Thoughts on The Thing (1982)

It’s crazy that this is the first time I’ve seen this film. I’ve known about it for years, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen it. I’m glad I finally did, because it was refreshing to see it after being burned out on all of Hollywood’s super polished releases. I’m going to take a different approach with this review and just share my thoughts instead of running down the whole plot of the movie. I’m sure everyone has seen it, and if you haven’t I think it would be appreciated that I don’t completely wreck the movie…this time.

Released in 1982, The Thing stars Kurt Russell, Wilfred Brimley and…T.K. Carter. Why he gets higher billing than Keith David is a question I’ll have to research to get the answer. The opening scene is one of the cooler ones I’ve seen in a long while. I really dig the way the space craft explodes into the title sequence. The mystery of the Thing starts up right away, why is there a helicopter shooting a high powered rifle at a dog? Why can’t they hit the damn thing? How is it possible for the poor thing to keep running like that? The answers are in the frantic yells of the Norwegian, but sadly what he says isn’t translated, so we are left thinking that something either isn’t right about the dog, or that the poor guy was nuts. By the way I have to admit I said “ooh” when the other guy was blown up by his own grenade. Not many movies let you see a person get blown up like that. That is one of my favorite things about this movie. It really just shows you what happens. In a matter of minutes once the film starts, you see one man get blown WAY up, and another man get shot in the head. I was sucked right in and wanted to see what was going to happen.

I thought it was a nice touch of storytelling that they actually had MacReady and the doctor go to the Norwegian campsite and showed what they found. It was a tense scene that illustrated the hell that broke loose there before the Thing was chased away. I did wonder, WHY in great goodness did they think it was a good idea to bring that nasty mangled “corpse” back to their camp. NOTHING about it looked normal, and even though it should have been dead, NOTHING about it looked NORMAL. Everything about it gave me the feeling that they should have left it sitting right there smoking in the snow. BAD IDEA.

And that dog was really well trained. Everything about the way it moved was sort of other worldly, and the scene where it casually walked through the hall and went into the room where the guy was about to go to sleep was so well done and had just the right feeling. Fade outs were used to the maximum effect in this film. That shot where the dog goes into his room and you see the man’s silhouette turn and look…then fade out--Creeptastic. I think I wanted to buy this film at that moment.

Then the crap starts hitting the fan. The dog gets put in the kennel, and some real nasty shit goes down. I guess the alien must have felt threatened, or he was hungry or something because those poor dogs didn’t have a chance once it got in there. That scene was excellently done. The tension ramped up so I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. Once the “bad” dog got to shaking I knew things were going to be bad, but I had no idea what I about to see. Using practical effects and strategic camera shots, we see just how terrifying the Thing really is. The Thing-dog splits open in a bunch of different ways, tentacles fly out and whip through the air (the sound effects here are well chosen) The dogs howl in fear and one tries to chew his way through a chain link fence as one of them gets sprayed with what I imagine is something like stomach acid. Bottom line the creators made this beast truly horrific and disgusting and it just got worse as the scene progressed. By the time Childs (Keith David) finally got himself to pull the trigger on the flame thrower the Thing was a mess of organic parts on a mission to suck up everything in that room.

At this point we learn that Wilfred Brimley’s character Dr. Blair has figured out that the alien will take over the earth in a very short period of time if it is allowed to reach civilization, and that not a whole lot of it is required to infect and take over another organism. He doesn’t tell anyone, but this discovery drives him mad. Meanwhile everyone is unaware that the other corpse they collected is still alive and that they are all still in danger. Another scene I enjoyed was how Bennings was assimilated and then killed. It reminded me of the body snatchers a bit how he howled out in the cold on his knees before he was burned up. By the way killing by fire is a really gruesome thing to do. Nothing for me is worse than seeing the struggle of a being doomed to die like that. 

