Right?!? They blow it all up, but all the fires will go out eventually and now you blasted pieces of it everywhere, increasing the chances of some part of it being frozen and survived
My thoughts on Mac being strangely calm at the end of the film makes sense if you try to imagine yourself in that scenario as a non-infected human; he just went through all that crap, and is probably thinking he is as good as dead. Most people would either panic, or shut down emotionally. To me, that feels like Mac accepting his fate.
That's always been the reason why i think it's Childs, Mac just did quite literally everything he could, he knows he'll be dead either mauled or frozen in less than 24h , he has no more reasons to be afraid or panicking
@flow185 | Yup. Childs meanwhile SHOULD be panicking, since he's been out of the loop for a while. You'd think he'd ask what happened to everyone else, be suspicious of Mac, etc.
He's either going to freeze to death. Or be assimilated by the thing. At that point he was probably exhausted and like you said just accepting his fate
Also by now he's had enough contact with the pre-exposing contact with The Thing that he might be wondering what the cast was, is he even sure he isn't the thing suppressing all but the Macready personality to better impersonate...
Yeah. I kinda hate hearing theories unless it’s based 100% on the creator or the creator itself. If not, u get a bunch of nerds bringing in lore & canon crap they made up and it comes off as cringe fan fiction
@Puppy_Puppington The entire film is based on paranoia and trying to figure out who is infected, so can you really blame people for wanting to share personal theories?
@Pugkin5405 yes but often to the detriment of the mystery/work in its entirety. its hard to encapsulate all things when you're literally anyone but the author himself/herself. there's a factor/angle that you just can't account for and its why we have stories in the first place. when the author PURPOSEFULLY leaves breadcrumbs and gives it for yourself to figure it out, then it feels earned. crackpot theories are fun but sort of feel like flipping over the chessboard and deciding to play checkers. to be clear, The Thing is an example of a deliberately ambiguous ending
@idrk3707no point in playing with a computer that objectively cheats but can't be argued with. Same reason I stopped playing Mario Kart 64 after losing the 150cc Star Cup by having the lead on Rainbow Road, getting rubber band AI'd, getting the exact same time as the computer in second place down to the millisecond but getting second place for some reason.
I heard a different theory about that bottle which makes more sense to me. It is thought that the actual human would be too vigilant and worried to be infected by a transmission, so if childs was in fact a human, he wouldn't have sipped from that bottle. The only one who wouldn't be worried about being infected is the thing, so MacReedy checked him this way. That's why he made that laugh.
I also think The Thing would be too smart to drink gas, like it already took over the Norwegian base and the dogs and it acted like a dog so it's possible it's got some alien 'power' of being able to have some kind of understanding of how the things it takes over behave and not to mention the fact that the blair thing was already able to start building a fucking flying saucer with just human tools. But you're gonna try to tell me it doesn't know humans don't drink gasoline? There's no way. It also destroyed the blood samples and I don't think something that can understand the complexity of what blood samples could do, wouldn't be able to understand people don't drink gas. HOWEVER do I think that it could slip up in a socially complex situation like not sharing a drink with someone who could possibly be infected? Absolutely. That's why it's a "I got you" laugh. The childs thing thinks sharing the drink is the "right" thing to do to blend in but McCready knows none of them, ESPECIALLY childs at that point in the film, would share a drink with anyone else. Also McCready "winning" the game by finding out childs is the thing with the whiskey mirrors the beginning of the film where he loses at chess and dumps the whiskey into the machine. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
Nah, that's a weak theory. At this point, with the station burning to the ground and the prospect of them both freezing solid - it would be too late to be thinking about infections when offered a beer bottle.
mr carpenter never intended any of the 2 to be the thing. and only after the fans came up with the theory he went "huh. yeah that WOULD be more interesting"
@Puppy_Puppington or foreshadowing. He used whiskey to destroy something attempting a poor imitation of human behavior Like (potentially) using the whisky bottle full of gasoline to expose an alien imitating a human
One of the most unrealistic things is that a Norwegian scientist in the 1980s wouldn't be fluent in English or at least know enough to warn the Americans.
