John Carpenter’s
THE THING
analysis / review
by Rob Ager © 2007
Please scroll down to the text for a much more detailed text version of the review.
PART ONE
PART TWO
John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing stands as possibly the most terrifying depiction of paranoia and distrust ever to hit the screen. The frosty desolation of Antarctica is a perfect setting for this dark emotional journey and, as if the icy setting isn’t hostile enough already, we find out in the opening scenes that winter is only just setting in. The second half of the film also takes place entirely at night, adding even more to the sense of paranoia.
The most obvious source of fear in the story is the dilemma of not being able to differentiate between trusted friends and murderous enemies. It is terrifying because trust is one of the most fundamental survival requirements for humans and other social organisms. Only through teamwork can we overcome nature’s hostility. Take this trust away and we perish.
And this is exactly what the alien organism of the story does. By making it’s hidden presence known to the social group it destroys all bonds of trust, leaving the individuals open to attack either from each other or from the alien organism.
Another potent source of fear is our lack of knowledge about the alien. Our only visual glimpses of it are as it transforms from one imitation into another. At no point do we see its real face. In fact we can’t even be sure if it has a face or form of its own.
Its biological structure is also a mystery as it seems to be completely unlike anything on Earth. It spreads like a disease, yet can form into rational thinking imitations of large advanced life forms. It can divide itself at will into multiple organisms, and even small particles of it seem to have an individual will to survive and reproduce. It is an enigma, which non-scientific minded audiences are baffled by as if watching a surreal nature documentary. And from Blair’s psychotic episode, brought on by studying the organism’s cell structure, we can safely guess that further scientific insight will only serve to increase our fear of the beast.
Watching it combine physical elements of different life forms is also a strong source of fear because we’ve no idea what horrific appearance it will adopt next … spider legs, dinosaur teeth, tentacles. We aren’t even sure what kind of horrific death we would be subjected to during assimilation, but the condition of the half absorbed dogs suggests such a death would be a slow and painful. Incidentally, very little mention is ever made of the liquid stream that the creature sprays onto the dogs during its attack. I can only assume that this is the creature’s way of quickly infecting the dogs, and that the living liquid begins assimilating their flesh upon contact.
A small example of how perfectly the organism imitates its victims is that the Norris imitation has chests pain as it looks out the window. There are no other team members watching him so this is not an act. He is such a perfect imitation that even his heart condition remains. Very cleverly the script offers us just enough explanation of the organism to make it physically convincing.
The organism’s mind, if it really has one, is also a mystery. We do not know if its smaller and more primitive forms (such as the docile spider head or sample dish of blood) are capable of intelligent and strategic thought. Maybe it needs to be imitating an intelligent creature such as a human or dog before it can think effectively. We don’t know if the imitation humans consciously know that they themselves aren’t human because even their personalities are imitated so perfectly. We can’t even be sure if the imitation team members have mutual awareness of who is infected and who isn’t.
The behaviour of infected team members Palmer and Norris offer us a variety of fascinating clues as to the organisms thought process. The spider head, when crawling away from Norris’s torso, is burned by McReady because Palmer brings it to everybody’s attention. This suggests that Palmer either doesn’t know that he himself is an imitation … or that he cunningly points out the escaping spider so that it can be sacrificed and he will then more convincingly pass for a real human himself. And for some reason he also chooses not to attack the team at the same time as Norris.
Strangely, Palmer objects to McCready’s order to tie down the dead bodies of Clarke and the Doc in the wreck room. By doing this he prompts MacReady into ordering Windows to tie him down also. If the Palmer imitation had been more compliant with McCready’s orders then perhaps Windows would have been tied down instead. This would have given the Palmer imitation a fighting chance during the blood test. Perhaps it wasn’t sure if the dead bodies were also imitations and hence wanted to leave them untied and free to attack MacReady at will.
Palmer is especially quiet during the blood testing sequence. When it comes his turn for MacReady to put the hot needle in his blood sample, a brief close up of Palmer shows him looking uncomfortable, which suggests that he has some sort of awareness that he is in
A contrasting variation on all this is that when Norris is offered the role of leading the team, he refuses. Surely a self-aware imitation of Norris could see the strategic benefits of leading the group and thus sabotaging them further with deceptive orders. We already know that The Thing is a cunning strategist from its ability to sabotage a potential blood test, so why did the imitation of Norris turn down this opportunity? It could be that it wasn’t expecting the group to allow MacReady to take the lead. Any other member of the team in a leadership role would have been easier to deceive and manipulate. Perhaps Norris was even hoping the group would choose the Palmer imitation to take lead instead.
