For me, at least, that process meant familiarizing myself with the names of the established white guy filmmakers. If they were so beloved, it stood to reason, their films must have been made transcendent through the alchemic power contained within that Great Man-liness. Even as I failed to delight in ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA as a generation of mallrats had before me, I persisted to believe that it was my duty to love John Carpenter in lockstep with the only cinephiles I had yet found. Would I have one day concluded that the alleged universality of Carpenter's appeal was in fact a self-sustaining myth, based on a confluence of factors that only tangentially included the opinions of my instructors? If not for THE THING, I imagine so. But there it is: I love THE THING, and I have enjoyed it deeply every time I've watched it. I am a fan, and everything THING-related is filtered through that perspective. Maybe one day I can explain more fully what about John Carpenter's film compels me. Now's not the time, as I don't have the words and I'm sure any number of movie geeks do. It's no longer any great statement to admit loving THE THING. I have little interest in adding my voice to the chorus. For now, and for the sake of the argument I'm about to make, it is enough simply to establish that I am as big a fan of the film as any.
When news of the most recent THING came my way, I was not especially troubled. I see a lot of reflexive moaning about the reconfiguration of previous pop culture items into new ones, and while I sympathize in theory, in practice I try to remain open-minded. If this potential new THING would indeed be seen through to fruition, why not see what it has to offer? I don't feel the need to offer that generosity to any and all corporate branding experiments, but THE THING '82 exists in my mind as an irreducibly layered experience. How many times had I reached out to it for its much-anticipated jolts and destabilizations? How many friends had I roped into watching it alongside me? How many times, since that fateful first viewing, had my dad and I agreed it was about time to remind ourselves how much we will always enjoy THE THING? It seemed almost churlish to reject the new THING out of hand. To do so would serve only to glorify a fond memory which hardly needed the help. There were, of course, no guarantees that the new THING would be anything but a mediocre rerun. But then, who could have predicted that THE THING '82 would act upon so many people as it did? THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD hardly lacks for appreciators among those who have seen it. Almost exactly three decades separate each THING from the next, and the original's esteem must have been as secure in 1982 as the middle THING's reputation is now. Why, then, should a new THING be greeted so derisively when its nearest relative has earned such admiration?
Admittedly, the point I'm making would be a lot stronger if THE THING '11 were greater-than-or-equal-to the next-most recent THING. I have not seen THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, but as a Howard Hawks fan, I don't have a hard time imagining I'll like it more than THE THING '11. Because THE THING '11 is decent, even impressive at points, and yet it is no match for an imagined Hawks movie, much less the THING I know and like so much already. Even so, I'm not content to stop investigating my reaction here. There is enough going on in the new THING that I wish to push back against the general indifference (cultural and financial) with which it's been met. I doubt THE THING '11 will win as many followers as either of its predecessors. Even so, its hierarchical standing in THING fandom will be determined with some amount of arbitrariness. How much so, and how much in comparison to its well-loved forebears, I cannot say. Still, let's tease out what we can before that consensus magically appears.
When THE THING '82 is spoken of admiringly, its practical effects are often mentioned as exceptional. Its impressively sinister tone is also a frequent topic. Those diegetic aspects and their awed reception are also a big part of the love for Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Interestingly enough, ALIEN also received a prequel just a year later than THE THING '11, the better-known and more successful PROMETHEUS. I happen to think PROMETHEUS is excellent, and I plan on writing about it sooner or later, but I've noticed that PROMETHEUS also was received unenthusiastically by most ALIEN fans. How ironic that these two new films were commissioned mainly due to the nostalgia for their predecessors, only to be rebuked upon arrival. Looking around at the entertainment world today, it's hard to imagine a more friendly environment for the exact kinds of people who grew up loving movies like ALIEN, THE THING '82, and of course the presumable wellspring of all this sci-fi ardor: STAR WARS. STAR WARS proves particularly instructive here, because it has already received prequels that were widely hated by "serious fans" of the original movies. Yet despite the folk wisdom that the original STAR WARS movies are incalculably better, the three prequels were very successful. If only probabilistically, based on how many people chose to see each successive film, it stands to reason that many viewers enjoyed the STAR WARS prequels. That also seems likely for PROMETHEUS, which will receive a sequel before long due to its financial success. Only THE THING '11 seems to have failed to excite a large amount of people, and considering the success of PROMETHEUS and the STAR WARS prequels, that wasn't a foregone conclusion when it was greenlighted.
What's going on here? Why are these expensive prequel movies being made to capitalize on old sci-fi favorites? And why do some people vocally, viscerally hate them when the movies are generally quite popular at large?