All the players in the story start distrusting each other, and we get a new layer of depth to the story. Not only is there a monster after everyone, but given enough time, it can perfectly replicate whatever it absorbs. So who is human and who isn’t? Stuff starts breaking down pretty quickly and it leads to some entertaining and frightening scenes. Wilfred Brimley was great, end even though I kept thinking of oatmeal when he talked I thought he was pretty badass. Other than this movie and Cocoon I’ve only seen him in Oatmeal and Diabeetus commercials, so I feel like I’ve missed out on how great an actor he really is. Once they get him into the shed, he seems to sober up, and his delivery when he later tries to convince MacReady to let him come back is unnerving especially when I felt sorry for him and distrusted him for being a Thing at the same time. I think he had that noose in there to try and convince MacReady to let him back in, and I thought he was a Thing at that point, especially when he said “It ain’t ___!" (I can’t remember who he was contesting at that point) but I thought it was weird for him to know with that much certainty who wasn’t infected. When was he infected? They never show, but I thought it was pretty nasty for him to touch the corpse with his pencil eraser, and then put it that close to his mouth. If one cell can infect, then it had to be there.

The last two scenes I need to point out are the defibrillator scene, and the blood test scene. The practical effects here are amazing I’ve never been so engrossed in a movie than I was here. The head pulling off and then turning into that spider thing was gross and crazy. When Palmer said “you gotta be F-ing kidding” I said “I know!” to no one in particular. (I’m turning into my mother, who watches films and gets way into them).

During the blood test scene I was glad they had a moment for me to laugh when Garry screamed about being “Tied to this FUCKING COUCH!” because before that I was a wreck. SO much work had to go into making Palmer into that mess, having him travel up to the ceiling like that, struggle with Windows, and then make Window’s half-turned corpse…I was blown away and upset that more films today don’t utilize these types of effects. I’m sure it takes more time, but the end result is much more desirable than the CGI-heavy stuff we get to see nowadays. I don’t hate CGI, I just think it’s over used.

That being said I wish the ending scene was done differently. It’s always hard to show a big monster like that without it looking sort of false, especially when earlier in the film the Dog-Thing was done so well. Maybe they only could have shown part of it, I don’t know, the end was just sort of a let-down. It reminded me of the Alien reveal from 2003’s Dreamcatcher. 

Here’s a pic.—terrible.

Any way I really liked the movie, and as I said before I plan to pick up a copy when I can. I would love to watch it again to parse through all the events to see if I can better understand how and when everyone was infected. I am definitely sorry I’m just now seeing this, but glad I finally did. I agree that it’s a classic. One other note, I got the urge to watch Aliens again after seeing this, maybe a great 70’s and 80’s sci-fi/horror movie marathon is in my future.

Prototype 2 Review

Rating: A+

It’s taken me a while to get this review up, and as a result my details on it are a bit sketchy. Right now I'm so far behind on all the games I own and haven't played that I’ve been pushing through them all just to say that I’ve gotten through them once for the story. I received Prototype 2 for my birthday last year, and was excited for it because of its main character James Heller, who is the first black protagonist I’ve ever played as in a video game. I know there have been a few protagonists of color in the past, however for some reason James Heller’s character was one I immediately wanted to check out when I first saw his concept art.  I like that he is a family man, and a trained soldier-- not a street tough like CJ from the Grand Theft Auto series. In recent years more characters of color have emerged in video games, which is definitely a welcome change from what’s been there in the past. In my opinion it’s not a huge deal, it’s just nice to see more diversity popping up in my other favorite hobby.

 

Prototype 2—Story

Prototype 2 follows the story of James Heller, a soldier returning from a tour in Iraq who learns his wife and daughter are presumed dead due to a virus outbreak in New York City, referred to as NYZ in the game. James returns to service to help fight against Mercer, the antihero from the first game to help try and stop the spread of the virus. James becomes infected with the virus at the hands of Mercer and passes out. He wakes up in a test lab and, determined to get revenge against Mercer discovers his new powers and breaks out. He meets up with Mercer again and is told that Gentek and Blackwatch are responsible for unleashing the virus on the city, and thus they are responsible for the deaths of his wife and daughter. James finds Father Guerra, and asks him for help in tracking down leads to help him figure out if he should trust Mercer.

James’ powers allow him to assume the identity of those he absorbs. This allows him to hack into Blackwatch terminals and sabotage their plans. As he fights and absorbs members of Gentek and Blackwatch, he gets into a fight with a doctor Koenig. This doctor is no ordinary guy as it turns out he is an evolved member or Mercer’s group of special infected agents. Mercer has planted infected people into Blackwatch and Gentek to assume control of NYZ and then attempt to wipe out humanity and take over the world (muhahahaha).