Despite all these mysteries about The Thing’s biological and psychological functions, its ability to build a hi-tech escape craft out of stolen helicopter parts is clear evidence that it is far more intelligent than its human opponents. It is also cunning enough to identify MacReady as its most dangerous opponent and to then sabotage him by tearing up his clothes and leaving them in places where they will be found by other team members, thus making him a false suspect. We also know without a doubt that The Thing is a liar and a merciless killer. In fact something that is even more terrifying about the organism is that it is part of its nature to fight these kinds of battles. It has already fought and defeated the Norwegian Science Team and, as Blair’s notes describe, could have conquered entire worlds before coming to earth. It may even have been doing battle inside the saucer craft before crashing – the saucer is seen swerving back and forth during its descent and the script describes it as having its “stern in flames” as if it is “out of control”.
Another terrifying aspect of The Thing, which is hinted at during the film but not explored directly, is that it need not exist in human or even dog form to evade detection. The spider-head and crawling blood sample show us how small parts of the creature can roam independently about the complex. We even see a small part of it scurry out of the dog kennel door as Clarke tries to kick it shut. Where did this piece disappear to?
So while we’re searching among the humans for culprits of devious activity, we’re neglecting that there could be portions of the organism roaming around separately from the group. This may explain how it manages to kill Fuchs, plant false incriminating evidence against MacReady, and gain access to Blair while he is locked in the tool shed. All these events occur while the team are closely monitoring each others behaviour at the height of their paranoia.
Another explanation for these events may stem from scenes that were admittedly scripted, but not edited into the film, which involved the lights being switched out in the complex for a long period of time. These power-down events, though not shown, are referred to in at least two dialogue scenes. MacReady: “Anybody seen Fuchs? Somebody blew a fuse in the lab. Lights were out in there for over an hour. Anyone of us could’ve gotten to him”. And again as the team debate their suspicions about MacReady: “The lights went out ... that would have been the perfect time”.
The organism plays on so many human fears that this group of stable, rational men are reduced to bumbling nervous wrecks. Many of them can barely comprehend what is happening and even when they do begin to understand states of denial are easy to slip into. In some instances they even freeze like terrified rabbits (Childs’ hesitation to use the flame thrower in the dog kennel, and Windows’ confronted by Palmer-thing in the wreck room).
The most terrifying moments are when the creature adopts semi-human forms such as with Norris or Palmer. This is likely a deep-rooted fear of the demon within our own species, a fear of the primal brutality and ugliness that lies dormant in our own minds. Director John Carpenter comments that scenes depicting red blood were much more disturbing for audiences than those featuring green and yellow slime. Isn’t this simply because we relate to blood as a part of ourselves? An important image representing the organism as our own duality of good and evil is seen in the frozen half-man, half thing that the team bring back from the Norwegian camp. Its face is stretched into two halves – one screaming in pain and the other featuring an evil grin.
So in many ways the Thing terrifies by appearing as a grotesque and twisted version of ourselves. And it especially plays on our fear of lies and deception. McCready states this core theme openly, “Trust’s a tough thing to come by these days,” and again as he records a warning tape, “Nobody trusts anybody now”. To emphasize the point he even plays the line back to himself before finishing the recording.
A much more subtle theme, which may not have even been intentional, is the films atheistic view of humankind. The fact that this organism can so perfectly imitate not only our bodies, but our personalities directly implies that humans have no soul … no spirit. In this film people are reduced to being mere biological units struggling to survive the hostile ambivalence of natures cruelness and brutality. We are caught up in a chemical soup universe where survival of the fittest is the only true meaning. In fact this film is so Godless that even in a situation that could be described as a “frozen hell” none of the characters show any sign of turning to spirituality. None one of them opens a bible or resorts to prayer. So when MacReady tells Blair to “trust in the lord”, the gesture is chillingly empty.
