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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Ambiguity would entail describing multiple equally-plausible conclusions based on the same evidence. It’s not enough to just list possibilities.
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Dec 10, 2020 06:44
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Childs sneaks up on an unarmed Macready, and points a flamethrower at him. If Childs were an evil alien, Macready would be dead.
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Dec 10, 2020 06:49
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the thing taught me that huskies can be very quiet but youtube shows this to not be the case 
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Dec 10, 2020 06:55
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Childs sneaks up on an unarmed Macready, and points a flamethrower at him. If Childs were an evil alien, Macready would be dead. SuperMechagodzilla posted:Most individual things don’t know that they’re infected, and aren’t deliberately murdering people. SuperMechagodzilla posted:-Palmer doesn’t know that he’s infected, and stays oblivious until his death. SuperMechagodzilla posted:First off, it bears repeating that there’s zero indication that Palmer knows (or even believes) that he’s infected, before the moment of the blood test. Looking forward to you ignoring this post like last time.
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Dec 10, 2020 07:15
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Splicer posted:That's why you're a bad gimmick (or just that bad a poster), you can't keep your gimmicky opinions internally consistent. I’m not sure how the assertion that Childs is not an evil alien contradicts the assertion that Palmer is not an evil alien. If you mean that Childs is potentially infected with the non-intelligent virus but doesn’t know it, I address that possibility in the post you quoted.
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Dec 10, 2020 07:45
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:I’m not sure how the assertion that Childs is not an evil alien contradicts the assertion that Palmer is not an evil alien. Also one of your core assumptions requires ignoring the in-text stated reason for something in favour of your own personal head canon reason, which is again just how you roll.
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Dec 10, 2020 08:04
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Splicer posted:You have excluded multiple possible interpretations from your three listed, one of which is a logical extension of a theory that I do not necessarily agree with but you keep putting forward. It is sufficiently obvious that I can only assume you excluding it was deliberate, or that you're just like that. In either case discussing things with you is no longer fun. Could you be specific about what the issue is? For clarity: my first point is that the popular question of “is Childs a Thing?”, in the sense that he could be an evil alien plotting the downfall of mankind, has a definitive answer: he doesn’t kill Macready, so he’s not. There’s no ambiguity there, and that’s further proof that hivemind theories are silly. (The “Things” story contradicts the film and says that Childs is 100% evil rapist alien at this point.) With that out of the way, my second point is that Childs might just be a human with space flu, but that’s not interesting. Either he has it or he doesn’t. It’d be trivially easy for the characters to check, but nobody cares. So, Macready is the real source of ambiguity here. He’s hostile to Childs, but in a halfassed way: hinting that Childs might be infected, but not bothering to confirm it. And this is after he went through the trouble of nuking the entire base to kill the virus. It’s pretty weird behaviour. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 08:43
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:All of it. In the vast and empty Nothing of GBS hark Rhetorical Fallacies. I call it „I have no point and I must scream“. Watching The Thing for the plot instead of the awesome puppet practical effects is like going on a guided tour of the Louvre and complaining about how many steps it takes to the next turn.
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Dec 10, 2020 09:25
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Could you be specific about what the issue is? Childs has the (possibly fueled) flamethrower. He has the advantage. If Childs is a the Thing and Macready isn't then Childs trying something Thing-ey risks being frozen in a more suspicious form or falling afoul of some last minute trick (remember, we know Macready, if human, is tapped out, but Childs doesn't), as opposed to just waiting it out in stasis for the next batch of apes to come around. If Childs is a the Thing and Macready is also a the Thing then hey, just wait it out all frozen with two shots instead of one. So Thing-Childs should wait it out. If Macready is a the Thing and Childs isn't then trying anything might get him torched on top of the frozen Thing-ly issue. Two the Things, see previous post. Thing-Macready should wait it out. If Macready is human and Childs is human, Macready should wait it out. Two dead humans saves the human race. If Macready is human but Childs is a the Thing, he has nothing to gain from pushing it. Either he freezes to death or he gets Thinged and gives the Thing a second shot at any rescue party, so he picks freezing to death or forcing the Thing to make the first move. He is tapped out, emotionally and physically, and has no weapons. He should wait it out. This is where it gets interesting. My initial thesis was that in all cases the least risky option is to wait it out. But human Childs is interesting. If the flamethrower is fueled then he has a motive to torch Macready, because he's either killing a the Thing or killing a dead man. He might not be doing it because burning to death is a horrible way to go and he doesn't want to risk doing that if Macready is human, or he wants to keep the flamethrower as a heat source, or because the flamethrower is empty and he's bluffing. So human, fueless Childs should do nothing, because he doesn't want to give up his bluff, but human, fueled Childs is the only one where the possible gains of acting (burn baby burn) potentially outweigh the risks. So if Childs has fuel then Childs is leaving Macready alive because he's too human to do something so inhumane, or because he isn't human at all. Splicer fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 09:46
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The Thing series really went downhill when the wreck of the soviet ship that rescued Childs and MacReady gets found, along with a bottle of Thing vodka.