James is royally pissed about this, and as a side note I have to say that this man lays down more foul language than I have EVER heard come from a single person in my entire life. His mouth alone could have earned the game its “M” rating. It’s understandable, he’s really angry…REALLY angry…like Kratos angry, so you could understand why he would lay out blue clouds when he talks. So anyway, Heller goes after more Blackwatch terminals and finds out about a doctor Galloway. Before he can kill her, she tells him Mercer’s true plans of world infection and that she can help him kill Mercer if he teams up with her.

Mercer doesn’t like the double-cross, and he finds and kills Father Guerra. When James finds the body, he answers Guerra’s ringing cell phone and learns from Dana Mercer (yup, his sister) that his daughter Maya is still alive. James seeks to find her and almost gets to her, but is sold out by Galloway, who intercepts his daughter and turns her and Dana over to Mercer. Mercer absorbs Galloway and he explains to an enraged James that he intends to use his daughter to infect the entire world. They have an epic battle, and James finally kills and absorbs Mercer.  He finds his daughter and Dana by using Mercer’s memories and frees them from their temporary holding cell. James uses his fully evolved powers to cleanse all of NYZ of most of the virus, and he, Dana, and Maya are finally free to rebuild their lives. Cue end credits.

Gameplay

Prototype 2 uses an upgrade system that allows James to upgrade his powers to insane levels. The controls are mapped in a way that lets you use two of his super powers at a time. You can choose which two you want to map to the square and triangle buttons, and you can also switch on the fly between the four or five total powers. This is convenient, because it is necessary to use all of his powers for the end fight, and as you run through the game, there are enemies that are more susceptible to certain powers. I do wish that the power wheel worked more like in the Ratchet and Clank games where you hit triangle and the action stops so you can easily toggle between all of the available powers. It’s not bad, but I did get hit a lot of times unnecessarily because I was fiddling around trying to get the goofy thing to load the right power. I got used to it by the end of the game though. Running and jumping are mapped to their own buttons, and there is also a button for changing your appearance from James, to whomever you’ve absorbed, to James with his powers. Change your appearance when people are watching and they will either scream and run away, or start to shoot at you. If you change into James with his powers and guards see you, an alert will go up, and you’ll either have to fight or run away.

When the game starts out, James is a soldier, and can use any type of firearm and has decent hand to hand combat skills. Once he is infected by Mercer, he gains the ability to run really fast, jump really high, glide through the air, extend crazy claws from both hands, and absorb enemies for health. This is extremely convenient for those moments when everyone is trying to shoot, bash, or eat you and heath is getting low.

As the game progresses, James can pick up cars and other really heavy objects and throw them great distances. He also gains the ability to pound the ground with concussive force, extend tentacles from his body to grab and infect other enemies, slice things with a massive arm blade, pierce and whip things with a long arm stinger and repel and reflect incoming attacks with arm shields. All these things are “bio” weapons, meaning that they emerge from his body on command (it’s kind of gross). The virus is sort of like if you took Rogue and Mystique’s powers from the X-Men and mixed them together, except that James can create metallic blades from his body, so I guess you should throw some Clay Face from Batman in there too. (I know I’m mixing Marvel and DC comics’ characters to talk about a videogame… What? I’m a huge nerd!).  James can also upgrade each of these powers to execute mid-level attacks against enemies that also can affect surrounding enemies. As if that’s not enough, James also has “devastator” attacks. As the name states, these are limited use, devastating (screen clearing) attacks for each power he has that James can initiate if the enemies get too close. After all that you can still chose to just pick up a gun or punch people with regular old fists as well. It does seem kind of silly to do that when you can just tear them apart with your bare hands--plus that’s more fun. That being said, the powers available to James can be overpowering. I never felt too much in danger, even when surrounded by enemies and there was a crazy amount of action happening. The controls are easy enough to use that I felt inclined to start an alert just so I could destroy everything on screen. It was great fun. By the end of the game James is almost un-killable, but I managed to die quite a few times. Taking that into consideration, I liked that you can’t die by falling off a building or getting hit by cars, and that when you do die, you re-spawn relatively close to where you left off.  One annoying thing to note about the mayhem, if you are in an area where there are lots of things to pick up and throw or use, it can get very confusing because James can pick up these items instead of grabbing an enemy. There was one instance where I was in the middle of a fight with a juggernaut, and while I kept trying to throw exploding barrels at him, James would pick up a gun and I’d have to drop it and try again. This was pretty annoying when the thing was also throwing big pieces of concrete or trying to charge and knock me down. The whole gun thing is a nice option, but I much preferred to just mow down enemies using James’ powers rather than picking up a gun.