There is a powerful irony in MacReady’s “trust in the lord” statement. He is the cynical loner of the camp and as such is the least likely to offer a spiritual gesture of comfort, but it’s his cynical realism that enables him to face and deal with the dark reality of the story, while his team mates fall to pieces. After the group battle the organism in the dog kennels Blair offers them a scientific opinion of what The Thing is. Yet, despite having witnessed it with their own eyes, in the wreck room they continue to deny what is happening “I just cannot believe any of this voodoo bullshit … How can it look like a dog? … Do you buy any of this Blair?” They launch their questions at MacReady because he is the one who has accepted the reality of what happened in the kennels.
An early draft of the script describes MacReady as follows; “Helicopter Pilot. Likes chess. Hates the cold. The pay is good.” Notice how even this early draft emphasises the game of chess as central to MacReady’s character. The alien, as we know, is a master strategist and without the counter-balance of MacReady’s chess-board intuition, it would have quickly defeated and assimilated the entire science team.
His intuition shows itself before anybody else in the team suspects a thing. In the commentary John Carpenter and Kurt Russell explain that the reason MacReady is wandering around the kitchens late at night is because he is restless. He instinctively knows something is wrong in the camp. Hence it’s he who hears the dogs howling and sets off the alarms. MacReady was even reluctant to fly to the Norwegian camp, “I’m just warning you doc. We’re taking a chance … You really wanna save those crazy Swedes huh?”
He’s seen puzzling over the shredded long john’s in his shack at a time when the only other character looking for human imitations is the scientist Blair. But Blair loses the plot and freaks out anyway.
It’s not just his sense of intuition that allows MacReady to assume control of the team. He is also the most diplomatic leader, yet capable of enforcing discipline the moment it’s needed. Thinking way ahead he leaves a warning tape in case none of the team survive.
He spells out the organisms motives to the entire team around the Bennings-thing bonfire, he separates key suspects and has them tied and drugged (though all three of them turn out to be human), and he assigns roles to individuals and co-ordinates team tactics.
Once he is framed and under suspicion, MacReady is not only angry with the organism, but he’s disappointed in his team mates gullibility. He now knows that the organism is more intelligent than his team mates and is willing to use the dirtiest tricks against him. And any strategic ideas he shares with the group will also be known to the organism, giving it a perceptual advantage. He is left with no choice but to assume authoritarian control so, in a purely tactical manoeuvre, he orders everybody tied down in the wreck room for a blood test. If he had explained the blood test in advance then the organism would have been fore-warned and would have launched into an attack to avoid being tied down and tested. The execution of an innocent team member (Clarke) may seem wicked, but considering the larger stakes in the game it was tactically necessary.
For MacReady to think up a successful blood test idea under such emotional pressure shows just how observant and disciplined he is.
Once the remaining team have established who is human and who isn’t their trust in each other is restored and gives them renewed strength. The rules of the game have changed from detection of the enemy to all out war, with each of them willing to sacrifice their own life to prevent the organism from reaching populated areas.
But before we explore the film’s ending in detail, let’s explore some more of the tactics used by the organism against the team.
When the dog imitation runs into the camp pursued by the Norwegian helicopter, it jumps up and tries to lick the face of Bennings instead of running for cover. Perhaps this was an attempt to covertly infect Bennings in case the Norwegians warned the team about the organism.
Fortunately for the organism, one Norwegian accidentally blows himself up and the other is shot dead. If Gary had been smart enough to wound the Norwegian instead of going for the head shot then perhaps the injured man could have prevented the films events with an immediate warning. The organism was also saved by the language barrier between the two camps.
The imitation dog then takes its time exploring the camp and observing its prey. It’s even possible that it is listening to and understanding their dialogue. When it encounters the person whose shadow we see on a wall, we can pretty much narrow the identity of the shadow down to either Norris or Palmer because they are both later revealed to be assimilated. However, there is an indication that Palmer may have been assimilated much earlier. As the Doc talks of wanting to visit the Norwegian camp, Palmer jumps at the opportunity to fly him there. If Palmer was already an imitation then travelling alone with the Doc would be a golden opportunity to assimilate him. So my guess is that Palmer was already an imitation and that the shadow on the wall, seen later, belonged to Norris.