The consistency of nerd hatred of these new films suggests that common denominators exist between the STAR WARS prequels, THE THING '11, and PROMETHEUS. One immediately apparent factor: the use of computer effects. There is a strain of thought that insists that computer effects are generally inferior to practical effects. You know the arguments: constraints productively challenge artists, physical labor makes practical effects more realistic and meaningful; computer effects are easy, they're cheating, it all looks the same, etc. etc. In other words, Ray Harryhausen and Rob Bottin are singular geniuses, and all those CGI drones are just anonymously clicking together an unwanted movie. Leaving aside the devaluation of all the unseen labor that goes into creating computer effects, this argument has a suspicious bias. Most people old enough to lob that complaint at the new digital movies are old enough to remember a time when practical effects were more the norm. Whether it's CLASH OF THE TITANS or Jim Henson, the fond memories these people have for practical effects were shaped by the time period they grew up in.
It begins to look like the issue with all these remakes and prequels is not that they're unoriginal at all, but rather that they are not familiar enough to work on the nostalgic vibes these viewers experience from rewatching STAR WARS, ALIEN, and THE THING '82. The odd note of betrayal you hear in many appraisals of the new movies is predicated on disappointment. Nothing, it seems, can ever compare to the formative media experiences of childhood/young adulthood that have so drastically shaped these grown viewers. They are yearning for a consumerist bubble that exactly replicates the one they grew up within. They seek to return to a womb from which they have long since been cast out. A womb in which analogue televisions play only sci-fi movies with lovably antiquated practical effects. There is of course nothing more innately realistic about practical effects, especially compared to the number of ways computer effects can visibly or invisibly create a convincing reality. "Realistic" here means "familiar," the same way "authentic" frequently connotes "with an established tradition." Nostalgists of this kind often neglect to remember that the newness of their old favorites was not immaculately conceived. History is continual and cumulative, built selectively from shards of the past into mosaics of the present. John Carpenter is open about his fondness for Howard Hawks, a sensibility that permeates his filmography even before his outright remake of a (disputed) Howard Hawks film. Carpenter did not conjure an entirely new type of film with THE THING anymore than George Lucas did when he drew on HIDDEN FORTRESS, THE SEARCHERS, and Flash Gordon to make his first STAR WARS film.
You've probably heard this argument before too: nothing is new, everything's been done before, newness isn't commonly recognized in its time. Sure, but why then is hauntology a recent concern among music theorists? Why are studio films reconfiguring 20th century into digital simulacra? On the face of it, nobody seems to like this state of affairs. People seem to crave the "newness" of those old songs and movies. But what if it's the very sameness that compels them, over and over, to seek out those familiar comforts of the past? What if every disappointing sci-fi prequel is just a stumbling block on the way to the infinitely postponed sublime? What if desire is only desire for more desire, never meant to be fulfilled because it would be impossible in the first place? I am concerned that the religious devotion to making the modern world into a remembered image will harm the way movies are perceived. Here at last I can note some of the strong points of THE THING '11: its understated but creeping air of sexism, Mary Elizabeth Winstead's performance, the alien-ness of its elaborate creatures. There's the cleverness of the dental fillings test, especially that scene where Kate has to walk right up and peer into the faces of the potential infected. And then it seems to me that the middle section of the film is uncommonly tense, its mood of hidden menace modulated quite well through surprises and outbursts of violence. From the moment when the crew realizes that any one of them could be infected up to the survivors leaving to investigate the mothership, THE THING '11 could reasonably be called a good movie. If the last section fails live up to the intensity of what came before, and if the whole movie seems a little less vivid and cohesive in memory, there are enough points of interest to make it a failed experiment worth consideration. And it does live under an awfully big shadow, after all.
When we ignore the Wachowskis' mind-boggling JUPITER ASCENDING because it's not the well-established MATRIX series, a loss takes place that's bigger than the reputation of one daring film. An acquiescence to received wisdom prevails, and it's a form of knowing established by a highly suspect group of moviegoers. If a movie fails to shake up the IMDB Top 10, that alone cannot be grounds for failure. As the film industry and its critics continue to choke under a suffocating, blinding white maleness, movies themselves become harder to see clearly. It is easy to see the demographic that influences so much of how movies are made and evaluated. It is harder to disengage from the ideological consensus that they have produced. I cannot claim independence, particular as a cisgender white male myself. But, in the spirit of critique, I seek to at least partially disestablish the bad faith that undergirds art consensuses. I only have my subjectivity as a viewer to compare against the movie nerd monolith. Luckily, with a certain amount of distance from the aging nostalgists, my own opinions naturally diverge from theirs. My opinions are no more innate or impervious to critique than theirs. However, working toward multiplicity over consensus can illuminate the blind spots that an unequal value system produces. Again, that is hardly my duty alone. It's only a precedent that I think many diversity-minded people are working toward as well.