The game is set up with a mission-based structure. You can plow through the game finishing main missions to complete the story, or you can complete side missions to upgrade James’ abilities, or you can wander around aimlessly causing all sorts of mischief. I chose to do a combination of all three. I also purchased the excessive force pack for more fun things to do once I finished the story.

I really enjoyed having all these abilities at my disposal. I loved when I was able to tear a missile launcher from a tank and then use it to shoot down a helicopter. There was so much James could do that like I stated earlier, I sometimes looked for an excuse to start a fight. What is also remarkable is that there are also other types of gameplay involved and it’s all pretty well interspersed throughout the game. There are missions where you can drive or hunt tanks, fly helicopters, and be stealthy and take out specific characters, along with the standard boss fights and fetch quests. The variety was great enough that I would play late into the night, telling myself, “just one more mission, and then I’ll go to bed.”

Graphics and Sound

Prototype 2 has decent graphics and a realistic physics engine. It was really amazing how much was capable of happening on screen at once.  I remember one particular mission where there were helicopters firing, tanks rolling, infected creatures running around and military men shooting at me while I’m unleashing huge attacks and holding my own during all this madness. If I started to take too much damage the screen would go from color to black and white to indicate that I needed to get away or find some health before I was killed. This always seemed to work well; however, so much can be going on that the color indicator can be too late and James will die before you can get him out of all the madness.

During the game, the ambient noises were nicely done. You could hear snatches of conversations from the civilians and military personnel that, if you wanted, you could follow to eavesdrop. There are LOTS of these conversations that you can stop to take in. They are all fully recorded and quite interesting. Some of them can be pretty funny if you don’t mind a lot of cursing. If you bumped into anyone while walking you could very well get some nasty words for not watching your step. One guy cursed at me and I threw him across the street. People yelled at me for doing something so mean, and I turned on my powers and had fun watching them run away screaming “Whoa, what ARE you? I’m getting out of here Whaaaa!” People’s reactions to James are also entertaining, but not always realistic. I appreciated this in some instances because it saved my tail when trying to escape an alert with low health. It’s jarring however,  to land on a roof on foot with a loud thud right in front of a group of people after jumping down from 20 stories higher only to have them jump a little and then continue on about their business like that kind of thing is normal.

This game focuses on some very violent actions, and the sound effects complement them perfectly. Explosions have great punch and feel powerful thanks in part to the dual shock rumble. Blades slice and cut into creatures with a satisfying ring of metal, whips and tentacles splatter realistically against whatever they hit, whether organic or not, and when things get crushed, there is an appropriate spray of sparks and smoke…or blood. Since the game has a lot of body transformations going on, there are a lot of fleshy sound effects as well. When James levels up, his body sort of erupts in these red tendril things that travel over him and then reconfigure back into his original shape. When this happens there is a juicy sounding fleshy noise, and my skin crawled a bit every time. Actually most of the infected creatures are really yucky looking beasts, you’ll hear quite a lot of sickening noises as unnaturally deformed creatures burst from everywhere to try and get at James.

Conclusion

This game has a TON of variety and content. As of this writing I still haven’t completed all the side missions or fully upgraded my James to his max levels. The graphics and sounds are appropriate and add a lot to the overall experience. The voice acting is solid and the writing, while it’s not the deepest story around, is solid enough to get me to be invested in James’ character. He did curse a LOT, but I didn’t feel like it was gratuitous as much as it was really part of his character, and that takes some skill on the writer’s and voice actor’s part. The character designs for the creatures were also well done. The monsters and infected people displayed enough variety that you could see they were not just clones of each other and they all had some really freaky looking stuff going on with their bodies after being infected. I have a ton of games to play through and I plan to return to this one after I can get through at least one play through of many of the other games I have waiting for my attention. Overall I had a blast with this game, and I can’t recommend it enough.