One of the biggest strategic mistakes made by the organism is that it attacks all of the dogs in the kennel at once, which causes their howling to alert the humans. However, the organism was compromised and so had to resort to this tactic. The team had recovered a large frozen specimen of the organism from the Norwegian camp. This meant the dog-thing would need to spread itself throughout the US camp before the team began gaining scientific insight. But its obstacle was that it was now locked in the kennel and unable to wander around assimilating humans. It needed to take over the dogs but could not attack one of them without taking on the whole pack. So this was a high risk scenario for the organism that backfired.
Another aspect of these events is that slightly beforehand Palmer is seen alone with Childs as they watch a video and smoke a joint. If the kennel fight hadn’t alerted everybody then Childs would likely have been assimilated by Palmer. It’s also worth noting that after the organism in the kennel is burned, Palmer is the first to run inside and begin extinguishing the flames.
An interesting moment now occurs in the wreck room, when the team are trying to come to terms with what the alien is and where it came from. Palmer tries to equate the organism with UFO conspiracies “They’re falling out of the skies like flies. Government knows all about it. Right Mac?” This could be the Palmer imitation trying to confuse and divide the group on the subject with a little reverse psychology.
Moving on with the story both the burnt and thawed out organisms seem to know that they must play dead as their next strategy. Only when they’re about to be locked in storage does one of them attack Bennings – another high risk manoeuvre. So it seems that the organism doesn’t like to be confined for long periods of time, which limits its freedom to assimilate more life forms, and is willing to take extreme risks to avoid such confinement. Once the team witness Bennings being imitated and Blair smashing up the radio equipment, the cat is out the bag and the breakdown of trust and team dynamics has begun.
The organism has already thought ahead and sabotaged the storage of blood to prevent the team using blood tests to identify who’s human. It is never revealed how the organism managed to unlock the fridge and the team work on the hypothesis that a key has been used. Looking ahead though, when we see that the organism is capable of building a small hi-tech vehicle out of stolen metal from the camp, it becomes perfectly plausible that the organism would be able to somehow pick the lock. An added bonus being that Gary and Doc would become the prime suspects, causing both a leadership challenge and sabotaging the trust of yet another scientist.
The organism’s strategy seems to be that it chooses the least prominent team members for initial assimilation and then uses deception to cause infighting among its more challenging opponents. It also considers scientists as priority enemies.
The question of whether Fuchs was burnt by attack or by suicide can be answered in the deleted scenes. An alternative scene was shot in which Fuchs was found impaled to a door with an axe, which is obviously a murder. A still shot of this scene, as pointed out in the fan site Outpost31,shows Fuchs impaled to a door (the novel also describes Fuchs as dying in this manner). This lends credibility to the burnt corpse of Fuchs having being murdered as opposed to suicide.
After the team lock Blair out in the cold based upon false evidence planted by the organism, MacReady makes his way back inside with the threat of dynamite. He fights off Nauls and Norris. And this is where we find some interesting strategies by the organism. The imitation Norris fakes a heart attack so that it can trick the team into letting the Doc resuscitate him. The creature knows that MacReady is not going to give anyone an inch of breathing space from this point so the Norris-thing tactically sacrifices itself (possibly knowing there are other imitation men among the group). If this was its motive then the organism is displaying a willingness to sacrifice itself for the good of the species, just as the humans do at the end of the film. This is the only time in the film that the organism voluntarily reveals itself to the entire team. The benefit for the organism is that in doing so it successfully kills the Doc so that he can’t formulate any new blood tests.
The bizarre special effects in this scene may seem over the top, but they also make strategic sense. The grotesque Norris-spider deformity that spews out onto the ceiling is simply an attempt to horrify MacReady by showing him a nightmare vision of his former colleague – a kind of psychological attack. It also draws the team’s attention to the upper part of the room, while the head drops to the floor and attempts to escape.
Moving on to the blood test scene the organism’s psychological tactic of taking on a hellish monster appearance is much more effective. Windows is utterly terrified and seems to drop out of reality just long enough for the monster to attack him. And even when the Palmer-thing is on fire it tactically tries to run blind at MacReady and take him out of action also.
Although the Norris transformation is a much more talked about scene, I personally found the blood test scene the most horrifying and well-scripted part of the film.
