Date : 2011-12-04
◎ Translation Of the Strange Shape Prequel / Xenomorph 2011 (Hong Kong) / Polar Trick (Taiwan)
◎Title: The Thing
◎ Year 2011
◎ Country Usa /Canada
◎ Category Sci-fi/Horror/Thriller/Mystery
◎ Language English
◎ Character screen Chinese and English double word
◎IMDB rating 6.6/10 (7,402 users)
◎ File format BD-RMVB
◎ Video size 1024 x 576
◎ File size 1CD
◎ Film length 98 Mins
Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
◎ Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead .... Kate Lloyd
Joel Edgerton .... Braxton Carter
Ulrich Thomsen .... Dr. Sander Halvorson
Eric Christian Olsen .... Adam Goodman
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje .... Jameson
Paul Braunstein .... Griggs
Jond Espen Seim Trond Espen Seim .... Edvard Wolner
Kim Bubbs .... Juliette
J?rgen Langhelle .... Lars
Jan Gunnar R?himself .... Olav
Stig Henrik Hoff Stig Henrik Hoff .... Peder
Kristofer Hivju.... Jonas
Jo Adrian Haavind .... Henrik
Carsten Bj?rnlund .... Karl
Jonathan Walker .... Colin (as Jonathan Lloyd Walker)
Ole Martin Aune Nilsen .... Matias (Heli Pilot)
Michael Brown .... Security Guard
◎Introduction
Vinsstead plays a female PhD student on the Norwegian Antarctic expedition, where they find a foreign ship frozen in ice. When a trapped creature is rescued from the ship, she unleashes a series of attacks that force her to join forces with a hired helicopter pilot (Joel Edgerton) to stop the spread of evil.
The film takes place three days before the story of john Carpenter's classic horror film The Strange Shape.
Paleontologist Kate Lloyd joined a Norwegian expedition and was ordered to the South Pole to investigate the details and matters of an alien spacecraft that had crashed inside Antarctica. The alien spacecraft was buried in The Earth's permafrost, frozen solidly into a "big freezer." The expedition dug out a huge ice cube with a strangely shaped animal inside. This animal shows no signs of life. It looked dead. So the expedition team brought the big ice cube to their base and prepared to conduct scientific research on it.
Experiments and drilling holes released monsters in the ice cubes, and the animals and members of the expedition group began to have abnormal reactions and abnormal deaths. Together with Carter of the expedition team, Royd decided to kill the monster in Antarctica, at whatever cost, to let it die completely, never to allow it to come into contact with human civilization, and never to let him continue and cause more casualties.
The film is a prequel to the 1982 horror film Strange Shape directed by John Carpenter. Carpenter's "Strange Shape" is based on John W. Campbell Jr.'s short story "Who Goes Where" (Who Goes There), which tells a group of American scientists who go to the Antarctic research station and find that the Norwegian expedition personnel there have died mysteriously, and later they find that there is a terrible unknown foreign object here, they themselves can be killed by this thing at any time, and the most terrible thing is that they can no longer tell whether the partner around them is human or not.
Mary Elizabeth Vinsted will play a female PhD student on the Norwegian Antarctic expedition where they find a foreign vessel frozen in ice. When a trapped creature is rescued from the ship, she unleashes a series of attacks that force her to join forces with a hired helicopter pilot (Joel Edgerton) to stop the spread of evil
One sentence comment
A solid, entertaining monster movie not only reminds people of the original work 30 years ago, but also has a little "Strange Shape" style.
- "Rearview Mirror"
The film is very restrained in controlling the appearance of monsters on the screen, which is the most terrifying point in the first "Strange Shape".
— The Chicago Sun
Compared to most new horror films, this traditional style of film is really scary enough.
