The Thing, the ship and its creator.

I agree with you @Major Noob, imagine if Paradise had a creature that was just like the Thing. It would bring all of these franchises together. But only if it is done correctly and the right way.

I have wondered about how the Thing could control the ship. It had to killed and replicated something, Predators, indeed why not, but i think they should have a whole new Alien who comes into contact with the thing, showing its origin. Itll be another prequel to the original.

Thats a good idea also @DenzlTH. I have always asked myself who were the original inhabitants of that huge ship.

[img]http://thepointfitchburgstate.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/thething.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.dbcovers.com/imagenes/backdrops/grandes/la_cosa_1982//la_cosa_1982_8.jpg[/img]

Rubirosa, this is a great topic. Much like the SJ in Alien, I've turned over in my mind time and again the origin of that vehicle. It seemed to me the Thing had quite a few other species in its memory, and could mimic them at will. If so, it's home must be a hideous place. Maybe it's Paradise! I couldn't get into the prequel, sadly. I would have loved an extended intro that told that story, no subtitles, but I figure it's gotta be incredibly difficult ( and expensive ) to believably realize something so otherworldly. My money is on Paradise to pull this off. Hope springs eternal!

I love this thread Rubirosa!! and I love the movie The Thing .. Its one of my most favorite movies....the 1984 John Carpenter especially ..there have been 3 in total... Your ideas are very interesting, connecting the biological weapon idea between movies is intriguing and I too have always wondered about the ship that crashed.... Ncc is an expert on space ships!.. I bet he has some really interesting things to say about it :) Ok you have me thinking now!!! ha ha ha ha ha ha I gonna have a think and look into what I can find and get back to you!! maybe some concept drawing of the spaceship : ) and a good look at the metamorphosis of the creature..to see if there are any hints at its Host in the ship.... because I too believe the spaceship belong to the host not the creature... I wonder if there was any black goo on board????? ;) also you reminded me that the ship has been in the ice for 4 million years...just for fun...Is there any time line ties into the other movies ?? [img]http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/the-thing-spaceship-1982.jpg[/img] [img]http://application.denofgeek.com/images/m/75spaceships/main/thing_saucer.jpg[/img]

I found this interesting article that references the early scripts.... director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. is being interviewed about his work on the prequel.... [b][i]How much thought did you put into The Thing's backstory? How did it get to Earth, why was it there, are there pages and pages of backstory that wasn't in the film?[/i][/b] [i]In an early script there was more stuff explaining it. The idea was, and I don't know if I should tell you this, the idea was that the creature in the ice is not the original form of the thing.[/i] [i]In my opinion it was always sort of a virus, it doesn't have an original form. So the creature they find in the ice it could have been a friendly creature that was then taken over by the thing. That backstory still holds, I think. We had, at some point, that they would go inside of the ship, in the beginning of the movie, and they would see that the ship was this big biolab and that they were specimen collectors that race, and it broke free and killed everyone in the ship. [/i] [i] So the spaceship was a science fiction version of the Norwegian base in John Carpenter's movie. But then it sort of f****d up the story. Because if you have 50 dead aliens in a spaceship why would you concentrate so much on the guy frozen in the ice? [/i] [i]So from a story point, that didn't work. It put too much emphases on the spaceship and not enough on the one creature in the ice. So we sort of abandoned that idea completely. Does that make sense? [url=http://io9.com/5849650/the-director-of-the-thing-reveals-the-aliens-secret-backstory]Read the Full Interview Here[/url] and here is the original script :) [url=http://sfy.ru/?script=thing_1982]THE THING 1982[/url] [b]Apparantly The Thing was based upon a short story [b]Who Goes There?[/b] and by the [b]HP Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness,[/b] in which an Antarctic reasearch team uncovers a cryogenically preserved Elder Thing, which thaws out and attacks them.[/b] [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Goes_There%3F]Who Goes There wiki[/url] [url=http://www.outpost31.com/books/who.txt]Read Who Goes There[/url] [img]http://www.unwinnable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Haines-Bok-Campbell-Who-Goes-There.jpg[/img] [img]http://cromeyellow.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ian_miller2_1-600x441.jpg[/img]