Next we find that Blair has been attacked in the tool shed. The fact that he has dug a huge tunnel and has half built a sort of mini-saucer suggests he was assimilated much earlier. The last time he was seen was when he begged MacReady to let him back into the barracks. His change in emotional tone from raving madman to calm reassurance doesn’t sit right, so he may have already been an imitation at this point. If this was true then the prominently displayed hangman’s noose next to his table would also be part of his false sincerity.
Once the generator has been blown MacReady instantly knows the alien’s motives so the three surviving humans accept their own inevitable deaths and proceed to demolish the whole camp.
For some reason, and I found this one of the very few weak moments in the script, Gary, Nauls and MacReady separate from each other as they plant their explosives in the generator room. the result is that two of them are picked off by the alien. If they had stuck together as a team then they would have had a stronger fighting chance.
When we see the giant dinosaur-type organism go after the detonator, we’re left with another puzzle. How did the creature get so big? It would have to have assimilated or eaten lots of organic matter to reach this size. The bodies of Nauls, Gary and Blair would not quite be enough. One explanation is that if the organism can feed off dead flesh to increase its own size then devouring the dead dogs or the dead bodies of Doc and Clarke are feasible. It may even have devoured some of the teams own food reserves for this purpose.
In the alternate special effects take of this end scene, a fully formed dog drops out of the monsters stomach, ready to go on the run again in search of another camp. Though these stop motion effects were not used in the final cut, we can reliably assume that the creature we do see emerging from the monsters torso is also a dog imitation. If this dog is about to go on the run then perhaps it has some idea of where it will be running to. It seemed very lucky that the imitation dog at the start of the story happened to stumble across a US expedition camp in a barren Antarctic landscape, but considering the organisms foreward-thinking tactics, it may have already known from the Norwegian team’s maps of the area that it would find the US base in the direction it was running.
So now for the big question of the story.
The ending: Is Childs an imitation?
The probability of Childs being an imitation is very high. In the build up to the ending he is left standing guard while his buddies go out to give Blair the blood test. A short while later the door he was guarding is seen wide open letting the cold air in, but Childs is missing. There would be little reason for Childs to leave the door open so we can only assume that the organism has done this in the process of attacking him. But when he finds MacReady again he mentions nothing of an indoor battle. Remember that the door was also left open to the tool shed, where we definitely know Blair was assimilated.
Childs’ excuse that he got lost in the storm looking for Blair is not convincing. Nauls saw a figure running out into the snow, but this happened a short while after the open doorway shot, where Childs should have been standing guard. It’s more likely he was assimilated and then ran out into the snow. But all this aside, there’s a much simpler clue that Childs is an imitation. When last seen standing guard in the camp he was wearing a navy blue coat and, though the lighting is dim, he is shown in the last scene wearing a beige coat. Why the change of jacket? Because we know from several other scenes that The Thing tears through peoples clothes when it takes them over. Remember that the Bennings imitation, when caught running away mid-transformation, had left behind Bennings’ torn red jacket and put on a darker one to replace it.
Many people have expressed disappointment at this “unresolved” end scene, in which MacReady and Childs face each other with the possibility of one of them being an imitation. But with cunning subtlety the chess metaphor offers us a positive conclusion. When MacReady is introduced to the story he is drinking from a bottle of J&B. The computer check mates him and he responds by pouring his drink into the computer, which blows its circuit board.
In the end scene, faced with another kind of check mate scenario, he offers a drink of J&B to Childs, watches him take a swig and then laughs. So my guess is that MacReady has a flamethrower under his blanket and is about to torch Childs, as he did with the computer. But only when you pay very close attention to the details of the story does this possibility of a triumph over evil ending reveal itself.
Conclusions
The overall story of The Thing is essentially a strategic chess game between MacReady and the organism, with the remaining characters as pawns in the game. Whoever can predict their opponents moves and respond with unpredictable stealth will be victorious. As an independent loner who even lives high up in a tower away from the team, MacReady has a lot in common with the creature and is thus its most worthy opponent. It’s also worth noting that in chess a pawn that successfully reaches the opponents end of the board is then transformed into a queen (the most dangerous piece on the board) just as The Thing can transform into a human imitation (it’s most dangerous disguise).
