Reviews

I do love science and science fiction. But i had to stop the movie after 40 minutes. Usually I always say: you need to finish watching the movie to be able to judge it. But not this time. This time, it was just so boring I couldn't find any reason to finish watching it. Unoriginal story. Illogical dialogues (the starting dialogue when the main protagonist is hired is one example, already mentioned by many other reviewers here). Ugly special effects. The "spaceship" has the typical minimalistic, unimaginative design used when there is no budget nor thought gone to its design. It doesn't make sense, like many other things of this movie. I imagine the conversation that the writers had when they came up with its design: "how do we design the spacecraft? Nahh, the typical flying saucer is so cliche, let's make it look like a huge egg or bean instead. We can draw it with a quick 1$ graphics design job, doesn't need to look realistic. Doesn't need to show any mechanical parts, just a flat surface." Same thing goes to the aliens design. Oh, and I do always love when the scenes cut just before some cool thing is going to happen. Really shows how much the movie has to offer. The color palette, is so dark and depressing. Colors are cold and washed out. I was wondering if my screen brightness had turned down for some reason. Turning screen brightness up doesn't help - the film brightness is just too dark, that you can barely distinguish characters from background in most of the scenes shot in dark areas.

Overall, a boring movie, made even worse by its depressing palette.

When I found out that the prequel of one of my favourite movies came out, I was excited and worried at the same time due to the mixed reviews. But I'll tell you, actually this movie pleasantly satisfied me. While it has its flaws, it's actually a coherent and well tied prequel, which temporally ends exactly when the original movie starts.

The scientific aspects of "The Thing" are developed more deeply, and we learn how this creature actually lives and replicates. Science geeks like me will find this quite interesting and realistic: The Thing hasn't got a "real" shape, but it actually is a cellular-based organism capable of cloning host cells, and trigger mutations when necessary (such as when it needs to attack and assimilate someone).

The Norvegian Base camp is recreated in the smallest details, and I appreciated the fact that we also get to see inside the spaceship. I mean, after watching the original film I was perplexed that we've got both a spaceship with its door open, and a team of scientists, and nobody seems to care about entering inside the spaceship and analyze it?

Flaws of this movie include some weak acting and no character development, and the helicopter scene CGI effects (who has seen the movie will remember it) which I found ridiculous, but fortunately in most of the other scenes we get well made CGI and practical effects, both kinda impressive. Also I didn't like the director's choice near the end (I bet almost anybody would have preferred the Alien Pilot version!! Instead of that shitty pixelated cover which felt nonsense and cheap).

I suggest you not to listen to the people whining on any cult-classic remake which comes out, first because this is a prequel and NOT a remake, second because it seems that aforementioned people can't distinguish between a good or bad prequel/sequel/remake when it comes after a lot of time (30 years in this case), they should understand that a change of style after such a timespan is normal. Nevertheless this movie is much similar to the original (a team of scientists isolated in an Antarctica base camp, paranoia derived from inability to trust anyone, flamethrowers which will ignite entire buildings, tests to determine if someone is infected or not etc.) and should satisfy enough anyone who doesn't whine on any new cult-classic remake.

So, nothing groundbreaking and we pretty much know already what to expect from this movie at the beginning; but at the end I was pleased to discover that all my expectations were met.