’s The Thing [1982] [Written by Bill Lancaster] is one of the most iconic science fiction/horror films of all
time albeit a box office failure when it was released, the film has grown and developed a cult status.
Ostensibly a remake
of the classic [1951] Howard Hawks-Christian Nyby film The Thing
from Another World, Carpenter’s film is a more faithful adaptation of the novella Who Goes
There? by John W.
Campbell, Jr. which inspired the 1951 film. When rumors began spreading about a
remake, there was an uproar which ultimately subsided when it was
revealed the new film
would be a prequel showing the events that preceded Carpenter’s
original film. The Thing news
has been quite scarce lately but today we’ve got official images from the film ahead of the first footage being shown at New York City Comic Con.
UGO
has released details of their set visit to director Matthijis van Heijningen's The Thing and HIT FIX scored some new images from the
film. The 21st Century version of The Thing appears to share a lot with
its 1980s counterpart. Star Joel Edgerton appears to be channeling original
headliner Kurt Russell and the use of flamethrowers indicates that Van
Heijningen is keeping a lot of the iconic elements from Carpenter’s film.
What does seem to have changed, this time around, is the
casting of a leading lady. Carpenters The Thing featured an all male cast, this time around Mary Elizabeth Winstead brings a
touch of femininity to the proceedings. One thing that is being kept under wraps is the actual look of “The Thing.” Rob Bottin’s makeup effects
in Carpenter’s film still hold up in today’s digital age so Special Effects
Creators, Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, will have to step up and deliver
something that pleases fans of Carpenter’s film as well as modern audiences.Gillis is confident their work will match The Thing‘s legacy:
“Like the Carpenter movie,
we’re not showing The Thing in its pure form. This is an alien that is a host
to whatever The Thing is doing to it. But what’s cool about this for us as
creature effects designers is that we get to work within the language that was
established by Carpenter and Rob Bottin in 1982, but we also get to add some of
our own stuff in terms of original creature design, with creatures like this
one, and then there’s another creature. There’s another creature at the end of
the film, there’s another alien life form that The Thing mimics.”
In recent years, remakes of John Carpenter films have
failed to match up to the originals – with The Fog, Assault on
Precinct 13, and Halloween, failing
to improve upon their “original” big brothers. Director Van Heijningen will
have to work hard to ensure that his film works within the context of the
original film – while offering modern audiences a film experience to get
excited about.
Here’s the official synopsis for The Thing prequel:
Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they’re infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet.Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up.When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew’s pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.
IO9 recently interviewed The Thing Prequel's [Producer] Marc Abraham, [Exec Producer] J. Miles Dale & [Effects Designer] Alec Gillis.
Does John Carpenter approve?
Marc Abraham: "Carpenter's totally cool about this, John's signed off on all of this and we have the rights to another one of his Movies that we might remake."
How much time was spent going over John Carpenter’s
film?
Marc Abraham: "Oh, forget it. Matthijs [van
Heijningen Jr.] has on his laptop not only screen captures of that entire
movie, but there isn’t a moment when he doesn’t go back to the original. A
million of them. He’s so careful about where the axe is in the door or what the
ice block looked like, or the spaceship, where they stand when we see the
spaceship. Because we can do so much more, so many things we could do, but when
it came to being anything that was referenced in that movie, we have absolutely
stayed with it. Thousands of hours he’s spent looking at that movie. He knows
and is respectful of every aspect."
How much
CG is the production planning on using to create the alien? The scariest part
Carpenter’s work were the very real spider heads and flaying alien tentacles.
Alec Gillis: "The interesting thing about this movie is that
not only is there going to be real practical stuff that is completely
animatronic and needs no digital embellishment, but there is also going to be a
combination of the techniques. And the most interesting aspects of that, I
think, are when you in a single frame and the two techniques working
side-by-side....So it should be fun and chaotic, but still somehow rooted in
reality. And I don’t mean to trash digital…I have my opinions about how it
should be used and how it should not be used, but we have the guys that did
District 9. So even I, as a snobby animatronics and makeup guy, I look at that
work and I go, “that is frickin’ amazing work.” So I think we’re in very good
hands on the digital end as well.
