Quote:
Originally Posted by AKORIS
isn't it amazing that this film has so much love now?
when it was released it was a financial and critical failure! I remember hearing at the time how audiences "didn't want to see the other side of E.T." in the summer of '82....
I think Leonard Maltin still gives it 1.5 stars in his movie guide!!
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Mick Martin and Marsha Porter of Video and DVD guide gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
I saw this at age 4 on video and thought it was scary as hell then at age 13 i re-rented it and loved it, it became one of my all time favorites. It was also one of the first DVDs i bought and one of the first blu-rays i bought. The effects are amazing and so is the paranoia, i think it's Carpenter's masterpiece with Halloween.
This movie is barely a "remake" of the earlier film, it's soooooo different than the "original" film and labeled foolishly as a "remake" as The thing from Another World and The Thing are hardly anything alike, i don't consider it a remake.
I mean okay there were a few homages to the earlier film like circle of men and the opening title card sequence but those are it as everything is sooo different like the location (one in the north pole and the other the south), the discovery/origin of the spaceship, discovery of the alien, the nature and methods of the alien, the characters and their backgrounds etc.
I consider Hawks and Carpenter's films to be 2 completely separate and independent adaptations of the same original source material which is an excellent novella called "Who Goes There" by John Campbell written in 1938. In 1951, Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby made a film called The Thing From Another World which was the first adaptation of the story yet despite being a good film on it's own but in reality it's truly nothing like the original story and it IGNORED it as the alien was not the shapeshifting creature from the book but rather replaced with a goofy Frankenstein vampire vegetable humanoid that didn't imitate into anyone or any living creature as it only had one form and even the characters were different from the book and the location was completely different as it was the north pole than the south pole, a good film but in reality it's one of the worst film adaptations of a book ever just like The Running Man or Lawnmower Man or some others, there is no film in 1951 called "The Thing" . In 1982 John Carpenter unleashed a film called The Thing as it was not a remake in name, source or origin as Carpenter's film was the second adaptation of Campbell's story and it was an excellent adaptation as it was set in the South Pole, the characters, the alien being the shapeshifting being that could imitate lifeforms etc. from the book. The name of both movies come from the character in the story called "The Thing" as even the 2 films have separate names. They should never ever be compared and should be treated as 2 separate films similar to how Burton and Nolan are two separate adaptations of Batman.
To me, the definition of a remake is when it's based on a screenplay written earlier that is an original screenplay not based on any existing source material (comics/novellas/books) and original motion pictures like say The Blob, Hills Have Eyes or Night of the Living Dead 1990, all TRUE remakes as their screenplays are original and the film acknowledges in those movies.
There are also re-adaptations which means a separate adaptation of source material ( book, comic or novella) and have nothing to do with the film produced earlier that that film was based on that source material like say Carrie, The Thing, The Shining, I Am Legend films etc.
To say The thing is a "remake" of the earlier film is like saying every Dracula film is a "remake" of 1931's film and 1922's Nosferatu or saying that I Am Legend is a "remake" of Omega Man or saying Omega Man is a "remake" of Last Man on Earth, nope they are all separate adaptations of the same original source material. Carpenter's film remains the quintessential adaptation of the book.
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