Ask Movie Slate - Episode 231 - The Thing (2011) by jamescorck
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Ask Movie Slate - Episode 231 - The Thing (2011)
by jamescorck
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Ask Movie Slate - Episode 231 - The Thing (2011)
Today’s Movie Slate is brought to you thanks to :iconssjcharon:
I have nothing against Thorax, believe it or not. He’s a great guy, and a wonderful character, but it’s just so much fun to make the poor guy suffer and have a rough time. With this one we thought it’d be a good idea to make a callback to Movie Slate’s review of the 1982 “The Thing”, where Movie Slate is quite well past the point of being shocked anymore, especially by very badly done movies. The lighting and shading for this piece was a bit tricky, especially because Thorax is a nightmare to shade for. He’s got this stupid colourful palette that once you start to adhere to a particular shade of colour, it starts falling apart. But he’s a precious Bug Bambi King and drawing him can be fun, despite how difficult he is to shade. Also dismissive Movie Slate should happen more often.
I could review “The Thing (2011)” in one single sentence. Fuck this movie.
…but that would be rather crash, and lazy, and that’s not what I do here. “The Thing (2011)” is one of the biggest cinematic slaps in the face I have ever seen in my life. It’s a destruction and desecration of what John Carpenter and his team put together in 1982, a movie that when first came out was despised by critics and shunned by the public. This is like adding salt to that wound, which honestly makes me wonder what was the motivation behind making this thing. It makes me wonder if this was due to the film rights about to be given up, or if the project started up and then they were left holding a half-done movie, so they decided to finish it for the sake of not losing all their money. I have no clue. The only detail of behind the scenes that I am familiar with is how Amalgamated Dynamics (the studio behind the special make-up effects) saw their animatronics and make up work covered and re-touched with tons of ugly CGI. I’ve been a big fan of AD Studio since they started their career with “Alien 3” and this is how the studio respects their work? Good grief, what was the purpose behind that decision? The CGI makes everything too fluid, too soft, not jerky or jittery enough, and it loses the organic feel since all textures look like shiny rubber.
And I haven’t even gotten to the writing! There is no tension, no real drama, the story is straight forward and needless because it’s meant to set up the events that occurred before “The Thing (1982)”. This is the problem that prequels sometimes face, where they either deflate the movie they are being a prequel of, or they deflate themselves in the process. And this movie almost pulls off both! Also the characters are terrible, none of them is relateable, they are flat, and the actors chosen to portray them are uncharismatic and not memorable. You can argue that the 1982 version didn’t have very deep characters, in fact some of them are walking stereotypes, but the actors chosen to portray them were all very good and had their own unique take and way of acting. This movie’s cast seems populated by a handful of unfeeling uncaring mannequins. Beyond this, there’s no feel of the hand of a director behind this, the music is forgettable, it’s shot very ugly and lazily edited, like I said before it has no tension and no drama behind it.
“The Thing (2011)” is perhaps one of the biggest cinematic mistakes we’ve had this decade. It’s like walking into a deserted convenience store that’s been overrun with the debris from an exploded slaughterhouse, and just as messy. Don’t even bother with it, not even to see how bad it is. It’s going to make you either angry, depressed, or both. Check out the 1982 version and let this one in hibernation.