@Sir_Modus I disagree, I admit the cgi was awful and definitely takes away from the film as a whole. But it has good bones and explains a lot of the questions from the original film quite well. Whenever my boyfriend and I watch the thing, we always watch the prequel first because we enjoy it. There's no need to be rude about that
I once heard a theory that both MacReady and Childs are assimilated but neither are aware of that fact so now there are two aliens paranoid that the other might be a human wanting to kill them. To me that’s some poetic irony that the Thing thrived on fear and paranoia to survive and now is paranoid that the only other living being in that frozen wasteland is not one of its own.
@Ojja78 I think there is a theory where you could be infected and not know through saliva. Like passive. Slowly taking you over (which some think it wasn’t a heart attack it was full assimilation) So if there was one person infected and hid, then came across someone else who was infected. It would be like a battle of infection so if macready in that one back shot (giggity) scene got infected like Kurt and John wanted. That would mean the thing was taking out a bigger badder thing in the caves, and he did that in order for him to survive and infect others (it’s lowkey what made me think of a pretty solid sequel idea for this universe, like imagine a thing that was really really intelligent using everything it learned from this and the prequel movie). Tl;dr: I personally don’t go with that theory, I like the idea Childs is a thing, and macready isn’t (typical movie trope) and the thing knew macready couldn’t run or escape so he played along. Helps with the chess game at the beginning of the film makes it be foreshadowing for the ending. Macready fights a computer that’s cheating, so he blows it up and goes into the cold to his friends/crew
People always forget the 'perfect' imitation aspect of the Thing, including all memories and knowledge. So both Childs and Mac would know the difference between liquor and gasoline even if one/both were a Thing. Personally, I think the funnest ending is both Mac & Childs are Things and are discussing the best way to escape Antarctica.
@Kubistonek if the thing doesn't recall memories then it wouldn't be able to assimilate certain speech patterns. As far as we know, the characters hardly act different than how they were pre-assimilation (aside from obviously wanting to survive). The Thing wouldn't know English and would actually strangely if they didn't gain at least some semblance of the host's memories
@zombiezes I haven't watched the 2011 movie, but he could have learned speech and maybe even the language from norvegian camp. Language seems to be a pretty common concept and even ancient languages can be decyphered with some knowledge about languages itself. Im kinda stretching here but i think the writers did not intend for the thing to gain memories, there is even this one scene where they are arguing about who had the keys and the thing doesn't seem to know the person its imitating gave the keys away
@Galaxy613 Being fair, even if one (or both) of them are a Thing, it doesn't actually mean humanity is doomed; the fact that at least one Thing was building a ship to get off planet indicates the Thing probably doesn't have much interest in being on Earth.
There is no ‘ending’. He constructed the story so that multiple valid conclusions can be made by the audience. People keep assuming there is one correct interpretation, as if the movie was a documentary of real events. It’s disturbing so many viewers can’t understand the difference between real-life and fiction.
@s4098429 you are giving the wrong reasoning. A lot of people want there to be a single correct ending because they are invested in the story and want closure. They want to understand, especially if it is something they have invested energy into. It is not disturbing that people want to understand the directors intent. It is disturbing that you aren't able to realise that.
I think the "The thing wouldn't know that we don't drink gasoline" thing falls flat once you consider that they seem to perfectly copy memories and behaviour.
Yeah it is specifically stated to be a PERFECT COPY, PERFECT. Meaning there is no difference between it and a human being(other than it being an alien but its so 1-1 that it doesn't matter)
I think Childs would've needed to know what gasoline tastes like for the Thing to have recognized “this is gasoline and humans don't drink gasoline therefore I should spit this out if I want to convincingly pretend to be human”.
Replication and actually having sentience are 2 entirely different things goober. What the FK rock have you been living under? It's exactly the same as when a primate copies an activity that we do (thus "replicating") without knowing or even understanding what it's doing
well it replicates their bodies and everything nigh perfectly, but it wouldnt be accustomed to the norms of humanity besides what it has seen so that it could perfectly immitate, it replicates perfectly, if it hasnt seen any evidence to prove humans cannot ingest gasoline than it cant replicate that behavior
What if they were both the thing? They showed earlier with the blood test that once separated the thing doesn't care about its other parts but its current self. So both men could have been the thing at the end and neither one knowing the other is also the thing.
Palmer-thing alerts the rest of the group of Norris-thing's head trying to scuttle away, while he's already been assimilated, so yeah separated masses of thing cells are individuals, not a hive mind. And that's why the blood test works, the infected blood isn't as intelligent as a larger organism, focusing more on survival at all costs even if doing so would give its parent's identity away.
Right. I don't understand how people take this theory seriously. The thing can copy a human so accurately that it keeps its heart disease, yet doesn't notice it is drinking gasoline instead of whiskey? Makes no sense.
Neither was the thing. Childs is wearing the same coat and has visible breath, they're just harder to visually identify because of the lighting and footage quality, and if he was, wouldn't be fooled by gasoline. Mac was just about to take a sip of it before Childs showed up, so it's not gas, and there's nothing left that could have assimilated him up to that point.
@donatodiniccolodibettobardi842 Some people say that you can't see his breath in the shot and that means he's the thing, except you can see it, and earlier when it was imitating Bennings, you could see breath then too so it wouldn't prove anything one way or the other.
Copper gives Norris a "Precordial Thump," it's an outdated procedure with a low success rate for when you don't have a defibrillator ready. It's no longer part of CPR or BLS guidelines.
20:50 except John Carpenter has stated conflicting things about this ending over the years, on the original director commentary he states that neither MacReady or Childs is a thing, and in an interview conducted years later he stated both of them were a thing, maybe he's never decided? maybe he likes creating confusion? whether he does this on purpose or not is irrelevant because it still makes whatever he says unreliable...
@poltgaa I think the truth is what he said in the director commentary, but then later regretted revealing his thoughts and has pulled a wild misinformation campaign ever since ... and I only say this because this is exactly what I would do if I accidentally revealed a secret
John Carpenter's The Thing John Carpenter IS The Thing It was in the title the WHOLE TIME! We thought it was possessive but it's actually a contraction!
@mattmarzulaknight to f7 made his 2nd queen commit sepuku. Hope this helps Nah bit for real the quewn moved to a apot it shouldnt have been able to move to. Which i think out him in check or checkmate. Valid crashout agter being in the artic for who knows how long
@TwinStargazer makes sense since the thing is cheating by sabotaging itself just so its left alone to build a spaceship/trying to freeze itself. Macready's solution to both was to burn everything down
Problem. When we see Childs in the room with the coats before Mac and the others go out to look for Blair the coats on the wall are arranged one way and the door to the supply room behind him is shut. When we get the shot showing him missing the coats have been rearranged and the door behind him is opened. Carpenter was very careful about maintaining object consistency throughout the movie. I obviously cannot confirm it but it seems certainly plausible that the Blair-Thing got to Childs while the others were out
@Draco-9158 I don't know if the coat is necessarily intentional, but I agree that the Blair Thing got to Childs. The Thing hunts isolated individuals, Blair wasn't in the hut, was likely already in the main building, & Childs was alone. It would be odd if Childs wasn't assimilated.
^ Also, it makes absolutely zero sense to conclude that MacReady is a Thing when he just had a standoff with the main host right before he walked back to the Research Station. We have full clarity as to where MacReady was when Thing attacked him; we do not have insight into where Childs went or what happened to him. Also, the excuse that he 'thought he saw Blair' seems extremely weak and almost effortless. That seems like Thing trying to come up with a quick excuse to dull Mac's initial suspicions, but it's not giving much effort because they're the only two left so why even play along? Clearly, the idea was that Childs was assimilated and Mac was supposed to be himself. People just like to contort the movie and create their own narratives. Carpenter should've given an actual answer. The movie is like 40 years old now. It's fine. It isn't going to be making anymore money now. Just give us an answer you old bastard.
