The Thing, the ship and its creator.

The Thing is in my top five favorite scifi movies. When there was talk about a prequel I was very skeptical. When I watched the prequel I was relieved to discover that Matthijs van Heijningen had treated John Carpenter's movie with the utter most respect and had delivered a prequel that was wonderful. I loved the end of that movie, the way it ties in with the original and where the prequel ends, the storyline runs into the original movie. I saw Alien when I was eight years of age and I didn't really grasp the Space Jockey concept until I was older. The question I did ask was how the "Alien" could fly a space ship. Only when I was older did I realize that the Alien never flew the ship; it was the Space Jockey. Great thread :)

Thank you all very much for contributing your opinions to this thread.

Its funny @TANKGIRL but that picture you put up of the DNA sample looks just like the giant spider with the human head which is in the Thing.

The original 1951 version is unique in that the director, Christian Nyby encouraged the actors to talk over each others lines in such a way as to mimic the way conversations actually take place. Its a little disconcerting when viewed but sounds like natural conversation after a few minutes. Oh, and a young James Arness played the title role.

The Thing is one of the most watched movies by me a Classic.... [img]http://media.comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/20773/thing-with-three-eyes.jpg[/img] This is what the designers supposed the Things original form looks like. You can see its based on the Who Goes There Book. As far as AVP i dont think its canon but in its own right its a decent movie, i agree some elements of AVPR are not well done. As far as the Thing connecting to Predator, i am not sure about wanting that. But heres a Question i will throw out...... What happens if the Black Goo in Prometheus comes into contact with a infected Organism by the Thing?

Dam @BigDave the original form looks really nasty. But in viewing it I do not see the whole body. In viewing it I only see its upper torso, and both its hands and the top of its arm folded. Do you see what I am talking about? Also what if the Thing ever tried to assimilate or replicate with another life form that was infected with the Black Goo? I really think that the Thing is a very intelligent life form. In my opinion it not only reacts but it also analyzes the situation it is in and decides what are the best options for it. If you really think about it the Thing is really an advanced model of the Black Goo. Its the Black Goo instead of mutating its new host, its the Black Goo becoming its new host but also bringing withy it all its past hosts also for the ride. Its really a great question @BigDave because there are no right or wrong answers. But I have a funny feeling that the Thing would find a way to over power the effects of the Black Goo and assimilate its properties.

I like the idea of this thread - Further more... My thought initially about that is as we're dealing essentially with the alien legacy that has been in exitence throught the galaxy for a very long time and my thought of another Thing film would be a prequel to the prequel. I would like to see what happened to and what exactly befell the alien crew in that franchise and the exact circumstances that drove it to come to crash land upon the earth 100,00's of thousands of years ago... I thought this could be approached in a similar way as in Prometheus with the holotechnology except like in an Avatar situation some kind of device is found and once triggered the person who triggered it is forced to re-live what the original crew went though in their ordeal. (Think: The Matrix and being 'jacked-in' yet you are a forced by-stander being directed to watch what happened to these ancient alien souls much as Malcolm Macdonald is forced to undergo 'forced rehabilitation' in A Clockwork Orange) Then others join in to make up the numbers and pretty soon you have a sort of flash back type of movie until the end where to reasons for the alien ship coming to Earth in the first place is truely revealed. The film could start off like a sequel but then refer back to what the original aliens who piloted the space craft actually origiunally encountered that was The Thing and all subsequent plot scenarios about it's origins are then set in motion for us the viewer. In another set of information snippets I remember trailig across in the script for The Thing when the Anartica 1st research team enters and investigates the Alien Space Craft they come across burned spots upon the floor at the enterance to what appeared to be some sort of 'habitation looking cubicle' (individual crew quarters?) There are giant vats full of a liquid that looks frozen solid much like a super-sized urn yet one appears torn open. Great 'claw marks' seem to run the entire lenght down the ovular-circule looking ovid. The 'metal' looked as though it was bent outward (no punn inteded for Alien but nice none-the-less) All down corridors there are spots of ripped 'hull', 'bulk heads' and yet more ashened-looking scratch marks that have been the product of something left there to the exposure of the elements for a long time... And some 'thing/creature' that caused it.