Thank you for your comments @TANKGIRL. I love the film myself. It is not only a Science fiction/Horror film. It also has touches of comedic moments in it. There were about 12 characters on the military base. Most of the characters had there own specific personalities that were expressed very well by all the actors. You had the lead tough guy MacReady played by Kurt Russel. Also Blair who was played by Wilfred Brimley who was one of the Doctors/Scientists in the group and was a true professional who saw the true danger the Thing was capable of inflicting if it ever reached civilization. Also Garry who was played by Donald Moffat who was in charge of security, managed the base and looked like he could not wait to retire. Both Moffat and Brimley by that point in there acting careers had been performing on stage and screen for many years. They were both experienced veteran actors. Then you had Childs who was played by Keith David, who in the film personified the loose canon on the base, but in reality he was just trying to survive. He also brought a funny sarcastic touch to the film. But the true funny man in the film was David Clennon who played the part of Palmer, who was a true laid back pot head. You also had Nauls played by T.K Carter who spent most of his time roller skating up and down the corridors while listening to his music. You also had Windows who was played by Thomas G Waites who was in charge of communications on the base. All the actors did a fantastic job in the film. Even though there were 12 people on the base, every death made sense. What I mean is that not unlike other sci-fi/horror films were you have killings that make no sense at all. All of the deaths in the Thing ran concisely with the story line. In other words there was no extra baggage in the film. Even the death of the 2 Norwegians from the helicopter made justified. One of the best scenes in the film is when MacReady has most of the men tied to there chairs and is taking blood samples from each of them to find out who is the Thing. I never get tired watching that scene. When Palmer begins to jump up and down and begins to transform himself into the Thing. That scene is incredible because its funny, scary and macbre all at the same time. Its a true science fiction film classic.

I have always viewed Carpenters The Thing as a pseudo prequel to the invasion of the body snatchers. Crazy it sounds I know but follow me for a sec... MacReady and Childs freeze to death (probably) as the remains of the Thing burn, in the smoke cells of the Thing are thrown up into the atmosphere and dispersed around the globe before dropping down with rain droplets and mist. These Thing cells interact with the plants and create the pods, from there on in you can fill in the rest... Plus of course they both deal with horror of losing ones identity and the paranoia of not knowing who you can trust...

I just finished reading the article you put up @TANKGIRL. Its very interesting the stuff that they had in mind in the first place. The ship would be found to be a huge bio lab of some sort. That sounds very familiar to me if you know what I mean. The creature then gets loose and begins to attack its creators/captors. The story At the Mountains of Madness is my favorite HP Lovecraft story of all time. It really is the ultimate story which explains his whole Cthulhu mythos. The elder ones, or (things) are those space gods who came to earth hundreds of millions of years ago. After them legions of other horrific space gods or creatures followed through and battled for the planet. In the process they divided the planet up between them. You really have to read the story yourself @TANKGIRL because you will find out that films like Prometheous, Alien, and the Thing all lead back to the work of HP Lovecraft. Who by the way also was a huge influence on the art work of HR Geiger. In fact one of Giegers art books is called the Necronomicon. That word was first used in HP Lovecrafts story - The Hound. All of that fantastic work done on Alien by Geiger if you investigate are just like the creatures Lovecraft invented. That is one of the reasons I was not pleased by the appearance of humanoid beings representing the Space Jockey race. The original Space Jockey in Alien is so dark and unnatural to see. Even though it is mummified or fossilized in its chair it still looks menacing. It even has a grand presence to it, especially when you listen to the score that was used for that scene. I still get goose bumps watching that scene. But what I am trying to get at is that the Space Jockey should of been shown in Prometheous as it was displayed in Alien. In my opinion the Space Jockey race are huge elephantine creatures. Now that is the type of creatures Lovecraft wrote about in huis stories. The macbre, the forbidden, the horrific and the unknown.

I loved that scene too Rubirosa : ) and the mix of characters was brilliant I especially liked MacReady... [blushes and twirls her ringlet] [img]http://deathensemble.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/With-the-coolest-beard-in-all-of-horror-as-MacReady.jpg[/img]

Yea.. Its so strange that I somehow missed HP Lovecraft??... because I have the most massive collection of scifi books and Im a voracious reader In fact I have so many books that many are in boxes in the attic! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha But I understand how fundamental Lovecraft was to all science fiction .... In fact.. I think I might buy a collection of his to read these christmas holidays! : ) and Im with you about the Space Jockeys! when I saw that scene..the music...the choreography..the creature..... breathtaking!

Thats brilliant Snorkelbottom! : )

Sounds good @Snorkelbottom.

[img]http://new.assets.thequietus.com/images/articles/10415/The-Thing-Kurt-Russell_1350611835_crop_550x403.jpg[/img] A very macabre setting.

well its an interesting thought, but to me the more interesting thought is why they used that ship in the final film lol seriously, it looks cool when its in the ice but that opening shot is my least favorite part of the film, its just so silly looking compared to the grittiness of the rest of the film, sorry lol that's just always got on my nerves. well anyway what would happen if the black goo infected "the thing"? what would that look like?

