We’ve seen the CGI explosion of a big, vaguely xenomorphic beast bursting from an ice block in previous trailers, but with this new The Thing red-band trailer from IGN, it’s clear virtually every bit of fleshy shape-shifting and horrific mutation will be a mish-mash of pixels. While I tend to think nostalgia for practical effects tends to runs a touch towards the willfully oblivious end of things among geek circles, I’ll say that in horror’s case there is usually little fright to be found among digital smears.
I do like a moment or two in this trailer, and there seems to be some genuinely freaky designs scattered throughout, but they seem like half-baked renders pulled from a video game (from two years ago). The photography looks nice in a general sense, and I still don’t know how the whole premakequel conceit will ultimately play out, but man those effects are dealbreakers for me.
All of this said, a report here and there have suggested this movie isn’t all bad. I guess it’s comforting to now it’s not a complete piece of garbage but if it’s only a mildly successful routine horror-flick, then the question comes… what was the point?
9 comments
I know everyone is judging this movie way too harshly only because the source material is so revered. Personally, this is a huge upgrade from the footage i saw earlier of it busting out of the ice. I am a diehard fan of the original and truthfully nothing can take that away. So i am not going to judge it according to Carpenters version, it would be impossible cause the director brought so much to the style. Besides ‘practical’ effects just arent… practical anymore. Time to realize this and stop clinging to old school mentality and just enjoy this for what it is, another gory delve into the universe of the thing. nothing more than that.
Heard that, Renn. Whipped cream on shit is still shit.
Some of the thing designs look liofted straight from the video game (especially the chick at the end). Annoying that the trailer gives away so many ‘Things’ I know about 6 of the characters who become Things so there goes any suspense. You can even see who the big Thing behind her is supposed to be FFS.
The Thing geek in me really liked seeing the “stretched face” Thing occurring though.
ACtually I’ll take that back. If you freeze it, it looks horrifically CG.
Boo. This is garbage.
My word, that just made it look worse. I kinda get the whole CGI treatment but did it have to look so fake? I dunno, I hope this is good (in a Predators kinda way), but this does not give me much confidence.
I’m going to go watch the original again.
I don’t understand why they needed to use CGI here. Actually I’m just sick of the oversaturation of the technology in general. I just can’t take it seriously.
All the years since Carpenter’s version, and we’ve seen absolutely tremendous advancements with practical animatronic effects. You know things that really exist, things that the actors can really interact with and not just look like they’re pretending to look scared of an imaginary monster. No, they’d rather populate the movie with cartoons. If you’re going to base your movie around cartoons, you may as well just make the whole fucking thing animated.
I think there are plenty of opportunities here to CGI to be used properly, and in conjunction with practical effects. Hopefully we’ll be seeing lots of hatching, stretching, and otherwise grotesquely distorting faces.
If the Thing designs are grisly enough and the scares aren’t too mechanical, it will have done enough. Can already tell the writing and characters will bleh, some hopefully they are dispatched in style
Comments are shown as archived from the original site; new comments are closed.