Another from the bad movie idea files:
Next up, Suicide Girls talked with Frank Darabont and the issue of the Sci-Fi Channel's remake of "The Thing" came up. Darabont quickly confirms "It's not a remake as much as it is a miniseries sequel to the great John Carpenter movie. It got reported in the trades as a remake but I would not want to remake a movie as good as John Carpenter's. But to do a loving sequel as a miniseries really does appeal to me. Then you're not screwing up somebody's great movie". The story is being hashed out right now by scribe Dave Johnson, and Darabont hopes it'll pick up right at the end of the Carpenter classic.
Darabont has apparently been making his living off of adapting other people's work for so long he's decided to step in and take over even without being asked. Worse, it sounds like he has no recollection of the ambiguity and dread that made the ending of Carpenter's The Thing so dramatic. Granted, I have no idea what he and Johnson (who may or not be one of the writers behind the overrated Jake 2.0) are planning, but odds are it would be some sort of Antarctic chase movie, ending up with a band of gutsy heroes making a last stand between the Thing and the rest of humanity.
This, of course, is totally unnecessary. The dire consequences of the alien's possible infiltration of human society were spelled out more effectively on MacReady's Commodore 64 than we'll ever get with whatever GPS-enabled, virtual reality AI crap Darabont and his crew come up with. The beauty of The Thing is in the way it creates such an effective atmosphere of fear and paranoia (the spider-walking head doesn't hurt either), ending in one of the better "question mark" moments ever made.
I've allowed myself to become complacent about the number of remakes and sequels being produced lately, mostly because I realize how pointless it is, but also because I can callously chuckle to myself when some idiot decides they want to take a stab at making a TJ Hooker movie. A wannabe like Darabont taking his rusty cleaver to one of my favorite movies of all time for the fer chrissakes Sci-Fi Channel is no less than I deserve.
I read the short story, Who Goes There?, on which Carpenter's The Thing and Hawks's The Thing from Another World are based. While Carpenter's, The Thing, is closer to the short story's plot and it's damned creepy, there's something about Howard Hawks's, The Thing from Another World, that still makes me want to climb under the bed. Maybe it's because of the music, maybe it's big guy James Arness wearing padded shoulders and that skull cap, maybe its the sense of isolation, maybe its the moody lighting, or maybe it's because I saw it for the first time when I was about 7 years old. For whatever reason, it scared the Hell outta me then and that same clammy-palmed feeling of dread returns even now when I watch it.
Remake "The Thing"? How dare they mess with a classic?
Of course, I could make a snarky comment about Carpenter's movie, which itself was a remake...but it was in fact much closer in spirit to the original short story on which both films were based ("Who Goes There?"). You're spot on with respect to the creepy, ambiguous ending of the 1982 version. There does NOT need to be any further story.
How could you beat that great moment when that head goes skittering down the hallway? "You've gotta be fucking kidding!" may be the best line in any horror movie.
Aahhh, hell, they'll remake anything these days. They remade "Rollerball," fer Chrissakes - now there's a movie that was crying out for a remake. With Chris Klein, no less.
I read the short story, Who Goes There?, on which Carpenter's The Thing and Hawks's The Thing from Another World are based. While Carpenter's, The Thing, is closer to the short story's plot and it's damned creepy, there's something about Howard Hawks's, The Thing from Another World, that still makes me want to climb under the bed. Maybe it's because of the music, maybe it's big guy James Arness wearing padded shoulders and that skull cap, maybe its the sense of isolation, maybe its the moody lighting, or maybe it's because I saw it for the first time when I was about 7 years old. For whatever reason, it scared the Hell outta me than and that same clammy-palmed feeling of dread returns even now when I watch it.