The Thing prequel?

[Forkboy]

I dunno....

"The Thing", which was originally made in 1951 by Christian Nyby, was brilliantly remade in 1982 by John Carpenter. Film makers essentially have been remaking the film over and over. Lets be honest, "Alien", "Creature", "It! The Terror From Beyond Space" and countless others, are all remakes of "The Thing."

The film's basic premise, a group of people marooned or isolated with a man-killing monster with no possible escape, is a great concept for a truly suspenseful movie, but lets face it, it has been done, and done very well.

Yet, movie makers can't leave it alone.

That brings us to this latest remake. This time it will be the exact same film as Carpenter's 1982 version, only told from the Norwegian camps point of view. Yes, you read that right. It is the exact same story, from someone else's point of view.

more
http://robojapan.blogspot.com/2008/12/plot-for-new-remake-of-thing-sounds.html

[Orrex]

1. We'll see...

To be honest, I'm not greatly bothered by Hollywood's much-maligned "remake fever." I mean, Hamlet has been produced thousands of times on stage and screen, and as long as a current production can bring something interesting to it, then it's all good IMO. Hell, we had at least two masterful tellings of the Faust tale before 1840, so let's not blame Universal for starting the trend...

I don't even believe that there are any sacrosanct films that simply can't be revisited--it may result in folly, as in the case of the remake of Psycho or the miniseries based on The Shining, but then the failure is due more to the weaknesses of the remake than to any untouchable transcendence of the originals.

Prequels are riskier still, in part because AFAIK there has never been a dramatically successful prequel (the vignette in Godfather II doesn't count). Almost without fail, the prequel succumbs to the temptation to put in cutesy references to the original, weakening the prequel for no good reason whatsoever.

A prequel could work, but to do so would require greater discipline than Hollywood has ever demonstrated. For one thing, the prequel should make no reference whatsoever to the characters or events of the original, except perhaps as fleeting, indirect glimpses. Maybe something like "McMurdo checked in. They have a hell of a storm over there." Certainly the prequel shouldn't consciously set up the events of the original; the prequel should be treated as a piece unto itself, and its events should flow naturally, giving rise to the original only as an afterthought.

What I think would be disastrous is an attempt to slickify the production to make it more hip and cutting edge. First off, they'd better damn well set the Norwegian film prior to 1982, so that we don't have to deal with satellite phones or Blackberries or the like. Second, I have this real dread that Ryan Reynolds will wind up in the role of the Norweigian analog of MacReady. Third, let's skip that shitty blue-filter over-lighting that's so popular with gritty "realistic" films; it's a gimmick that dates a film as certainly as a Jerry MacGuire reference ("You complete me, Thing" or "You had me at 'I want to eat your DNA.'").

For that matter, give it to a Norwegian film company and let them cast it full of Norwegians. Foreign-language horror films are grossly underrepresented in the US, and it would be very refreshing to see a different country's take on the story. Heck, give it to Lars von Trier--he's Danish rather than Norwegian, but he has an excellent grasp of truly dark film-making, and I'm sure that he could come up with something nightmarish.

In short, I'm not ready to dismiss the prequel outright, but I'm conscious of the thousand little ways that they could destroy it even before they start filming.