The Thing (2011 film)



"It's Not Human. Yet."

The Thing is a 2011 science-fiction horror film directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and written by Eric Heisserer based on the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell. It is a Prequel to the 1982 film of the same name by John Carpenter, and stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Eric Christian Olsen.

In it, a team of Norwegian and American scientists discover an alien spacecraft buried deep in the ice of Antarctica. During investigation and exploration, the body of an alien found within the craft, which they retrieve and store, still encased in ice, in one of the buildings of the base from which they are operating. The alien, though, is very much alive, bursts from the ice, and escapes. They pursue it, and discover that it is a shapeshifter when it kills one of them and begins transforming into him even as they (apparently) kill it.

However, the creature is not dead, and the base becomes the site of a dangerous -- and familiar -- cat-and-mouse game, with no one sure who is human and who can be trusted. In the end most of the team is dead, and the alien is in the form of a dog. As it flees, the two survivors chase it in the Norwegian helicopter, with one leaning out of the open doorway, trying to shoot it with a scoped rifle, thus leading into the events of the 1982 film.


 * Badass: Lars, who seemingly out of nowhere appears with a flamethrower when a Thing attack occurs. Kate also applies, who by the third act is even referred to as "The Boss."
 * Badass Adorable: Kate, intelligence and bravery aside, has been described by a review as "looking like a cute teenager trying to buy booze with a fake ID rather than an actual adult."
 * Belly Mouth: the Thing loves to pop out of the chest and turn the ribs into teeth.
 * Black Dude Dies First: Subverted. The resident black guy is.
 * Body Horror: Due to CGI, there's a LOT more gore, tentacles, fangs, teeth, and bodies splitting apart then in the original. The is the embodiment of this trope.
 * Chekhov's Gun: It's discovered early on that the Thing cannot duplicate inorganic material, such as metal. This comes back when Kate . It's also used to reveal that.
 * Chekhov MIA:.
 * Combat Tentacles: Used by the Thing to kill or wound several people, usually as a prelude to assimilating the surviving biomass when it has time.
 * Conspicuous CG: All over the place, which is a real shame since the animatronics the CG painted over were great on their own.
 * Continuity Nod: Being a prequel, this is to be expected. Among them are:
 * The fire-axe, and how it got stuck in the door.
 * The UFO, discovered in a massive chamber underneath the ice.
 * The two face-thing, and how it eventually appeared in it's melted state.
 * The block of ice, and what it looked like before it was found by MacReady.
 * Who ended up being the suicide victim found with his throat and wrists cut.
 * Lars is the only one of the Norwegians who can't speak English and knows where the grenades are. Sure enough,.
 * Things love the chest-mouth thing they pulled on.
 * Also comparing stored blood with blood samples taken from everyone.
 * There is also a combination Chekhov's Gun Continuity Nod, because.
 * Cosmetically Advanced Prequel: Being released almost 29 years after the original, CGI is heavily used this time around, with relatively few instances of puppets or other practical effects being utilized.
 * A Crack in the Ice: The movie opens with the Norwegians in a snowcat homing in on a Distress Signal.
 * Distress Signal: How the Norwegians find the Flying Saucer. The signal sounds even more creepy and otherworldly than the signal in Alien.
 * Downer Ending:.
 * Doomed by Canon
 * Executive Meddling: According to screenwriter Eric Heisserer, the studio wanted a "leaner and meaner" film. The result was that the film has been gutted of most tension-building or exposition scenes, leaving just the straight-up violence with the monster. Worse, they built very expensive animatronics for the alien which look genuinely horrifying, but the final version of the movie switched to CGI effects to make the alien's attacks faster. The CGI is okay, but its truly shocking when you see the level of detail that went into these animatronics. Further, we can tell from various cast and crew interviews that a lot of the movie's runtime was cut to focus on the action scenes and for pacing.
 * Expositron 9000: The base computer, during the explanation of The Thing's infection and replication mechanism.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: When the Thing assimilates some of its victims via direct contact, they're aware of what's happening, and are clearly in great pain during the process. . Another.
 * Genre Savvy:
 * Here We Go Again: The ending of this film dovetails into the beginning of the 1982 film.
 * Hope Spot:
 * Impostor Exposing Test: It's theorized that Thing blood will react when exposed to human blood, so a test is quickly created in order to see who's human or not..
 * Idiot Ball:
 * It Can Think:.
 * It Was There I Swear: Kate realises the Thing has assimilated a human
 * Jerkass: Dr. Sander Halvorson
 * Let's Split Up, Gang!: After the Thing is fully revealed and everyone believes Kate, the expedition still ends up splitting into teams of two even after it's been made abundantly clear this is a terrible idea. It turns out that
 * Load-Bearing Boss: The flying saucer's power system shuts down after both its control system and the Thing is destroyed.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
 * Not His Sled:
 * Nothing Is Scarier: The Thing's original form is vaguely insectoid, but we never get a very good look at it.
 * Prequel: And not a distant one -- it ends literally minutes before the predecessor film begins.
 * Retcon: What the UFO looked like and its condition at the end of the film, the manner of, and of course the original number of people at Thule station.
 * Red Herring: Just like in the original film,
 * Shapeshifter: The Thing, of course.
 * The Un-Reveal:
 * While a shape can be seen inside the block of ice, we never see exactly what the thing looks like inside. What few glimpses we do get suggest that it looks like.
 * Some fans theorized that the film would explain what the Thing was doing in the UFO..
 * Trailers Always Spoil: Most if not all of the trailers for the prequel have footage that clearly shows that This is particularly egregious as it turns out they were the only characters that were secretly assimilated by the Thing. Also, recent television spots very briefly show
 * What Happened to the Mouse?:
 * Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
 * Wounded Gazelle Gambit: