Trivia / The Thing (1982)

• Actor-Inspired Element: During rehearsals, Richard Masur and Keith David decided that, as the two largest men in the camp, their characters would be antagonistic to each other.
• Cast the Runner-Up: David Clennon was originally cast as Bennings, but found the Palmer character more interesting and fun.
• Completely Different Title
  • Brazilian and European Portuguese, respectively; O Enigma De Outro Mundo (The Enigma of Another World) and Veio do outro mundo (It came from another world)
  • Chinese, 突變第三型 (The Third Mutation)
  • Danish, Det grusomme udefra (The Evil from the Outside)
  • Japanese, 遊星からの物体X (Object X from Outer Space)
• Creator Breakdown: The film's initial reception caused this. While he is very proud of the film, citing it as arguably his favorite of his films, and very pleased that it finally gets the respect it deserves, the visceral hatred it received at the time, including from the director and star of the original film that influenced his career so much, nearly destroyed Carpenter's career and basically tanked his confidence as a filmmaker. He refused to even talk about it for another few years due to the personal impact its reception had on him.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: Although Kurt Russell was involved with the production very early on, he was actually the last actor to be cast. John Carpenter was leaning towards him but, having already worked with him previously, he felt he should consider some other actors for MacReady. Carpenter relented after several choices fell through. Carpenter's initial concern was that his and Russell's working history, combined with Russell's fame as a leading man, would telegraph to the audience that MacReady was The Hero, while Carpenter wanted to keep suspicion high that no one can be definitively trusted, even by the audience.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Carpenter remarked in a 2011 interview that the film is close to, if not his favorite film from his own filmography.
• Deleted Scene: Some of the scenes deleted from the movie include:
  • Doc and Blair checking the corpse of the dead Norwegian that Garry killed. Garry takes the Norwegian's ID tags and reads his name, Jans Bolen. Childs is asked by Garry if the Norwegian said something before he was shot, and Child's response is, "Am I starting to look Norwegian to you, bwana?" In that same scene, the "corpse" visibly blinks.
  • Norris goes to Mac's shack and tells him that he needs to fly the helicopter over to the Norwegian base.
  • Mac and Doc checking the destroyed Norwegian base longer and right after they find the giant block of ice where the Thing was frozen, they also find the body of one more dead Norwegian stuffed inside a closet.
  • The rest of the crew sitting together and waiting for Mac and Doc back at outpost while the two are at the Norwegian base.
  • Mac moving his stuff inside the base because the cold weather outside is too much for his shack.
  • Doc and Fuchs checking the footage from the Norwegian base.
  • Mac watching some footage from the Norwegian base with his "friend", a blow-up doll.
  • Blair checking the Dog-Thing's dead body longer while the rest of the crew is asking questions about it. When Blair mentions that the Thing is not dead yet, everyone back off from it.
  • Mac and Norris climbing out of the crater where the Thing's UFO is located.
  • Mac shows everyone the ripped clothes that Nauls found in his kitchen, revealing that whoever was wearing it is a large person; however, most of the crew members are therefore suspected to be the Things.
  • A deleted sequence during the scene where some of the crew members are tied down when lights in outpost turn off, causing panic between the crew for some time before Mac and Palmer manage to fix it. John Carpenter mentioned in DVD Commentary that the "Lights out" scene was deleted because it was lighted with blue light which didn't really work in the scene.
  • Originally, Fuchs was found dead by Childs and Palmer inside their greenhouse, pinned to a door with a shovel impaled into his chest (in the original script, he was killed in the same way but with with an axe). There is a picture that shows Fuchs impaled with the shovel on the door; however, there is also one picture that shows a Fuchs-Thing, still impaled and appearing to be burned, but smiling. While in the greenhouse they debate whether they should burn their marijuana crop - pondering if the Thing can imitate plant-life as easily as animal life.
  • Originally, Bennings was killed with a screwdriver from behind by an unidentified person in a blue coat (presumably Blair) while he was inside the kennel. The beginning of this scene, where he enters the kennel, sees someone, and says "Clark?", was used for early TV cuts and was also in the deleted scenes in Special Edition copies of the movie. Carpenter mentioned that he wanted to make Clark look more suspicious with this scene, but after viewing the scene in early previews, it didn't fit well with rest of the movie, and it felt more like something out of Carpenter's Halloween (1978).
  • Mac and Nauls are checking Mac's shack when suddenly Mac's blow-up doll flies out through the shack's destroyed roof, scaring the hell out of both of them.
  • The Blair-Thing was originally shown onscreen much longer in a stop-motion scene, which Carpenter deleted for not being convincing.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: For the scene where Dr. Copper gets his arms bitten off, two shots that each lasted only a few seconds, an actual amputee stood in Richard Dysart's place wearing a mask in his likeness.
• Disowned Adaptation: The director and star of the original 1951 film, Christian Nyby and Kenneth Tobey, both stated their dislike for Carpenter's version, believing that the gore overshadowed everything else and made it impossible to care about the characters. Nyby even described the film as an ad for J&B Scotch.
• Dueling Movies: With Blade Runner, which was released the same day, as well as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which were released two weeks and three weeks respectively before this film. Sadly, The Thing ended up grossing by far the least of the four (although Blade Runner was a financial flop as well), though they would all go on to be remembered as classics of the Sci-Fi genre.
• Dyeing for Your Art: It took Kurt Russell around a year to grow MacReady's famous beard and hair.
