While you're probably in the midst of planning your alien assimilation party in preparation for the remake/prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing, also titled The Thing, put down the severed-head-with-legs centerpiece for a moment and have a gander at the film’s latest TV spot, which you can check out below. See if you notice anything awry... or avoid it altogether if you don't want to be spoiled.


I’m not one to complain about trailers and TV spots. Actually that’s a total lie, I am not at all shy about complaining about trailers and TV spots. Regardless of your view on whether or not a sequel/remake/prequel to The Thing should exist, this trailer is not doing the project any favors. It is by far the most forthcoming of any of the marketing for the film. It shows the monster not once, but twice during the course of even this short ad.

If this movie is trying to achieve even a fraction of what made the original so effective, this is the wrong approach. Not being able to get a handle on the alien being’s exact size and shape is what made John Carpenter’s The Thing so thrilling. One could make the argument that since this is that same alien from the original that we already know what it looks like by now so it doesn’t matter. But the alien in this TV spot looks vastly different than the one in the final scene of the 1981 original.

The big difference here is that the original film used practical effects almost exclusively, and it’s clear from the glimpses of the alien in this spot that the remake is using primarily CG, and not even great CG to boot. In more ways than one, this ad lays bare all the film's secrets.