One thing I would recommend is watch the prequel and then the original back to back. I ripped both movies as avi files and I then trimmed out the original and some of the prequel end and spliced both movies together as one movie and it’s amazing how they blend so well. The prequel was made in a way that the Thing looked and felt like the original movie. I loved how they actually blend moments in both movies like the scene in the prequel when they use an ax to kill a thing on the wall and then you see Kurt in the original looking at that same ax stuck in the wall. When they fly to the camp and discover the burned remains in a pile with the two faces blending, the prequel takes you to that point of how the Thing got there - just brilliant. If you watch like I did both movies spliced together, you will be hard pressed like me to try and find a prequel/ Sequel that fits this perfect together.

Yes Doppleganger, thats true when you do that! :-) I had some more in-depth writings on this prequel-to-the-prequel idea I talked of earlier above. I have somemore writings here I would like to share with you which I have expanded upon in greater detail where I only glossed over the surface in my earlier posting. Here it is... ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Thing (sequel/prequel) scenario I thought that there could be a prequel to the prequel but what I thought of was that in there being a sequel to John Carpenters film somehow there is established some form of device(s) that has been recovered off screen maybe) from the crashed alien space ship and like an AVATAR-like situation, somehow the "Users" are linked-in (also like the Matrix being Jacked-in... Or was that Jonny Neumonic?) and they are, in some way, forced to re-live the experiences of the alien travelers as they went about what seemed to be some sort of zoo-ological/science expedition cataloging many different species throughout their "quadrant" of space. The Thing prequel script seems to hint at the fact that there was some huge circular/oval looking vats suspended high above the chamber floor they were in and one seems to have a breach down one side. Also its as if something ripped a claw mark down one side to escape out of the vat. There are other clues as well, ashend remains upon the floor in one of the alien cubicle enterances. I would love to see this part of the "alien's" story investigated. Like AVATAR we some how become them via an advanced memory link technology mechanism and relive there memory recordings that they did as an every day occurence when out on patrol/missions and follow them as events unfold. AS in Avatar, these zoo-ologist beings have futuristic "video-cam"-like devices that they use to record their day-to-day exploratory and living activities. Perhaps they are mini-probes that hover like the spherical seeker/probe(s) in Star Wars films but maybe a little smaller, almost marble-size. Who knows, perhaps these advanced, wisened yet helpless souls just happened along some other bunch of poor alien souls whom fell foul of the alien parasite/organism. Or maybe they ended up on its homeworld and thought it was worth the risk to try and "tame" this feral-like organism. Maybe it was of militaristic value if indeed this was the social structure of their society. The Thing organism could have been a survivor of countless assimilations enlessly hop-scotching down the generations for perhaps a millenia! Or more...! And as the final battle ensued, added to the fact that the creature/ organism equally assimilates intelligence and knowledge along with the life form it has absorbed it uses that intelligence (if any) to its advantage to create fear, doubt and paranoia. Just imagine there is probably litterally dozens, maybe even tens-of-thousands of worlds out there in space that have been completely taken over by the intruder organism and like waves on the sea just keeps rippling down through any and all life it comes into contact with spreading what may inevitably turn out to be just the single basic spore that started it all but has past its assimilation heritage down the generations to the next set of potential hosts. Perhaps the Aliens in the craft and their entire race was conquered by The Thing and it was their last-ditcth attempt at eradicating it for good but some-how the creature got the upper-hand and managed to get to the control room and sent the craft on a one-way voyage to crash-land upon Earth after perhaps having already visited there after The Thing had infected one of the alien crew it equally assimilated their knowledge base along with it and refused to let them destroy it. It new where Earth was and directed the ship to rendeveous there.