What do you get if you cross Alien with The Thing, one possible answer is Leviathan (staring Peter Weller). It is certainly not the greatest film ever made, but I like the concept that a ship is scuppered to hide the the evidence of mutational experiments. Since Leviathan was made after Alien, was this background based on the ship on LV 426, only placed in a more earthbound context. From what I have seen from all the Predator films, I am left with the feeling that humans are used as a blood sport, but with the intention of training for a confrontation with something far bigger and nastier. The AVP franchise is something of a sideshow in relation to this, ( to me anyhow) particularly after watching Predators which points to more than one type of predator. I find Prometheus has raised the question as to whether or not the mutationss are deliberate or accidental. What I mean by this, is that yes, the engineers had set up some form of possible military research base and something went wrong. Is it though a result of something they discovered (somewhere in another part of their universe) or something they manufactured ( based exclusively on their technology) So could the end result be a bit like The Thing. Something gets dumped in the middle of nowhere with the hope that it will not be tampered with. The fun starts when someone, or something decides to investigate.

Now I can imagine the Thing mimicking the biology of an Engineer to travel through space in the Juggernaunt ... a very interesting topic btw ... especially to create fanfiction.

These Science Fiction ideas are based upon things that are happening here in earth today... There are living Things that use others as hosts and then totally control them through genetics, turning the host into a zombie Anelosimus octavius, is a spider that becomes a host for a parasitic wasp To manipulate the spiders, the wasp must have genes that produce proteins that alter spider behavior Other parasites manipulate their hosts by altering the neurotransmitters in their brains. This kind of psychopharmacology is how thorny-headed worms send their hosts to their doom [img]http://www.vintage-views.com/MeyersKonversations/Vol17/wood/images/0527839k6-Wurmer1.jpg[/img] Simple viruses can do this at the cellular level Outside of a living cell, a virus is a dormant particle; but within an appropriate host cell, it becomes an active entity capable of subverting the cell's metabolic machinery for the production of new virus particles [img]http://www2.raritanval.edu/departments/Science/full-time/Weber/Microbiology%20Majors/SoftChalkeCoursesubmission/chapter13sub/figure_13_05a_labeled.jpg[/img]

The Thing is in my top five favorite scifi movies. When there was talk about a prequel I was very skeptical. When I watched the prequel I was relieved to discover that Matthijs van Heijningen had treated John Carpenter's movie with the utter most respect and had delivered a prequel that was wonderful. I loved the end of that movie, the way it ties in with the original and where the prequel ends, the storyline runs into the original movie. I saw Alien when I was eight years of age and I didn't really grasp the Space Jockey concept until I was older. The question I did ask was how the "Alien" could fly a space ship. Only when I was older did I realize that the Alien never flew the ship; it was the Space Jockey. Great thread :)

Thank you all very much for contributing your opinions to this thread.

Its funny @TANKGIRL but that picture you put up of the DNA sample looks just like the giant spider with the human head which is in the Thing.

The original 1951 version is unique in that the director, Christian Nyby encouraged the actors to talk over each others lines in such a way as to mimic the way conversations actually take place. Its a little disconcerting when viewed but sounds like natural conversation after a few minutes. Oh, and a young James Arness played the title role.

The Thing is one of the most watched movies by me a Classic.... [img]http://media.comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/20773/thing-with-three-eyes.jpg[/img] This is what the designers supposed the Things original form looks like. You can see its based on the Who Goes There Book. As far as AVP i dont think its canon but in its own right its a decent movie, i agree some elements of AVPR are not well done. As far as the Thing connecting to Predator, i am not sure about wanting that. But heres a Question i will throw out...... What happens if the Black Goo in Prometheus comes into contact with a infected Organism by the Thing?

Dam @BigDave the original form looks really nasty. But in viewing it I do not see the whole body. In viewing it I only see its upper torso, and both its hands and the top of its arm folded. Do you see what I am talking about? Also what if the Thing ever tried to assimilate or replicate with another life form that was infected with the Black Goo? I really think that the Thing is a very intelligent life form. In my opinion it not only reacts but it also analyzes the situation it is in and decides what are the best options for it. If you really think about it the Thing is really an advanced model of the Black Goo. Its the Black Goo instead of mutating its new host, its the Black Goo becoming its new host but also bringing withy it all its past hosts also for the ride. Its really a great question @BigDave because there are no right or wrong answers. But I have a funny feeling that the Thing would find a way to over power the effects of the Black Goo and assimilate its properties.