• Easter Egg: During the kennel scene, one of the Dog-Thing's tentacles hits one of its heads in the right eye. Then the head turns to the right and growls, before looking back at the men. It requires a frame-by-frame or .12 or slower DVD viewing to catch the tentacle striking the eye. This actually explains why the Dog-Thing turns to the side and growls in that particular scene. Granted, this could also just be an extraordinary Special Effects Failure coincidence.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Charles Hallahan played his character, Norris, in some scenes, as suspecting himself of being the Thing, but not really sure. He's very much correct.
  • Another example, according to the commentary, occurs when Mac and Copper reveal the corpse of the Thing they recovered from the Norwegian camp. The production team used AB smoke fluid during the scene, with everyone gathering around. The cast's reaction to the stench is genuine.
  • Kurt Russell was almost injured in the scene where he blows up the Palmer-Thing with a stick of dynamite. Apparently, he had no idea exactly how big of an explosion it would produce, and the reaction that he has in the movie is genuine.
• Executive Meddling: An extremely bizarre example: the ending of the basic cable edit actually makes the movie a lot bleaker and nastier. Carpenter hates it for precisely this reason.
• Fake American:
  • The English Donald Moffat as Garry.
  • German-American Norbert Weisser plays the Norwegian chasing the Dog-Thing.
• Focus Group Ending: An alternate ending was made for this express purpose, where MacReady is rescued and confirmed to be human. This was the idea of Todd Ramsay, the editor of the film. They never meant to include it in the final cut, but they felt it was better to be safe than sorry if the studio demanded a change. Otherwise, they'd have to go to the trouble of getting Kurt Russell back on the set. Since it was never used, the footage got scrapped.
• Life Imitates Art: During the Covid-19 pandemic, the news about viral outbreaks in a Chilean and Belgian antarctic bases despite extensive screening and protocols, were met with joking comparisons to the film.
• Real-Life Relative: Adrienne Barbeau, who was married to John Carpenter at the time, voiced the computer.
• Recycled Set: The scenes at the Norwegian outpost were filmed last, using the ruins of the American station set after it was blown up in the film's climax.
• Shrug of God: John Carpenter has admitted he could never decide if Childs was human or not in the end.
• Spared by the Cut: While Nauls' fate is left unknown in the film (although if he wasn't killed by the Thing, he definitely was when the station blew up) he was originally killed by a jack-in-the-box like alien, only they cut the scene as the special effects didn't look real enough, and Carpenter liked leaving it ambiguous anyway. Another scene, which made it to storyboards but was never filmed, showed him being eaten alive from the inside out by a series of Thing-tentacles.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Universal originally wanted Tobe Hooper to direct the film due to Hooper's success with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Under Hooper's vision, the alien in question would lack Shapeshifting abilities and the plot would less resemble the original Campbell story Who Goes There? and more Moby-Dick. Stuart Cohen and the other producers, who wished for a more faithful adaptation, were unhappy with the script and turned down Hooper. The film production would go through more directors until the arrival of John Carpenter.
  • Some early designs for the Thing were similar to the alien in the original short story, but they were scrapped in favor of Rob Bottin's Body Horror concept. In doing so, the film makes it ambiguous whether or not the Thing has a true form.
  • The film's original choice of composer was Jerry Goldsmith, but he passed.
  • Bill Lancaster wrote the script with Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford in mind for MacReady. Universal suggested Kevin Kline, but feared that he didn't have enough star power. Carpenter did meet with him and gave it serious thought. Other candidates included Tom Berenger, Jeff Bridges, Peter Coyote, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, John Heard, Kris Kristofferson, Nick Nolte, Sam Shepard, Christopher Walken and Fred Ward.
  • Powers Boothe, Kevin Conway and Lee Van Cleef were considered for Garry.
  • Bernie Casey, Isaac Hayes, Geoffrey Holder, Ernie Hudson and Carl Weathers were amongst those considered for Childs. Hudson almost landed the role, but lost it to Keith David.
  • William Daniels and Brian Dennehy were considered for Copper.
  • Donald Pleasence was the original choice for the character of Blair, but was unable to take the role due to a scheduling conflict.
  • Alec Baldwin was considered for Fuchs and Palmer.
  • Jay Leno and Garry Shandling read for Palmer as it was customary of studios to seek out stand up comics as the next potential up and comers.
  • The movie was originally going to end with the camp burning and a Husky (the Thing) escaping into the wilderness.
  • John Carpenter originally wanted the film to have no obvious "leading man" or central character, to preserve the sense that Anyone Can Die (or be The Thing). While he discussed the film at length with friend and frequent collaborator Kurt Russell, Carpenter resisted hiring Russell for this reason. However, the script called for MacReady to ultimately be The Hero, and finding a relative unknown who could play the part was proving difficult (let's face it, there are only so many Sigourney Weavers out there). Finally, Carpenter decided to embrace the fact that MacReady was the lead character, and hire the best actor for the role: Kurt Russell, even if that would telegraph to the audience that MacReady would make it to the end (which he does... but only on a technicality).
    • Though this is somewhat of a modern take on the situation. Back in '82, Russell's biggest achievements were playing the lead in Escape from New York (not a financial success nor yet to be the Cult Classic it came to be), being the voice of an animated dog (in another unsuccessful movie) and playing the lead in a TV series axed after airing only 11 of its 15 episodes due to terrible ratings. In other words, he was the relative unknown face the script needed, but Carpenter was reluctant to reuse the same actor as his leading man (just like Spielberg and Lucas didn't initially want Harrison Ford to play Indiana Jones). However, Kurt Russell did still have some big name draw due to his earlier Disney films, and was the most stereotypically "leading man" type actor in the cast (to the point of getting full starring billing: Russell is the only actor to get billed in the opening credits).
  • The unused ending mentioned in Focus Groupending.

---