What is "The Thing(s)" endgame, exactly? If it even has one.
It crashed to Earth on a ship which it may or not have been originally piloting, but in the Carpenter movie it's clearly attempting to build a smaller ship to (presumably) get off Earth. I think it just wanted off the planet and the original crash was complete accident.
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I always thought it was meant to just be an animal. No intelligent plan or anything, just doing what animals do and eating and spreading itself.
gf banned both the thing (2011) and that old one from the 80s.
This was fun for a few threads but it's running a little thin now. Don't milk it.
Yeah this is what makes it so scary. It is a hostile entity that cannot be reasoned with, it just wants to kill and survive.
I always thought it was maybe a prisoner or a specimen being sent to some other planet to be studied and it escaped captivity, assimilated the crew, and cashed on earth. As you said, I think it’s endgame was to leave earth.
shut the fuck up
How could it build a spaceship if it’s just an animal? I think it acquires the intelligence capabilities of the creatures it assimilates
i presume you have a new gf by now who isn't such a bitch.
Stop ruining Thing threads with your shitty meme, you fucking spastic.
It's basically like Aliens. Think about how they (were they Norwegians? Scandys?) found it on a ship. It was the exact same scenario as Aliens just without an egg. So to answer your question: parasitic takeover. Humans were the new host.
bees build hives. they're just insects.
beavers build dams. they're just rodents.
humans build cities. they're just primates.
no, and she won't even open up to a discussion about why we can't watch them on movie night.
it's just "no"
Well, I don't think what it was building was a spaceship, but just a vessel that could get it out of Antarctica, like a single use jet or something (it just looked like a saucer because that's what it was familiar with). But yeah, even that would require some intelligence, so it's possible that it's taking some of the intelligence from whatever it absorbs. I mean it stands to reason that it would have to in order to effectively mimic the personality of whatever it takes over.
Uhhhhhhhhh... Peter Watts (insane guy) wrote a story called Things which is the movie from the Thing's point of view.
clarkesworldmagazine.com
Who says the thing built the spaceship? The much more likely thing is an alien race was trying to escape a thing infection, wasn't as safe as they thought they were, and this led to a crash on earth
enjoy your dead thread in 30 minutes
I’m saying it acquires the intelligence of whatever entity it assimilates. If it assimilated the crew of the spaceship before the crash, it would have the knowledge of those aliens.
Exactly, it couldn’t just be a mindless animal if it is to pass as human.
I assumed he was talking about the 'ship' in Blair's basement.
I’m talking about the spaceship under the shed that Blair was in. Not the spaceship that crashed.
>some intelligence
Did the guy he assimilated have a PhD in engineering? If not, then "The Thing" definitely has its own knowledge and intelligence. It built a fucking aircraft out of nothing but shit it found on an Antarctic research base.
I was.
There's a lot of animals in nature that pretend to be things they're not to lure in prey or avoid predators. This could just be an advanced form of that. To us it seems like an intelligent lifeform because it can mimic humans, but from its point of view its all just instinctual.
My bad ignore my post then
Those are all dwellings. A ship is a means to get somewhere. It could already get around earth, so was it trying to leave?
I think it just retains all of the knowledge of the entities it assimilates. If the spaceship crash at the beginning was because the thing assimilated the crew, it would retain their knowledge of space exploration. At least in my opinion.
Get fucked you tourist fsggot
Why blow the helicopter up, is a better question? That's a ready made mode of transport right there. The goal was to stop anybody else getting out alive (Dead men don't talk) and get the fuck out of there.
But to be able to build a spaceship from scraps in an Artic base with more antiqued materials makes me think it possesses the memory and knowledge of those it assimilates. I suppose you could argue that is all instinctual with no self awareness but it literally had a plan building the ship.
>it's possible that it's taking some of the intelligence from whatever it absorbs
I would assume this is the case
I don’t think the thing blew up the helicopter, that was Blair before he was infected during his freakout.
I mean it would have to at bare minimum to pose as that person believably. But guys I'm a brainlet and was never clear on if the Thing was reproducing or just taking over bodies 1 by 1.
