The Thing Reaction
Added 2024-04-24 19:27:35 +0000 UTC
Comments
Chi and Hella: At a point near the end, Macready says that with the generator out and no transportation, they are all going to die. The only goal at that point was to kill the Thing.
Edward Olson
2024-04-27 06:39:50 +0000 UTCA few of the observations/thoughts I've had over the years of many watchings that come to me now... There were possibly at least TWO Things present in/under the complex during most of the event after the dogs were attacked in the kennel: one was the portion of the Thing-Dog that sprouted arms and lifted itself through the ceiling; another was the remains earlier brought from the Norwegian Station that defrosted/reanimated to attack Bennings (as witnessed by Windows in the storeroom), as Thing-Bennings that was confronted outside had roughly only his own body mass present (and almost restored to intact imitation of Bennings except for the arms). The Thing that attacked and initiated his conversion was still somewhere else when Thing-Bennings was being incinerated. During Blair's rampaging in the radio room, the concern that Clark shows when he's by himself viewing the remaining dogs just slaughtered by Blair (so that no dog sled teams could be assembled) tells us that Clark was still human at that point. Norris became a Thing without ever being aware he was infected; his infection likely occurred from the method that Fuchs alludes to when advising Macready that a person could be infected by just one microscopic particle of a Thing and thus everyone should eat out of cans & prepare their own food. Norris was slowly being transformed and was evincing the process when having chest pains and eventually succumbing to cardiac arrest. Doc Copper never turned into a Thing even though he was in contact enough to be contaminated (after having his forearms ripped open/apart when they plunged into Thing-Norris' chest cavity toothy maw) likely because he succumbed to death from massive blood-loss and shock before the Thing conversion process could get a good start. With there being two Things present during most of the events up to the point of Thing-Palmer's revealing, Blair was quite possibly still human when Macready last checks in with him; the second Thing that Fuchs chased (or was chased by) outside onto the ice (before Fuchs seemingly killed himself) was the Thing that was under the complex building the small (space?)ship. It was then this second Thing that came up through the ice & floor of Blair's shack to attack/convert him. If Blair had knowingly been the Thing when destroying the helo, snowcats, comms, sled-dogs, etc. then It could have just destroyed all the ground vehicles but one and escaped in that vehicle with no one else able to pursue It (though It probably wouldn't have made it far enough to reach another outpost/station/port, It could still have gotten away from the dangerous humans and entered the frozen dormant state to await eventual discovery by new humans). My opinion of the Thing's motivations for building the ship has developed over the years. Even before seeing the 2011 prequel film, I had come to believe that the Thing had unintentionally crashed on Earth and didn't want to remain here if It could leave again. To that end I imagined that the Thing used Its vast (largely stolen?) advanced technological engineering knowledge to construct the small spacecraft under the American Station from cobbled equipment present around the complex. It had found humans to be shockingly dangerous to Its survival in unexpected ways that belied our primitive technology and inferior biology. It would only attempt to take us over as much as necessary to enable It to leave our planet. The 2011 prequel seemed to reinforce this view in various details having to do with how the Thing is more openly operating/attacking at first before It learns of our unexpected dangerous-ness (contrasted with how It mainly employs stealth and subterfuge in the 1982 film), and details with the Thing and Its original spaceship presented in the prequel. The remainder of the team after Thing-Norris and Doc Copper are killed might have inadvertently (and thus unknowingly) contaminated themselves in the course of performing Macready's hot wire blood experiment. When Windows is procuring blood samples from himself & everyone in the room (besides Macready who likely got his own blood drawn), we don't know exactly what order the blood was drawn, but we do see Windows re-use the same scalpel apparently without sterilizing it (and it is entirely possible that the various chemical sterilization methods could be ineffective against Thing cells). Anyone that had their blood drawn with that scalpel after Palmer would be slow-infected just as Norris had been. There are several theories about the dark ending with just Macready and Childs remaining, and I've never been quite able to settle on just one. Yet even if neither are a Thing, then the ending is still suitably dark and appropriate for such a deathly serious preceding set of events... with the both of them soon freezing to death in the remoteness beyond the edge of the world, with possibility of rescue being similarly remote.
S_Vive
2024-04-26 10:26:17 +0000 UTC