The "Childs was a Thing" theory always bugged me because it makes a ton of dumb assumptions and makes up fake evidence as proof. Firstly, why wouldn't The Thing have visible breath in the cold, or not know the difference between whiskey and gasoline? It's seemingly able to perfectly imitate any living creature, and a big part of imitating humans is imitating the fact we're warm-blooded and don't drink gasoline. It would be insanely obvious to figure out who wasn't human because you'd just feel their forehead or take their temp and it would be cold. And this doesn’t even get to the fact that most of the "evidence" like the visible breath is just not true. Childs has visible breath, it's just harder to see, and besides, we see Thingified people blowing vapor clouds in the cold anyways. I think it's pretty clear how the movie ended, it's not ambiguous it's just bleak. Mac and Childs die of exposure, it's inevitable. The movie fades to black because there's nothing else to see, just two men who saved the Earth but couldn't save themselves sitting down for the end of their stories.
I like the idea that the thing knew it was gasoline,but drank from it anyways. Not to “fit in” or trick mac but because he WANTED him to know that it had won. Almost like a slap to the face. It makes sense since the thing is seemingly incredibly intelligent but also malicious, it knew Mac had no weapons left and by drinking the gasoline revealed itself knowing Mac would freeze. Also it could be that the bottle had whiskey, but the thing drank it because it wanted to trick him, instead it revealed itself because no real person would risk infection over a drink. This would be cool since the thing is smart enough to realise that sharing a drink is a way humans bond and possibly build trust BUT may misinterpret social norms around infection given the complexity of the situation and therefore accidentally expose itself.
@Icyman43-g1d a good counterpoint to one of them being the Thing is "Why not drink from the bottle?" If the Thing is Mac, then he's going to kill Childs and escape. If the Thing is Childs, then he's going to kill Mac and escape. These people have no supplies, and Mac just used up the last of their explosives trying to finish the fight. There's not only no way to definitively figure out if the other guy is the Thing, but there's no way to fight back either. So why not just drink from the bottle and wait? If Mac is the Thing, Childs is now also the Thing and would know the moment before he's fully assimilated. If Childs isn't the Thing, then now Mac knows because Childs hasn't killed him after taking a drink.
@ARokanten That's the genius of John Carpenter and this specific movie...it doesn't matter...the only thing that matters is that he did his job right, and here we are, pointing fingers at each other all these decades later, proclaiming that certainly not *I* am the thing, so you must be! The scary part? We already know who The Thing is...it was: John Carpenter's The Thing...it was him all along! So you can't trust anything this movie says...maybe he made the movie to assimilate YOU, and YOU are now The Thing too! Just don't tell John Carpenter...if he knows you found out...
@TheCaptainSlappy If we got any surprises for each other I don't see we're in much shape to do anything about it. Why don't we just wait here for a little while, see what happens
Not that thinks it's weird , either sign that Norwegians lost the plot or something else is off but then you forgetting Yanks are not known for their intelligence 😂
Idk that's what I thought at first too. I watched the movie with no prior knowledge of what it was about, and my thought at first was that the Norwegians had gone insane, which would seem to be a perfectly reasonable response to seeing people hunt a singular dog across miles of wasteland in a helicopter shooting at it with assault rifles & grenades & then shooting your friends for touching it. The only reason to see this as reasonable is to assume prior knowledge of shapeshifters.
@TheGreySage0You think people that don't instantly assume a dog is actually a shapeshifter monster from another planet based on a helicopter with Norwegian guys shooting at it in a location known for making people go stir-crazy through isolation are just stupid people that aren't very intelligent? Whatever European country you are part of that can't brush their teeth and only eat grey flavorless mush must be really proud of your vaunted intellect.
