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'''''The Thing''''' is a 2011 [[Science Fiction Films|science-fiction]] [[Horror Films|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 [[The Thing (film)|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.
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.
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* [[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 {{spoiler|1=directly set-up as The Thing's first victim, but it completely ignores him after breaking free. He later survives a seemingly fatal helicopter crash, and ultimately doesn't end up dying until the mid-point/climax of the movie where ''all'' the secondary characters get slaughtered}}.
* [[Body Horror]]: Due to CGI, there's a LOT more gore, tentacles, fangs, teeth, and bodies splitting apart then in the original. The
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: It's discovered early on that the Thing cannot duplicate inorganic material, such as metal. This comes back when Kate
* [[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 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2bsXC-uhXQ&feature=player_embedded the animatronics the CG painted over] were great on their own.
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** {{spoiler|Those flamethrowers they give the Antarctic teams sure do have a bad habit of failing at critical moments}}.
** Lars is the only one of the Norwegians who can't speak English and knows where the grenades are. Sure enough, {{spoiler|it's him at the beginning of the original film who shouts useless warnings in Norwegian at the Americans and tries to toss a grenade at the Thing}}.
** Things love the chest-mouth thing they pulled on
** Also comparing stored blood with blood samples taken from everyone. {{spoiler|In the prequel the Thing hastily burns the lab -- whereas the Thing at Outpost 31, knowing in advance that this test will likely be used on it, has the time to destroy the stored blood in a way that implicates the camp leader.}}
** There is also a combination [[Chekhov's Gun]] [[Continuity Nod]], because {{spoiler|at the end of the 1982 film, Childs still has his earring}}.
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* [[A Crack in the Ice]]: The movie opens with the Norwegians in a snowcat homing in on a Distress Signal. {{spoiler|They discover where it's coming from when the ground opens beneath them and they become wedged in a crevasse with their headlights shining down on a [[Flying Saucer]].}}
* [[Distress Signal]]: How the Norwegians find the [[Flying Saucer]]. The signal sounds even more creepy and otherworldly than the signal in ''[[Alien (franchise)|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.
* [[Genre Savvy]]:
* [[Here We Go Again]]:
* [[Hope Spot]]:
* [[Impostor
* [[Idiot Ball]]:
* [[It Can Think]]: {{spoiler|The Thing cleans up one of its murder scenes, attempts to extinguish a fire (though this may be pure luck on the Thing's part), leads Kate into a trap, and finally briefly manages to power up the ship}}.
* [[It Was There I Swear]]: Kate realises the Thing has assimilated a human {{spoiler|when she finds blood in the shower. When she goes back after the helicopter crash, the shower stall has been cleaned up. While this removes the evidence, it also tells Kate that the Thing is still among them, and wasn't just on the helicopter.}}
* [[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]]: {{spoiler|The director stated there was originally a shot of a laboratory on the ship, which would have proven that the Thing is a different species than the creatures who made the ship. The original film shows that the Thing is perfectly capable of building its own ship, however.}}
* [[Nothing Is Scarier]]: The Thing's original form is vaguely insectoid, but we never get a very good look at it.
* [[Prequel]]:
* [[Retcon]]: What the UFO looked like and its condition at the end of the film, the manner of {{spoiler|the Split-face Thing's death}}, and of course the original number of people at Thule station.
▲* [[Prequel]]: And not a [[Distant Prologue|distant]] one -- it ends literally minutes before the predecessor film begins.
* [[
▲* [[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. {{spoiler|While we do see inside the UFO, we never get a clear answer as to what its relationship is toward the Thing. Director van Heijningen originally intended to show that the Thing was an alien sample collected by the UFO's pilots that broke free, but the subplot was cut for pacing issues}}.
* [[Trailers Always Spoil]]: Most if not all of the trailers for the prequel have footage that clearly shows that
* [[What Happened to the Mouse?]]: {{spoiler|We don't have any clue what Kate will do at the end of the film. We ''do'', however, find out that Lars and the Huskey-Thing were simply hiding while the climax took place.}}
* [[Wounded Gazelle Gambit]]:
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