No, that was Blair while he was infected. His freakout was completely premeditated and a total fabrication.
I think it is like an amoeba. So it splits parts of itself off, while still being a sort of single 'consciousness'. That was always my take on it anyway.
Quick drawing I did.
I don’t know, I don’t think so. I think Blair realized that the thing could do major damage if it got out of the artic. And destroyed all the communications and vehicles to contain it. He got infected in the shed. Why would the thing destroy a helicopter if it’s end goal is to leave? It makes no sense to destroy a helicopter and then build a space ship.
Gay actually
>HEARD YOU WERE TALKIN' SHIT
That doesn't make sense. The Thing wouldn't want the radios destroyed because if they could have called people in then it would offer him more bodies to take over.
Helicopters can't go into orbit, but they can fly to other places. Destroying the communications was was exactly that; to stop the flow of information. Once people think you're crazy, they stick you in iso. Once you're alone you can start getting to work on your fucking spaceship without interruption.
It was the Thing which was actually trying to quarantine and cover the whole thing up. It was unironically the good guy.
This sounds like some retarded youtube fan theory. Really reaching for 'brilliant alternate takes' when the most rational line of thinking is that Blair destroyed all the stuff because he didn't want The Thing getting out.
It didn't want more bodies to take over, it wanted to kill everything there and then fuck off.
If that were the case the thing is very intelligent and manipulative. It’s very possible.
I'm clean
>Why would the thing destroy a helicopter if it’s end goal is to leave?
Would there even be enough fuel to leave Antarctica from helicopter?
Did you try to watch them EVERY movie night, user?
This is pure nonsense. It doesn't prove a thing.
The entire reason it was building that little craft was to take it from the middle of nowhere Antarctica to somewhere more populace, a place with more people, which was its only option after Blair destroyed all the helicopters and the radios. It was not trying to get back into space.
There are other, larger bases on Antarctica. It could have seen a map with them or something.
>bro practical effects
>like dude like the dude was the thing at the end
>bro like so superior, my taste is superior
>comfy xd
There every thing thread ever, can we delete this now?
It's the only thing which makes sense to me. It would be fair enough if was just trying to infect as many people as possible, but it wasn't. It was actively trying to build a craft to escape. In the prequel it tries to start the actual full ship which was found. It's only impeded by that stupid bitch who shoots him/it in the van.
It is literally trying to leave the planet.
>Thing which was actually trying to quarantine and cover the whole thing up. It was unironically the good guy.
So MacReady was the thing all along. No wonder why he wanted to blow up the camp and wait for Childs to freeze.
...
Bumping it just to spite you. Faggot
This is probably the best concept of what "The Thing" is like. Reasoning ability and strength scaling to the amount of biomass, hijacked a ride on that ship by infecting the crew, a shadow of itself at the beginning of the movie, gains strength and savvy as it absorbs the crew of the Antarctic stations.
I'm not even gonna take the prequel into consideration because it is poopoodoodoo. But ask yourself why would it want to get back into space? That tiny little ship wasn't going to have a faster than light drive or something on it, so it would have just shot itself into space so it could drift around aimlessly forever? It's never stated outright but it stands to reason that as a biological organism it does have to consume something to stay alive, so if it shot itself into space like that it would just starve to death.
>alitafag mad over their repetitive spam general getting sent to the trash
You alitafags were spammers and waifufuckers. You didn't even discuss the movie. These Thing threads may have patterns in the conversation but the movie is being discussed. These threads belong on Yea Forums unlike your shitalita general.
m8 it's probably infected a bunch of lifeforms all over the galaxy already. If you go with the theory it infected the pilot/crew of the original ship which crashed, then why crash in the first place? You've obviously already encountered much more advanced lifeforms than humans, so who gives a fuck about earth?
Also the prequel, like the game, is canon. So fuck off.
That doesn't answer my question of what it would do in space once it shot itself out there with that rudimentary ship. Also the reason it crashed in the first place was probably because it took over the lifeforms on the ship but couldn't figure out how to properly pilot the ship, or one of the aliens it took over possibly sabotaged the ship prior to being taken over as a last ditch effort to kill the thing. Also why would it care about encountering more advanced lifeforms, all it cares about is surviving.