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Dec 10, 2020 09:53
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Splicer posted:Childs has the (possibly fueled) flamethrower. He has the advantage. If Childs is a the Thing and Macready isn't then Childs trying something Thing-ey risks being frozen in a more suspicious form or falling afoul of some last minute trick (remember, we know Macready, if human, is tapped out, but Childs doesn't), as opposed to just waiting it out in stasis for the next batch of apes to come around. Ok, so, you’re saying I ignored these major possibilities: -Maybe Childs is an evil alien but the flamethrower he’s aiming at Macready is empty or broken for no reason. (So why not bash his head with a flaming stick instead, or just stab him to death with infinite claws?) -Maybe Childs is an evil alien but afraid of an unarmed, injured, already-half-frozen Macready who’s sitting down with his back turned to him. (So why approach at all? Why not walk a short distance away from the camp & freeze there?) -Maybe Childs is an evil alien but he’s suddenly shy about looking alien when he freezes. (Why? It’s never stopped the creatures before, and this fire’s going to burn for hours anyway.) This is what I’m talking about with listing mere possibilities. It’s possible that Childs is an evil alien who’s suddenly really timid, frightened, and useless - but there’s no reason to believe that. It’s beginning with the premise that he’s an evil alien, and then going out of the way to ignore evidence to the contrary. Like, straight-up saying to ignore the big military flamethrower he’s carrying because it could be a fake flamethrower. The “Things” short story makes the same mistake, telling you to ignore evidence in the film that contradicts the writer’s preconceptions. Maybe Palmer was left alone with the food supply for hours at a time, even though the guys in the film are specifically concerned about people sneaking off and tampering with the food? Yeah, maybe. But almost certainly not. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 14:11
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Ok, it's fun taking the piss and saying The Thing is extraterrestrial snot, but... just stop treating the smg drops like they're worth engaging folks.Lurking Haro posted:The Thing series really went downhill when the wreck of the soviet ship that rescued Childs and MacReady gets found, along with a bottle of Thing vodka. So the little thingspit would eventually freeze and, given the small sample of cells, probably expire -- assuming it isn't tardigrade-like with its durability to elements.
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Dec 10, 2020 15:26
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If the prequel is canon so is the game and in it Childs and MacReady were human. Please ignore that the game also has Blair's UFO in the burned out camp.
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Dec 10, 2020 15:28
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Lurking Haro posted:The Thing series really went downhill when the wreck of the soviet ship that rescued Childs and MacReady gets found, along with a bottle of Thing vodka. as not much of a drinker i find it very harsh. spend a few dollars more on crown royal and pretend its j&b and that you are drinking with macready and he is your friend this is a slippery slope to drinking fruit-flavored vodkas though e: 
gary oldmans diary fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 18:18
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Groovelord Neato posted:If the prequel is canon so is the game and in it Childs and MacReady were human. The videogame is right that both characters are human and probably uninfected, but it’s otherwise insanely bad at telling a Thing story. Ironically, they leaned way too hard into it being just a virus and end up with an absurdly generic zombie narrative.
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Dec 10, 2020 20:53
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Lurking Haro posted:The Thing series really went downhill when the wreck of the soviet ship that rescued Childs and MacReady gets found, along with a bottle of Thing vodka.  I beg your pardon, Leviathan is a good rear end movie featuring a dream team of 80s character actors and is just plain watchable af.And even if it weren't, "I know you've gone through hell," "Gone? Bitch we're still here!" gives the movie a free pass just by itself.