- New York Daily News
Behind the scenes
It's like a remake of a prequel
In 2004, after the remake of Dawn of the Living Dead, filmmakers Mark Abraham and Eric Newman set their sights back on Universal Pictures' repositories, trying to find some suitable material to make a remake. Naturally, they set their sights on Carpenter's Strange Shape. However, after much deliberation, Mark Abraham and Eric Newman are not ready to remake the film, but instead reshoot the mobile phone movie "Strange Shape" in the way of the prequel. Eric Newman said: "Carpenter's film is already perfect, and if we remake it again, it would be like adding a beard to mona Lisa's face, which would be self-defeating." If you're going to remake Jaws or The Exorcist, I'll be the first to jump out and stop you. And in the face of "Strange Shape", my feelings are the same. However, we feel that the story of "Strange Shape" can be told in another way, from another angle, and with another expression. We can get the characters who have become ghosts in Carpenter's films to face the strange shapes again. ”
Although it is a prequel, the story of the film is the same as that of the 1982 Carpenter version. Because the novel adaptation of the film is John F. Kennedy Jr. W. Campbell's novel Who Went Where? 》（Who Goes There？ ）。 The Carpenter version is also the source of the adaptation of the novel. So in a way, this is more than a remake of the original film, not a prequel, let alone a remake. The film's earlier writer was Ronald D. Moore, who said that compared to Carpenter's original, his script was like "a companion, not a remake or a prequel." "The script we wrote told the story that took place inside the Norwegian expedition team, and it took place before the film downloaded The Strange Shape," he said. As for the other plots, the two films have a lot of similarities." However, Universal later approached Eric Hathel to revise Moore's script, and Hathel said: "I added a lot of detail to the script, adding description and detail to the strange shape, and enriching the background of the film." Let the plot and details of the film be richer, rather than a simple prequel or remake of a simple fried cold rice. ”
The script was endorsed by director Massis van Harkinnigan, who said: "This is not a simple horror thriller, because the script is full of panic and changes in the characters' hearts. I have always felt that it is a very important thing to express the changes in the hearts and emotions of the characters in horror films, because in this way, the audience can more truly feel the horror atmosphere created in the film, so that the audience can have an empathetic understanding and identification with the choices and emotions of the characters in the film. Contrary to the absence of female characters in carpenter's version, the protagonist of this prequel film is a woman who comes to the expedition team, finds the strange shape, and later escapes from death, in order to protect all mankind from the attack of the strange shape, she decides to stay with the members of the scientific expedition team and fight with the strange shape. In fact, this image can be traced in many movies, the most famous is the heroine in "Alien". However, the story of this movie takes place on Earth, and the horror is even better. ”
Ambience is the point
Because the film's director, Massis Van Harkinnigan, didn't like digital machines, the film was shot on 35mm film from start to finish. Moreover, in order to move closer to the "quiet horror" effect of traditional horror films, he chose to edit the film in a slow, steady way instead of using fast-paced editing. This choice is more or less inconsistent with the current aesthetic standards, said Mas heath, "When I made this film, I referred to the shooting methods of many famous thrillers. One of the films that influenced me the most was Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. I was inspired by the horror atmosphere that film portrayed. So I decided to use that slow pace of storytelling, because that would unfold the horror and horror atmosphere layer by layer. On set, Massis Jr. would often look through the materials in his laptop, which contained stills from Carpenter's original "Strange Shapes." The reason he did this was to restore the visual atmosphere of carpenter's film in its original form, and to make the expedition team that encountered the strange shape be in line with the original in visual effects. Mas heath said: "As a prequel, it is very important to feel that it has a certain characteristic of the original, and its importance has exceeded the plot of the film itself. If the audience sees a movie that is diametrically opposed to the original, it will certainly not be satisfied. ”
Carpenter's original "Strange Shape" has always been regarded as a benchmark in the field of film special effects makeup, whether it is the separation of the head of the protagonist Norris or the close-up of piranha, which shows the highest level of film makeup at that time. In this film, makeup techniques are replaced by computer stunts, and CG animation is introduced into the film. However, the director's use of CG is very restrained, and Mas Heath did not abuse stunts. "We used a very limited number of CCs and special effects because it's not a film that relies on special effects as a selling point," he says. Conversely, the less special effects appear in the film, the better the horror and mystery of the film. The strange shape made by the CG is almost completely revealed in the film, and this kind of shooting makes me very satisfied. Mas heath made a strangely shaped solid model because he felt that if there was an actual object on the scene, the actor's performance would appear more realistic and believable. The company that produced the CG effects for the film was the Alien Image Engine for District 9. In order to make the strange shape in the film look more real and believable, the staff of Image Engine deliberately watched Carpenter's film over and over again, studied the strange shape created by Carpenter before and after, and then added some reasonable adaptations to produce the current strange shape. Eric Gillis of Image Engine said: "The original monster has a very complete and mature setting, and what we did was to extract the original setting concept and adapt and improve it to some extent. Because the times are different, people's requirements for special effects are also different. However, there are not many physical displays of strange shapes in the film, so the production of computer animation is not difficult. ”
Tidbits
Although both the film and the 1982 original were made of The Thing, this was a prequel rather than a remake. And the crew couldn't think of a better name for the film, and prequels like The Thing: Begins were too boring to get the original The Thing back to use.
The character design for the character of Kate Lloyd comes from the heroine of the Alien series, Alan Ripley.
The music written by Enio Morricone for the original film will appear in this film in fragments.
The Norwegian members of the Norwegian expedition team in the film are played by Norwegian actors.
Dennis Stohoyn was originally going to play a role in the film, but he quit the cast for personal reasons. His role was also given to another Norwegian actor, Ulrich Thomson.
John Carpenter's 1982 "Strange Shape" is actually a remake, and his remake of Howard Hawke's 1951 "Strange Man" is actually a remake.