@TheGreySage0 setting aside your bias on americans all the people in both bases are high level scientists and on paper should all be smart and should recognize the people from the other bases are of similar capabilities
19:17 I don’t get this take. MacReady has just won the boss battle and saw his colleagues die in most obnoxiously disgusting ways possible prior to said battle. So… Him now just trying to somewhat relax is only natural, isn’t it?
The man's exhausted, sad, and probably terrified. He knows he's going to die, and there's no telling if any of what he's done will work. Childs showing up is an x-factor, but honestly, in his shoes, I'd probably do the same. I'd just want to die in peace, and try not to worry about it any more...
If you watched all your colleagues die and blew up your one chance of survival just to stop the alien from surviving would you then go "man im tired, guess we can give up on that" and throw it all away?
Yes that's what we are meant to assume and relate to, from the other perspective it's " the alien has finally won as long as they give up now" also a double win bc childs drinks from the same bottle possibly infecting him
@zatorith. On the physical side, yes I can see why he is tired. (Not to be rude idk where you live) but this guy did 100x more work than any firefighter in 2001. Not only is he running around with heavy equipment and with heavy clothes on, it is also like negative thirty and crunchy thicc snow, slippery ice, and cutting wind. I’m not saying I deal with that but in my experience yeah dude 5 minutes in that environment even trained you will feel tired. Mental side I can’t talk on because every one is different but judging on how there is nothing left and just burning rubble, what are you gonna do ride an iceberg back to South America? I think it’s more he did all he could and as far as he knows he just killed the one in control (seeing the space ship, only him, and how that was the biggest he seen) Tl;dr: nah bro it’s valid trust, let him rest
@mynamedontmatter4796nobody would drink gasoline to off themselves -.- freezing would be less painful than the pain drinking gasoline would bring… most people end up feeling warm and taking off clothes when freezing because of that one effect.
I mean, people would still talk about it, it would still be a great movie, but I know what you mean.. It definitely wouldn’t be being discussed anywhere near as much or just like it is, now. The end is what turned it from an amazing movie into a literal masterpiece.
@ldawg7117 True. Saw it the first time with my old man when I was 5 and it terrified me. Didn't see it again until Sci-Fi channel ran it commercial free, paid for by the XBOX game that was coming out (maybe by Activision??). It blew my freakin' mind in my early 20's when I knew what was really going on. Not just the story and acting, but I was amazed at how well the special effects held up too. I've probably seen it a dozen times since then and I love that I've never really figured it out beyond a shadow of a doubt, and love it even more that nobody else has and, frankly I don't think anybody ever will. That's why it's a Masterpiece. Many of the theories could be correct and are very convincing, but nobody has ever put one forward that makes an unbreakable case. What an awesome thing Carpenter made. THIS is how you remake a movie. I hope they stop remaking good movies and start remaking bad ones like Carpenter did here.
@stevandjuric1479it kills the mystery and leaves no room for speculation. Its a pretty basic narrative method to have a story linger with a viewer/reader. It's like you tell a story and shut the book on the last 3 pages. Its like narrative edging 😂 the movie is perfectly fun without having it explained. Having it explained would satisfy the itch yes, but it would also just be less intriguing for your brain to remember or rewatch or talk about
@the_Googie Room for speculations is only good if there is a sequel, story will linger in my mind way longer if it has satisfying ending where we whole story concludes. "It's like you tell a story and shut the book on the last 3 pages." do you see how moronic that sounds, eh it's about journey not about the destination type bullshit. It's not just the itch it's way more, itch would be how we even got to the chase at the beginning of the movie which luckily got answered in the prequel, this is more of a listening to the 3min song but instead of releasing full 3min they cut last 10s in the middle of guy singing last verse that would never make me rewatch it ever and only thing i would talk about is how shitty and unsatisfying ending was. I do understand that some things are better left unanswered but this is just too big of a thing to be left hanging especially when director said that one of them is the thing, you can't just go and say hey there is like 50% chance that your interpretation of the ending is right, ending was bad enough even without him saying there are 2 options instead of 4 now it's just straight up shit. I am kinda making a few stories so i know that mystery can be very interesting thing but not when it's this important to the plot, we literally did not get conclusion it's like a some TV series adapting book but they just never finished it, no final season no anything, you got your first 90% of the story now f*ck off no more fun for you.
