The Thing (1982)

After a disappointing experience this past October with The Thing's 2011 remake/prequel, I finally got around to watching John Carpenter's original 1982 version of the story. Now I can see what the remake was truly a pale imitation of, I've already sat through basically this same story, with roughly the same setting and similar characters, but this one was just so much better. It had a sense of life and energy to it, and certainly of originality that the more recent movie lacked. Even the special effects, though they were showing basically the same kind of stuff, namely 'The Thing' contorting human like bodies into all sorts of weird shapes, was so much more satisfying when you know its done with physically effects not computers. All this being said there was still a part of me that was tempted at the end for them to make a third The Thing movie and use modern digital effects to have a young Kurt Russell and a young Mary Elizabeth Winstead team up to fight the alien beast, but I'm pretty sure that that to would only be a pale imitation of the original, about like an alien attempting to assume human form. ***1/2