NEWS – The Thing… Remake… Reboot… Who Cares?

Published on: 2nd March, 2010

NEWS - The Thing... Remake... Reboot... Who Cares?  | read this item

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Whilst John Carpenter’s classic monster movie The Thing itself was a remake, it is still frustrating to know that Universal are still going ahead with their latest remake/reboot. Directed by Dutch filmmaker Matthijs van Heijningen (who produced Dick Maas’ 1983 thriller De Lift/The Lift), the word is that the movie will be set before the events of Carpenter’s film, recounting the fate of the Norwegian base.

What is most disturbing, however, is that the new version of The Thing is set to star Joel Edgerton and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Australian actor Edgerton is perhaps most known as Owen Lars from the Star Wars prequels, whilst American actress Winstead co-starred as Bruce Willis’ unruly daughter in 2007’s Die Hard 4.0.

But how is this possible, if the move is about the Norwegians? The American base was an all-male facility and none of the crew had visited the Norwegian camp until MacReady (Kurt Russell) heads in search of survivors. Yet IMDb list their character names as Sam Carter and Kate Lloyd, respectively. So surely they are not going to attempt Norwegian accents whilst sporting American names?

Edgerton reassured What’s Playing that the movie is not a remake, but a more acceptable ‘reboot’:
Anyone who is a big fan of the John Carpenter version of The Thing knows that it starts on the American base station but the investigation of where the Thing has come from leads us to know something very bad has happened at the Norwegian base station and the prequel centres itself around there and what happened pre-Kurt Russell”

So what parts will their characters play in the movie and should we really care?

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