The gasoline theory falls apart the millisecond you realize the thing also absorbs your memories. That’s why it can imitate you so perfectly. Every human knows what gasoline smells like and reflexively knows not to drink it. If Child’s was the thing, he would spit it to keep his cover.
@B@BulbearGamingve always assumed it’s implied because of how it avoids deception. Of the assimilated characters they all behave like their former selves before being found out.
I'm not so sure, looking at all the confirmed instances of infected crew members none of them say or do anything that couldn't be inferred from context clues or eavesdropping. I only looked at the original movie so it could be confirmed elsewhere but within the movie there isn't really a moment where some advanced knowledge is demonstrated from an infected crew member.@andrew1498
When I first watched the movie I only learned about the gasoline theory later. My instinct reaction was that both of them are still human. Sure when Childs enters the shot he is to be mistrusted, at that point we don't know whether or not he is the thing. But from a narrative standpoint MacReady does something he's been known to do throughout the movie which is testing if the crew is human or not. Alcohol after all is poison and the thing has been shown to negatively react to damage to it's cells. It's drive to survive is it's strongest motivation. Also very well edited video, really enjoyed you talking about this movie. I think the unsettling feeling and paranoia this movie produces is good in contrast with your calm narration.
As far as continuity errors goes this was 1981 (released in 82 but made in 81), movies back then were rife with continuity errors because it was long before home media was what it is and film makers had no way of forseeing people being able to sit down and pick apart little details like that, they simply didn't worry about things like that to the point where they had production and set people keep track of how many and what kind of boots and jackets are in a shot like that, for example if you watch the Kevin Costner movie The Untouchables you'll notice a scene where Charles Martin Smith has a Model 97 Winchester pump shotgun and Sean Connery has a Model 12 Winchester shotgun while they're in an office, when it cuts to where the camera is in the hallway and they come walking out of the office and down the hallway to an elevator they've switched shotguns, because of the magic of Hollywood people don't get that even though it appears on screen to be one continuous flowing moment the hallway scene could have been filmed after a break for lunch, the next day or even next the next month because of a reshoot and the actors or the on set armorer just couldn't remember which one had which shotgun, and nobody back then would have cared. But because things are so different nowadays is why when they made the prequel The Thing and they shot the scenes where the Norwegian facility is burned down, which is what Mac and the Doc wind up finding in the 1982 The Thing the director had a laptop on set with him so they could look at shots from the 82 movie because he knew if he got one little detail wrong people would be all over him for it. Carpenter himself said some years back not to make too much about continuity errors in the 82 movie because they just didn't go to the lengths back then to make sure they didn't happen like they do today, and I don't believe him when he claims that either Mac or Childs is supposed to be a Thing, years ago he said it didn't matter and that he never considered that one, both or neither should be, he purposely left it up to each person to draw their own conclusions, but nowadays he's claiming that one was a Thing simply to keep the public interested in the movie.
Gasoline has a strong scent, and the Things are proven to have some or all the memories of their hosts. Childs would know what gasoline smells like, would know it's toxic and that a human wouldn't drink it, and would have rejected the drink. whether human or Thing.
The computer cheated in the beginning After the test they all should’ve just stuck together when they knew they were all human But yeah I get it’s a movie
Want to survive a horror movie? Never have groups of less than three. If you have groups of two and one of them has been replaced by the monster, you can't tell which one. Sure, they would incriminate each other, but that is just word against word. But with groups of three, if one has been replaced, there will be two who can confirm each other's identity and a third without an alibi. Could two been replaced? Absolutely. But if that happens, you have bigger problems.