I like the idea of this thread - Further more... My thought initially about that is as we're dealing essentially with the alien legacy that has been in exitence throught the galaxy for a very long time and my thought of another Thing film would be a prequel to the prequel. I would like to see what happened to and what exactly befell the alien crew in that franchise and the exact circumstances that drove it to come to crash land upon the earth 100,00's of thousands of years ago... I thought this could be approached in a similar way as in Prometheus with the holotechnology except like in an Avatar situation some kind of device is found and once triggered the person who triggered it is forced to re-live what the original crew went though in their ordeal. (Think: The Matrix and being 'jacked-in' yet you are a forced by-stander being directed to watch what happened to these ancient alien souls much as Malcolm Macdonald is forced to undergo 'forced rehabilitation' in A Clockwork Orange) Then others join in to make up the numbers and pretty soon you have a sort of flash back type of movie until the end where to reasons for the alien ship coming to Earth in the first place is truely revealed. The film could start off like a sequel but then refer back to what the original aliens who piloted the space craft actually origiunally encountered that was The Thing and all subsequent plot scenarios about it's origins are then set in motion for us the viewer. In another set of information snippets I remember trailig across in the script for The Thing when the Anartica 1st research team enters and investigates the Alien Space Craft they come across burned spots upon the floor at the enterance to what appeared to be some sort of 'habitation looking cubicle' (individual crew quarters?) There are giant vats full of a liquid that looks frozen solid much like a super-sized urn yet one appears torn open. Great 'claw marks' seem to run the entire lenght down the ovular-circule looking ovid. The 'metal' looked as though it was bent outward (no punn inteded for Alien but nice none-the-less) All down corridors there are spots of ripped 'hull', 'bulk heads' and yet more ashened-looking scratch marks that have been the product of something left there to the exposure of the elements for a long time... And some 'thing/creature' that caused it.

One thing I would recommend is watch the prequel and then the original back to back. I ripped both movies as avi files and I then trimmed out the original and some of the prequel end and spliced both movies together as one movie and it’s amazing how they blend so well. The prequel was made in a way that the Thing looked and felt like the original movie. I loved how they actually blend moments in both movies like the scene in the prequel when they use an ax to kill a thing on the wall and then you see Kurt in the original looking at that same ax stuck in the wall. When they fly to the camp and discover the burned remains in a pile with the two faces blending, the prequel takes you to that point of how the Thing got there - just brilliant. If you watch like I did both movies spliced together, you will be hard pressed like me to try and find a prequel/ Sequel that fits this perfect together.

Yes Doppleganger, thats true when you do that! :-) I had some more in-depth writings on this prequel-to-the-prequel idea I talked of earlier above. I have somemore writings here I would like to share with you which I have expanded upon in greater detail where I only glossed over the surface in my earlier posting. Here it is... ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Thing (sequel/prequel) scenario I thought that there could be a prequel to the prequel but what I thought of was that in there being a sequel to John Carpenters film somehow there is established some form of device(s) that has been recovered off screen maybe) from the crashed alien space ship and like an AVATAR-like situation, somehow the "Users" are linked-in (also like the Matrix being Jacked-in... Or was that Jonny Neumonic?) and they are, in some way, forced to re-live the experiences of the alien travelers as they went about what seemed to be some sort of zoo-ological/science expedition cataloging many different species throughout their "quadrant" of space. The Thing prequel script seems to hint at the fact that there was some huge circular/oval looking vats suspended high above the chamber floor they were in and one seems to have a breach down one side. Also its as if something ripped a claw mark down one side to escape out of the vat. There are other clues as well, ashend remains upon the floor in one of the alien cubicle enterances. I would love to see this part of the "alien's" story investigated. Like AVATAR we some how become them via an advanced memory link technology mechanism and relive there memory recordings that they did as an every day occurence when out on patrol/missions and follow them as events unfold. AS in Avatar, these zoo-ologist beings have futuristic "video-cam"-like devices that they use to record their day-to-day exploratory and living activities. Perhaps they are mini-probes that hover like the spherical seeker/probe(s) in Star Wars films but maybe a little smaller, almost marble-size. Who knows, perhaps these advanced, wisened yet helpless souls just happened along some other bunch of poor alien souls whom fell foul of the alien parasite/organism. Or maybe they ended up on its homeworld and thought it was worth the risk to try and "tame" this feral-like organism. Maybe it was of militaristic value if indeed this was the social structure of their society. The Thing organism could have been a survivor of countless assimilations enlessly hop-scotching down the generations for perhaps a millenia! Or more...! And as the final battle ensued, added to the fact that the creature/ organism equally assimilates intelligence and knowledge along with the life form it has absorbed it uses that intelligence (if any) to its advantage to create fear, doubt and paranoia. Just imagine there is probably litterally dozens, maybe even tens-of-thousands of worlds out there in space that have been completely taken over by the intruder organism and like waves on the sea just keeps rippling down through any and all life it comes into contact with spreading what may inevitably turn out to be just the single basic spore that started it all but has past its assimilation heritage down the generations to the next set of potential hosts. Perhaps the Aliens in the craft and their entire race was conquered by The Thing and it was their last-ditcth attempt at eradicating it for good but some-how the creature got the upper-hand and managed to get to the control room and sent the craft on a one-way voyage to crash-land upon Earth after perhaps having already visited there after The Thing had infected one of the alien crew it equally assimilated their knowledge base along with it and refused to let them destroy it. It new where Earth was and directed the ship to rendeveous there.