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Dec 10, 2020 21:36
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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:I was just about to ask if anyone thought this shot: So I watched The Thing From Another World, and the surface plot has even less in common with The Thing and Who Goes There than I figured, it's pretty much just the "find alien monster frozen in ice at one of the poles" and the creature encountering the dogs early on. That said, the cast has good chemistry, I even got a kick out of the romance, to my surprise, and not just because they sneak a bondage scene in there (who would've thought a 50s horror flick would be kinkier than Carpenter's R-rated 80s take?). And while the encounters with the creature felt few and far between, they're well staged. The way their first face-to-face engagement with the Thing played out in particular definitely surprised me. So answering my own question, the quoted shot probably wasn't intended to be a homage but MacReady's pose in front of that open doorway does kind of evoke the 50s movie when looking at it in freeze frame. Oh, and "Holy cats!" 
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Dec 10, 2020 21:58
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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:So answering my own question, the quoted shot probably wasn't intended to be a homage but MacReady's pose in front of that open doorway does kind of evoke the 50s movie when looking at it in freeze frame.
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Dec 10, 2020 23:07
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Xenomrph posted:If I remember right, some of the Norwegians' footage that Copper and Macready find is actually from the 1951 movie as an easter egg but I might be mistaken. Ah poo poo, I remember hearing that before, too, and I forgot to keep an eye out. Just off the top of my head I can't think of anything that really matches what I can remember of the Norwegian footage, but there may well have been a quick shot or two taken from a distance they could have used.
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Dec 10, 2020 23:31
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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:Ah poo poo, I remember hearing that before, too, and I forgot to keep an eye out. Just off the top of my head I can't think of anything that really matches what I can remember of the Norwegian footage, but there may well have been a quick shot or two taken from a distance they could have used. The Norwegian footage is obviously designed to evoke the 1951 film (hence the black-and-white monitor), but it's all original stuff. The subject matter is roughly the same, but all of the individual shots are very different. The point of the Norwegian base scenes is actually to do a short 'grimdark' retelling of Thing '51. The central image of the two burnt men merged together is a callback to Dr. Carrington, who ran up to embrace the creature and save it from being incinerated. The dog is a callback to the one sled dog who got vampired, and the guy who's committed suicide in front of the radio is the journalist from the ending: "keep watching the skies!" That idea of doing a sequel to the Hawks/Nyby film accounts for all the differences in plot, but it's probably also because Carpenter was quite aware of his film's similarities to Alien. (One of his goals was to do an Alien film with more than 'just' a man-in-suit.) Thing '51 is arguably the classic film most copied by Alien, so a straight remake would have definitely come across as a ripoff of the Ridley Scott film.
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Dec 11, 2020 01:13
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The Norwegian footage is obviously designed to evoke the 1951 film (hence the black-and-white monitor), but it's all original stuff. The subject matter is roughly the same, but all of the individual shots are very different. I've heard that take before, too. In fact it may well have been the first time I'd even heard of the Carpenter film at all; it was in one of those giant almanac-sized movie guides akin to the ones Leonard Maltin would publish, except it wasn't one of his. But yeah, right off the bat the book suggested Carpenter's The Thing wasn't a remake itself but rather the sequel to an imaginary remake of The Thing From Another World where everyone was Norwegian, the creature was contagious, and things (argh) ended on a much bleaker note...
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Dec 11, 2020 02:22
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It doesn't even need to be imaginary; besides a handful of particulars of the setting (that it's a Norwegian base in 1980s Antarctica, instead of 1950s Alaska), Carpenter just adds a twist ending where the Carrot was infectious all along. Shortly after "keep watching the skies", the dog comes back to life and people start turning on eachother.... Treating the films as companion pieces highlights the stuff from the story that Carpenter doesn't include in his film (basically all the more breezy, pulpy aspects), but also highlights what they share when you subtract a body-snatching plot. As we've seen, the spectre of he outlandish alien tends to distract people from the more basic narrative where Blair is 'just' a mad scientist whose madness is creatively visualized through various latex sculptures and prosthetics. You can do away with all the morphing and assimilation, and still have Dr. Carrington giving himself to the monster in pursuit of Knowledge in the exact same way. It's why Blair's self-experimentation with the virus reads as a Limitless deal. He's not purely The Blob. Lose focus on these being alien-men, and you lose their motivations.
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Dec 11, 2020 04:17
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"the thing only works in the darkness" is a theory that makes the thing really lame, and thus, i choose not to believe it. my power over smg and his 60000 paragraph manifestos is supreme.
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Dec 12, 2020 18:53
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the thing sequel directed by john carpenter where the alien manages to escape into the world and is infecting everyone. ends with a fireworks show to beat it Lmfao
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Dec 12, 2020 18:55
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Fucker posted:the thing sequel directed by john carpenter where the alien manages to escape into the world and is infecting everyone. ends with a fireworks show to beat it Lmfao That moment when you realize you wrote the summary to War of the Worlds/Mars Attacks/Signs/etc.
