Get Ready For The Deepest Dive On The Thing

Cole Helgerson

Is it just me or did they go through (kill) 14 people who happened to be "Things" very quickly? I was shocked at how fast that portion of the Novella went as I expected more of a resistance from the converted men.

To start off, John Carpenter's "The Thing" is one of my favorite films ever, second only to the original "Alien". I had never read the original story or seen "The Thing from Another World", so this Deepest Dive was very exciting for me. I really enjoyed "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell Jr. I loved how methodical the author was with the science behind everything, lending more weight to the "science" behind the science-fiction. I was intrigued by the seemingly psychic aspects of the original version of the creature with it invading the dreams of the humans. I thought the story also conveyed the sense of horror and paranoia well. It makes the reader not sure who they can trust, which is an important factor of the story. It was a great story and I can see how it provided a fantastic basis for the media adaptations to follow. As for "The Thing from Another World" directed by Christian Nyby, I thought it was a fine film. It held up pretty well and I enjoyed watching it. However, it was surprising to me how much had changed from the original story to this version. I was especially disappointed with the change of the design/concept of the titular "Thing". Nothing about this film version captures the terror of the creature from the original story. While I think the film itself has a fair amount of creepiness and suspense to it (especially for the time it was made, despite limited technology), it's disappointing that the creature is reduced to a super-strong "carrot" and average movie monster when the original creature is so much more interesting. With that major change, it makes the movie a fun film, but a fairly poor adaptation of the original material in my opinion. I also agree with Dylan about some of the other changes to the film, including his mention of the American-military-ized nature of the film version, as well as recognizing other aspects to make it appeal to a broader audience, such as the romance subplot. I'm really looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts, and excited for the weeks to come. Thanks!

That's awesome :)

Alrighty Cohorts(or possibly not?), this might be a relatively long comment but here we go: So working chronologically starting with Who Goes There, I like how at the beginning of the novella that it focused on the specifics of how a human sounded in the Antarctic environment, almost preparing you for paranoia that the rest of the story portrays. Also, the way that the scientist talks about life from nature seems very modern. He says that just because life takes a certain form, that doesn't necessarily speak to the intention of the lifeform (although he was wrong in this specific case). He mentioned that they suffered from something innately human: the fear of things that are different from you. I thought that was a pretty progressive view to see in a story of that time. I also enjoyed how the story never had a distinct change in perspective so you never truly got a grip on who was human and who was an imitation. It added a lot to the suspense. Oh, one last odd, yet kind of interesting thing. I was wondering why John W. Campbell would choose Antarctica of all places for the setting of his story. I searched "1938 Antarctica" to see if there was anything significant that came up and I happened upon articles about a German Antarctic expedition that took place in 1938 (the year of the story's initial release). This specific expedition was the third one by the Germans and there was territory that was disputed between them and the Norwegians in an effort to increase Germany's production of whale fat.....or was it?? But yeah just an interesting little tidbit I found. Now, as far as The Thing From Another World is concerned, I found it interesting that they chose to change the location to the Alaskan arctic and the north pole. It seemed like they wanted to use as much of the military as possible since WWII had just ended and Hollywood was looking to capitalize on the fondness the American people felt for the military after the war. I laughed when I saw the discount Frankenstein's Monster-looking alien they used but I was actually impressed when the oil to the compound got cut off and everyone's breath was visible. I'm having a ball with this deep dive yall. Im glad we did this!

I couldn't take the captain in the movie seriously because he looks like Ryan Stiles

Riley

Just wanted to say I found The Thing From Another World on the Internet Archive for free, also found the story as a .pdf. In case anyone needed some help finding resources!

T1M3C0P

I can't wait. John Carpenter's The Thing is my second favorite horror movie ever only beaten by John Carpenter's Halloween. I have never seen the original movie though so i'm looking forward to finally checking that out for this.

Adam Meran

The Thing is one of my all time favorite movies. I feel like alongside Alien it's a real masterpiece of sci-fi horror, and even scratches some of that lovecraft itch. I've watched the prequel too, but I'm definitely using this deep dive as an excuse to read the original short story and watch The Thing from Another World. If anyone's interested there's also a pretty good short story published in Clarkesworld Sci Fi/fantasy magazine that retells the plot of John Carpenter's movie from the point of view of The Thing. Cheers! http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/

I haven't read/watched/played any of this so this should be fun.

Tommy Carver-Chaplin

Would love some one off Movie dives too

Andrew vala

The thing about, “The Thing”, is that it’s a thing about a thing that is not the thing you think it is.