W-what happens if I have doubles?
The prequel was made thirty years after the film we're talking about, and actually contradicts information from the original movie.
As for the Blair stuff, it's pretty easy to assume Blair was human and trying to prevent it from leaving, and was either infected by a few cells that eventually took him over, or a full Thing infiltrated the shack and assimilated him after. The Thing didn't try to consume everyone at once because it was in a situation where it could potentially die. It wanted to leave to a place where it could spread more easily and not be nearly as threatened by temperatures.
>Game takes place hours after movie ends, so still 1984
>totally different configuration for both Norwegian and American outposts
>Advanced technology such as automatic turrets, high powered cameras, and that entire underground base
>Canon
If the game is canon regardless, that helps your point even less. The Thing is actively hunting and aggressively attacking as many humans as possible despite having access and time to supposedly build that spaceship to leave the Earth in peace.
>All it cares about is surviving
That's a prerequisite which you invented yourself and which your whole argument is based. It obviously cares about more than just surviving since it's very obviously thinking about cause and consequence and makes very real, conscious decisions about not only itself but others.
Leave no survivors. Dead men tell no tales.
Have another spite bump, faglord.
beautiful work senpai
I love The Thing, but Blair's UFO is the worst part of the movie. The idea that he built this out of helicopter parts and scrap metal is so fucking stupid.
So why did it leave survivors at the Norwegian base and escape as a dog? If the the thing is as intelligent and thoughtful as you are making it out to be then wouldn't it realize that absolutely no one in the world even believe these survivors if they started going off about there being a shape shifting alien that killed all their team members? Why would it even need to kill all of them. If all it cares about is killing everyone and leaving no trace of itself, then why does it attempt to shut the power off and freeze itself at the end, since this whole plan relies on the fact that eventually other people will come and it will be able to take them over? Every single choice the the thing makes prioritizes survival above all else.
TORCH IT MACREADY
You guys are paranoid, there is no monster
>So why did it leave survivors at the Norwegian base and escape as a dog
Of course it has a will to survive, it's not fucking stupid. But in the opening scene of The Thing it also acts the victim (Jumping up, acting scared, begging for protection) while the surviving Norwegian crew are tying to kill it. Which, ultimately leads to them both perishing. It doesn't only understand cause and consequence, it also understands empathy and what manipulation is.
The idea it's some vacuous parasite which attacks and infects anything it comes into contact with because MUH SURVIVAL is complete fucking bullshit.
Never had dubs. Never even held a pair of tits at the strip club
FUCKING KILL IT
fuck you faggot the thing was kino
>it's clearly attempting to build a smaller ship to (presumably) get off Earth
No it's not numb nuts. It's trying to get the fuck away from such a shithole(below freezing and people crazy enough to readily kill each others) and get to a populated area where it can infect without people being the wiser.
It's ultimate goal is to assimilate all life on earth because then it can live in peace. It doesn't need food and is always just reacting to survive.
>tight pacing
>cinematography that serves a purpose rather than being self-indulgent style masturbation
>action oriented horror with a psychological horror component that arises naturally rather than 'muh drama' 'muh slowburn atmosphere'
The Thing is the opposite of A24 basedhorror.
I agree with all of this except the idea that it doesn't need food. That seems impossible. But I guess it doesn't matter since the topic never comes up in the film, and the end goal would be the same anyway.
TORCH THE FUCKER
I wanted to go somewhere warm and populated
Maybe to find other organisms to absorb and imitate until it found the perfect organism something that felt right.
I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH.
Hey guys, we exterminate any of things recently? Hehe let's be extra cautions
..we cant trust anyone
>Peter Watts (insane guy)
Lol'd, as a huge fan of Watts writing. He'd probably lol too.
I had a creative writing class in college and part of it focused on novels and their film adaptations. So we read Who Goes There and the teacher showed The Thing in class. It scared the shit out of people. I think it's one of the few horror films that can still really shock people that haven't seen it.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!
>The Thing 2011
An Insult to Carpenter masterpiece.