‘The Thing’ (1982) is the sort of the film I start to be
able to identify more and more when I grow up. True, E. T. has once been my
favorite film of all time, but we all have our past, right? The more I return
to the film, the less I see it as a horror film. What happened in ‘The Thing’
does not necessarily happen in another universe – it can just happen in our
real world. ‘The Thing’ can be anything, be it a rumor, a disease, or something
destructive for our well being. The reason why The Thing is scary is not merely
because it was violent and chopped off someone’s arm as if it was nothing; The
Thing was a reflection of our dark side – it exposed humanity’s darkest aspect.
Carpenter could have changed the ending of the story and given us a happy
ending, as an affirmation of human spirit, yet he chose not to do so. He wanted
this monster movie to inspire us, to give us entertainment (I know it is sick)
and a chance for self-reflection in one package. ‘The Thing’ can just be
Carpenter’ most philosophical and intelligent film.
What made this cinematic monster chilling was that, while we
had no idea whether it possessed a brain or any cognitive faculties, it
certainly was a cunning opponent. The Thing brought out the dark side of human
nature – the ego, fear, and suspicion inherent in all of us, and what made us
so human and not a mere robot. Rather than physically facing humans one-to-ten
– rather like The Matrix or the Kung Fu Master – this monster stirred up the
paranoia from the back, and led the humans to mistrust each other and started
killing each other in return. If The Thing is a cowboy, it certainly was one
that shoots someone at the back!
The American team was doomed from day one. A sense of
fatalism was detected – the fact that the American team did not understand or
aware what has happened to the Norwegian team meant that history was doomed to
repeat itself, the ‘Thing’ scenario would happen to the American team in
exactly the same way. It was quite sad to see when MacReady (Kurt Russell) was
alone in the room, and did a recording to tell the later generations about the
team’s encounter with ‘The Thing’. He certainly understood that they would not
survive this ordeal, and sooner or later the remaining members would likely be
eliminated one by one. Men might not have the ability to stand up to ‘The
Thing’, yet there was something even worse – the fact they could not even stand
by each other in such a critical situation.
What paranoia is all about is an irrational and subjective view towards others, especially when at a situation where trust and confidence are more important than ever. In ‘The Thing’, every action, no matter how positive and contributive it may first seem, can be interpreted in the opposite manner. Even the most objective form of test would be suspected and failed to deliver the promise. When all the men agreed on that the fairest test was to have a blood test to see who has turned into a monster, the next thing they have found was that the blood has already been sabotaged. Another standoff ensued, as now everyone was suspecting that someone among them has already turned into ‘The Thing’ and attempted to skip the acid test. Even the apparently objective evidence could be questioned – when Mac’s torn shirts were found in the wrong place at the wrong time, suspicions all turned onto him, and he has to literally defend his ‘innocence’ by holding the other men at gun point. Everything has to be tied up – which is ironic because it seemed to be only time when they were literally branded together as a team. Even worse are the testimonies by the characters. The trust and credibility of every character was questioned, even if the audience assumed that MacReady was the protagonist and likely to be the hero after all. When someone’s statement is contradicting what others have seen, his credibility was immediately put to question, and the focus was on whether he was ‘The Thing’ or not, even if there is another guy doing some funny business behind to distort the fact.
In the film, there were characters who were just plain
unlucky. It could be the case that because one was standing just next to an
infected character, he would be infected right away. If we take the meaning of
‘The Thing’ in a more metaphorical meaning, that will be the case if the
destructive effect of paranoia, disease or rumor can pass on very effectively –
because our dark and often irrational sides are so committed (The Hateful Eight
reference) to choose to believe that, without analyzing it beforehand.
At the most stressful situations, people will retreat, and
it really is the sad fact of humanity. Some of the members simply walked away,
and were never to be found, or their corpse were later discovered, either
devoured by The Thing or a suicide. One of the members, Blair was sort of like
a ‘wiki’-freak and he just straightly went to the computer and engaged with a
bit of dynamical equations – to see if ‘The Thing’ did escape and go to the
civilized area, how long everyone on Earth would be infected. When the output
stated ‘a few years’, Blair became consumed with awe and paranoia. He went as
far to disconnect all the transport and communication for the others to escape.
At the point he became the monster, he started building an aircraft, to achieve
the aim of infecting the humanity with the nasty Thing.
Carpenter has placed a lot of clever ellipsis through the
films. There are characters that disappeared for a while and suddenly
reappeared some moments later, without stating , or showing objectively what
has happened to them during their ‘time-off’ – all the characters and the
audience can know was the verbal testimonies and reasons the character
provided, and there are no ways to see whether their claims are true or not.
The effect is that makes both the characters and audience alike more paranoid, because
especially for us, we are not even allowed an objective point of view of the
real answer to the mystery. Anyone who disappeared without a good reason could
already be proof that they have been transformed to the monster. An relevant
point I feel was that maybe some audience are over-analyzing the actions of the
characters, especially when they tried to identify which character was ‘The
Thing’. Statements like ‘Oh, he is not breathing all the way’ could be very
subjective, because Carpenter deliberately misled us to follow that way. There
is not an answer of who is ‘The Thing’ or not – if some ‘Man-Thing’ tried to
pretend to be a human being – it certainly would behave like a genuine human
being, and one would be hard to figure it out – except with the blood test or
at the point it exposed. The director was playing a mind game with the
audience, and to fuel their suspicion through the various ups and downs of the
narrative.
At the end, the only 2 survivors were MacReady and Childs.
Childs has disappeared throughout the final showdown, and no reasons were
provided for his disappearance. Since Carpenter intended the ending to be dark
and ambiguous, there were many debates and speculations about the final
conclusion of the story - just search for ‘Is Childs the Thing’ on the web and
you will be assaulted with loads of hits about the various theories. A very
famous fan theory is that, while it appeared that MacReady was sharing a last
bottle of liqueur with Childs, it was actually gasoline to test out whether
Childs has transformed to the Thing. Since Childs appeared to have no hard
feeling about the offer after he has taken a sip, MacReady confirmed that he
was sitting next to a bloody monster. Of course, the flip side was that
MacReady himself was the Thing (I understand it could be hard for Kurt Russell
to be seen as the bad guy).
To me, I feel that there is no point to decide who is The
Thing, because Carpenter’s idea is not to give a definite answer. The power of
the ambiguous ending is that it would generate a sustained paranoia in the
audience’s mind, because the ends will never be tied up properly, and the
mystery would never be resolved. The team of men might be facing a powerful
alien, yet it was the weakness and dark sides always inherent in humanity that
have defeated them, and prevented them from devising more intelligent means to
conquer the shadows that have haunted them.
So, any-Thing else to deal with?
-End-
(2/2)
by Ed Law
24/12/2017
Film Analysis