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Dec 12, 2020 19:03
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Fucker posted:"the thing only works in the darkness" is a theory that makes the thing really lame, and thus, i choose not to believe it. my power over smg and his 60000 paragraph manifestos is supreme.
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Dec 12, 2020 19:57
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ruddiger posted:That moment when you realize you wrote the summary to War of the Worlds/Mars Attacks/Signs/etc.
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Dec 12, 2020 20:36
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Fucker posted:"the thing only works in the darkness" is a theory that makes the thing really lame That’s true, but it’s the same necessary shift in perspective as in Alien. It obviously sucks to have your brain eaten by a space dinosaur, but Ripley’s actual enemy is the Mother computer.
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Dec 15, 2020 03:16
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FilthyImp posted:The short story fanfic posits that it works while people sleep and that makes a nice kind of sense to me That's just ripping off bodysnatchers
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Dec 15, 2020 05:07
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SilvergunSuperman posted:That's just ripping off bodysnatchers
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Dec 15, 2020 05:23
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Dec 18, 2020 17:41
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Dec 18, 2020 18:04
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For a good example of how The Thing doesn't work, you can watch the not-great 1995 movie Proteus - a ripoff where, in this case, there really is just a singular evil intelligence within a slime-puddle that absorbs personalities. Because the 'rules' are different, the narrative is different (and vice-versa): it ends up being far more like Solaris. It's a species of ghost story, where the characters are visited by spirits of the deceased, from a sort of physical afterlife. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFKkF0bVoCA Even in this case, though, the filmmakers are aware enough to distinguish between the disease and the creature it infects. Proteus is the name of the inert slime that coats everything in this secret genetic facility, while the intelligence that uses the slime as a tool to shape itself is a human/fish hybrid codenamed Charlie.
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Dec 19, 2020 20:39
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:not-great 1995 movie Proteus
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Dec 19, 2020 23:27
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gary oldmans diary posted:in that category of film thats both too bad to and not bad enough to have a wikipedia page Proteus may have the aesthetic of a 1990s TV show, but it also busts out a full-sized animatronic sharktopus for the finale. The point is, however, is to look at the actual narrative of these films. So, while the protagonists of Proteus experience events as a ghost story (where they’re haunted by images of the deceased), the killer antagonist is characterized as having a very literal “multiple-personality disorder”. It’s exactly like in Split or something. And that’s precisely what doesn’t occur in The Thing. There’s zero concern that the “copies” are suffering in some kind of digital hell - because they’re not. And the only character who displays anything like a ‘new’ personality is post-suicidal Blair. And then, as we’ve gone over, Blair does have some kind of exotic disease but the question of whether he‘s now a 2-Million-Year-Old extraterrestrial or just fuckin crazy is unanswerable.
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Dec 21, 2020 03:48
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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:The Thing is a freaking remarkably sex-less movie, all the more so because the opportunities are all right there. Here's a movie with an all-male cast in constant heated conflict and nobody ever makes any jokes about "homoerotic sexual tension," and you never hear about it being popular with the erotic fanfiction crowd. None of the characters swing in that direction (Clark kind of pings for me, but I think that might be more the actor than the character).The movie doesn't even do anything with the idea that the Thing tears off its victims' clothes, and the tentacle concept that launched a thousand anime porns isn't exploited, either (I mean, yeah, there's Bennings, but that goes by so quick you can't even really tell he's half-naked at first watch). So I coincidentally revisited Carpenter's Princeof Darkness the other day and funny enough it's quite the opposite, in this one sex is front and center even though it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the story. Just doing "horny grad students" as a trope I guess? It's kinda nice that the two leads sleep with each other early on and it's not treated like a big deal. Oh and the dude from Simon & Simon is constantly in body-hugging form fitting clothes and at the end is featured sweaty, naked, and heaving in bed. I dunno if all that was Carpenter's idea but somebody in the production sure enjoyed filming him  Oh and Jesus is an alien.
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Jan 11, 2021 01:08
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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:Oh and Jesus is an alien.
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Jan 11, 2021 04:05
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Prince of Darkness is pretty good. Watched it Halloween last year. I was hoping for a little more darkness, but it ends up pretty campy. Alice Cooper mopes around in it. I dunno. Fun camp. I want to watch Madness.
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Jan 11, 2021 04:19
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