Amazingly, The Thing was a box-office flop upon release, but it has gained a massive following since (I recommend the fansite www.outpost31.com). There are many reasons for this delayed recognition and one of them is that the intricacy of the script just can’t be appreciated in a first viewing of the film. Upon first viewing the story succeeded just a little bit too well in terrifying and confusing its audience. There was too much blood, too much cold and darkness, too much realism. The fear levels were off the scale. Even minor details such as sleep deprivation, Windows slicing into his own thumb to extract a blood sample, or the Norwegian’s bullet hole in the eye induced cringing responses.
To appreciate the marvellous script and incredible technical beauty of this film requires many viewings. To this effect it is the re-watch value of video and dvd that have allowed The Thing to assimilate a much larger audience. It is now quite rare to see a top ten list of all time favourite horror or sci-fi films that does not feature The Thing among its ranks.
Yet another fear element, that possibly harmed its box-office takings, was that while the film was being released, the Aids epidemic was newly prominent in the media. This new killer disease was widely misunderstood and caused great paranoia. On a purely accidental level, The Thing played on these fears by depicting an infectious disease-like organism, hyper-dermic needles, terrifying blood tests and an unusual all male cast. Regarding the gender issue, scenes were also scripted and shot of MacReady having a blow-up doll as a “friend” in his shack, but they were dropped from the final edit, so maybe the lack of females in the story was an important and deliberate dynamic.
You may have noticed that I have lavished very little praise in this review for Rob Bottins special effects. This is simply because they have already been applauded, praised and studied across the board. There is little I can add to in this respect except to say “Thank God they never had access to CGI!”
For this review I’ve focused on Bill Lancaster’s script because I think modern film makers, including the Hollywood professionals, can learn a great deal about their own craft from it.
Lancaster shows a brilliant sense of character psychology. We are offered almost no personal history for any of the characters yet they all come across as totally believable people because Lancaster thoroughly understood an essential building block of script writing. Everything a character does reveals something about their thoughts and values. A character’s actions must consistently fit into whatever detailed set of beliefs and values the writer has given to the character.
In this case the characters and group dynamics are initially defined by functional roles within a scientific expedition, but their reactions to a complex alien threat are what allow us to see them for the more complex people they really are.
The “hero versus villain” dynamic is also present, but Lancaster and carpenter wisely refrain from injecting pretentious macho dialogue, muscular / sexual posing or cheesy attempts at humour. These are the studio character formulas that have turned modern cinematic heroes into silver-screen catwalk wannabes. Lancaster gets the formula right – real heroes are people who show guts, intelligence and personal instinct when it’s really needed. Real heroes get the job done for the benefit of all, but they don’t need to be admired or idolized. In fact they are repulsed by it. I have to admit though, that MacReady’s massive hat is strangely cool and Gary’s line after the blood test is a corker “… I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH !!!” Classic!
Given such fantastic character depictions, the cast are given the freedom to do their job – to inhabit a role convincingly. The result is a film that oozes class acting from every performer and given the sci-fi context this is a rarity.
Lancaster also seems to have separately designed a much more detailed version of the story, which the script then draws upon in order to retain its coherency. This is an excellent scriptwriting method, which results in details that consistently hint at a larger, more complex and more convincing reality.
Perhaps The Thing being tagged as a remake blinded reviewers and filled their heads with mistaken assumptions, which was also the case with Scorcese’s version of Cape Fear. It was also released the same day as Bladerunner with which it had to compete for its audience. E.T. was also on release in the same year and perhaps set an aesthetic tone that The Thing definitely didn’t fit into.
Carpenter describes having had a full year of pre-production planning for this film due to studio delays. The high-speed production schedules he has been forced to conform to on subsequent films are probably why he has not made a film of this calibre in a long time. Lesson for the studios – careful planning and preparation, not mega-budgets, are the secret to quality film making. Kubrick’s work was always a testimony to this fact and another classic sci-fi movie that had its shoot delayed by a year, allowing its director to fully refine and prepare the production, was The Terminator.
Much talk has been floating around over the years of a projected sequel to The Thing, but if the studios want to make a film of half this quality then they better make sure that they have a very talented group of film makers on board who are given the creative freedom to work their magic.