We don’t want to be the guys crying “foul” over remakes, given that there have been a few good ones, so we don’t want to shit on Strike Entertainment’s revamp/remake/whatever of “The Thing” considering it was already a remake of “The Thing From Another World” which itself was derived from a sci-fi short story. Honestly, we want to be on their side, because even if they did put out the intellectually bankrupt “Dawn of the Dead” remake, they also made “Children of Men” and are promising another interesting remake somewhere down the pike with a redo of “They Live,” which holds so so so much promise as a concept.
Their hopefully strong production of “The Thing,” which is actually somewhat of a prequel (more on that in a bit) just added Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the lead as a PhD candidate working with a Norwegian research team in Antarctica. The “Death Proof” and “Final Destination 3” star definitely has the genre pedigree, though supposedly she earned the job by turning heads in the upcoming “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.” The male lead will be played by bruising character actor Joel Edgerton, who plays a helicopter pilot forced to team with Winstead’s young academic whiz. The pair will be working with first-time director Matthijs Van Heijningen.
If all this sounds familiar for “Thing” fans, that’s not a coincidence. The film has actually been reverse-engineered to fit into the beginning of John Carpenter’s moody horror classic, detailing the exploits of the doomed Norwegian research team found by Kurt Russell’s MacReady and his American cohorts. For those of you who haven’t seen it, a large chunk of the beginning of Carpenter’s film finds the cast slowly assembling the truth from their gruesome gory findings, which involves several mutated and un-mutated corpses in the wake of the violent death of a (yes) rogue helicopter pilot trying to kill a dog disguised as the creature.
In an interview at Bloody-Disgusting, co-writer Eric Heisserer talks a little bit about re-writing a draft of the script from “Battlestar Galactica” creator Ron Moore. “It’s a really fascinating way to construct a story because were doing it by autopsy, by examining very, very closely everything we know about the Norwegian camp and about the events that happened there from photos and video footage that’s recovered… from a visit to the base, the director, producer and I have gone through it countless times marking, you know, there’s a fire axe in the door, we have to account for that…were having to reverse engineer it, so those details all matter to us ‘cause it all has to make sense.”
So, for those of you keeping score… first, the prequel to a film with one of the most badass macho casts in history (Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford muthafuckin’ Brimley) is going to star teenyboppin’ cutie Mary Elizabeth Winstead. This also doesn’t work because putting a hottie in a parka will just remind us of “Whiteout” and having a female lead somehow tackle a problem it’s taken more than one macho tough guy to battle brings forth memories of “Alien Vs. Predator.” Second, the film is going to effectively try to eliminate all the suspense of the first half hour or so of one of the greatest horror films in history in order to tell their story. And finally, we know exactly what’s going to happen to these people, so we’re watching one of those prequels where there’s absolutely no mystery as to how it ends up, no?
Filming on the project, which is still being called “The Thing” because it will probably shamelessly ape set pieces from Carpenter’s film but with CGI instead of the all-time greatest ever practical effects, starts on March 15th in Toronto.