Will this film respect the work that [special
effects designer] Rob Bottin did
in Carpenter’s original?
Alec Gillis: "Yeah, it’s intimidating as
hell...Because it was so… it was so… the term “groundbreaking” is always used.
But it was so imaginative, beyond even what the technical aspects of it were,
the materials used. The concepts were so very imaginative. So one of the things
that that film kinda put into perspective [for] me is you can break ground
technically or you can break ground conceptually. And I think that what we’re
hoping to do is we’re hoping to take the updated technology, which is not code
for digital, because I know there’s a lot of concern—I share that concern
obviously, especially on this film, to not go too digital-heavy because that’s
not the language of The Thing. But we’re hoping that conceptually, we’ve got
something that fits within the lore of the film. It’s almost like if you look
at the Howard Hawks version which had exclusively makeup, then you look at the
Bottin version and it had makeup and animatronics, this one will have the
cutting-edge animatronics and the little mini-revolution we’ve had since 1982
in the world of animatronics, plus it’s got the digital to embellish it. I don’t
think you can really tell this story without digital because as great as
animatronics can be, and as big a believer in them as I am, I think that you
still need to open things up a bit with the digital, especially when it comes
to transformations. And so once you have the best of both worlds, you’re free
to let the audience enjoy the conceptuals."
How much of the movie will be subtitled?
"Since this picture is set on the Norwegian base, and the
only characters we saw alive in Carpenter’s film [albeit very briefly] didn’t
speak any English at all, we have to imagine that there’s going to be a lot of
subtitling. Actress Winstead, who is seemingly stuck in a lot of those
situations, confirmed our suspicions.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead: A lot [of the film will be
subtitled]. We did a lot of versions where we would do at the end, “OK now do
an English version just in case.” I’m not sure exactly what they’re going to
decide to do. But there’s definitely a lot of scenes with Norwegian. Which has
been great, especially for my to not know what people are talking about. I don’t
know if they’re talking about me, so you freak out a little...
[English-language reshoots are] the same as [redoing] a scene without the
f-word, just in case. It’s that sort of thing which is tacked in on the end,
just in case someone has a problem with that scene being in Norwegian. But for
the most part, I think it’s really cool. I think Matthijs [the director] really
likes that there’s a lot of Norwegian in it. It has that feel about it I think
that adds to the film feeling very European. Having a European director and a
large European cast. It sort of has that feel about it. Which is very cool."
Will
Carpenter’s soundtrack be incorporated in some way?
"The first few sounds you hear in the 1982 version are the
skin crawling plunks from Ennio Morricone’s score. Apparently we should keep
our ears perked for a few Morricone tributes, executive producer J. Miles Dale
elaborates."
J. Miles Dale: "I
expect that there will be some echos of the Morricone themes. He’s pretty busy
in Italy touring, so he probably won’t be doing the movie. But I expect that
you will hear a familiar melody from time-to-time."
Will the
new soundtrack still have that stripped down, ominous feel to it?
J. Miles Dale: "It’s not a comedy. It’s going
to be kind of serious. It will be in that thriller or tense mode. Tonally it
will resemble the original in the terms of that feel, but also, it’s a
different movie. The things that tie this movie to the Carpenter movie are kind
of obvious and we’ve done a lot of reverse engineering, in terms of the camp
and the creature and when things happen and how things look. So there can be a
continuum there. I think again that melody is a very signature melody, but we
have a different director and this is a different movie so I think there will
be some reinvention there, I’m sure."
J. Miles Dale: "Obviously this film has to
stand on its own. Nobody was really excited about a remake for obvious reasons,
because of the comparisons and because you know what the story is. The notion
of a prequel was very exciting to everyone, and we know that it will be held to
that standard and that it is going to be a companion piece. So yes without a
doubt. I think that there will be a huge demand to watch the other movie once
people have seen this film. Matthijs has been very scrupulous about what we saw
of the Norwegian camp in the first film, that’s what it looks like now. And the
logic, when people should walk through, the alien in the ice block, even the
guy who slit his throat, he’s a full-fledged character in this movie. We’ve
really gone to great lengths to make that work... Without a doubt, it honors
the details of the first movie."