I think the only wrench in the bottle with gasoline theory is that the thing assimilates memory too, so why would it not know that it’s not alcohol? On the other hand the idea of McCreedy never having access to to alcohol in the first place is pretty good too.
I forgot which is “canon”… but I think I can recall a comic book out of 3, that retcons the thing & states that it does take the thoughts & memories… before then, I don’t think it did. Yet again, that short comic series also 100% shows you that child’s was infected. Idk if John carpenter considers it canon or not. That’s all I care about when it comes to IPs & such; as long as the creator states it, then it is valid to me & concrete. Everything else by random people comes off as valid as cringe fan fiction to me… like wtf, no need to look into rationality or logic or whatever in ā MADE UP UNIVERSE. Haha. Only thē creator decides.
The way I took it, he laughed knowing that they were whittled down to just the two of them, meaning that regardless of who is the thing, they would both die.
Wait, hold up: How would Childs know that Blaire wasn't still locked away, when he wasn't with the group that went to go check on him? This gives credence to the statement "I thought I saw Blaire", because he wouldn't know to lie about that. He'd just assume Blaire was still locked away. Also, if Childs was The Thing, why would he walk up to Macready? He would either hide to freeze, or ambush Macready after he passed out. I think we can definitively say that neither Macready nor Childs were assimilated.
If Childs was the thing, Macready would have a hard time doing anything against him. He has no flamethrower and no molotov cocktails left. (Even if the bottle was full of gasoline, it didn't have a tarp in it so he couldn't use it) Childs has a flamethrower and doesn't seem as exhausted as Macready. So why would he need to hide?
@jojomania1105exactly. every time the alien killed someone it did it silently like a predator if it was child’s he is the dumbest alien ever. Unless he likes to play with his food which he never showed signs off. In the prequel they also showed that the alien can’t mimicking inorganic materials likes metals and child’s had an earring so it’s not him.
19:32 I always saw this scene as MacReedy telling Child's that the both of them should burn to death with the station, to ensure the Thing won't be able to escape. Both of the two still have an underlying distrust that the other could be the thing, so for both of them to accept burning to death was not only a strange irony (I think it'd be an irony the way I'm using it) that both of them aren't the thing (MacReedy laughing because he realized Child's was human & Child's accepting the drink as a way to say he accepts his fate), reestablishing that trust in a bittersweet ending, but also showing that they don't know what else the thing's capable of and would rather kill themselves then leave alive on the off chance the thing is capable of lying dormant in a host or could possibly hide somewhere in their clothing. But ig I gotta throw away that interpretation lol
Mebbe they have both resigned to their fates for fear of being infected without realizing they are. Like instead of the creatyre taking control mebbe it hides in the host dormant unless it hss to take control to save itself so they are both willingly dieing just to make sure neither one accidentally carries it back to civilization. 🤷♂️
They wouldn't be burning to death though, what was shown was probably the peak of the fire and it would die out soon after, not flare up more. So in that way it could be Macready as the thing willingly freezing himself and Childs.
We make assumptions the alien wouldn’t know we don’t drink gasoline, yet, how does it know anything at all? It obviously is able to understand language and communicate to humans enough to blend in.
@bil1876-1it's not that it's not deep, it's that people are reaching for a less bleak ending. The two remaining characters surrendering to their inevitable deaths by hypothermia makes some people feel uneasy or unsatisfied, so they make up theories in their heads about how it goes down differently off-screen.
@riffler24im inclined to agree. As interesting as the theory is it seems more likely that they burnt the thing but are unlikely to survive the cold that follows their decision...and their last moments torn between hoping to survive the cold and holing they DON'T juuuust in case they bring a piece of the thing back with them.
The fact that getting into a shootout with the Norwegians "didn't cause any immediate concern" is something I never noticed as being funny until you focused in on it a little. "Are we at war with Norway? Eh...Who's up for a little Texas Hold Em'?" 🤣
Thing Assimilation seems to be more intense than just giving a small particle. Maybe the human body can fight it off, maybe the thing needs to transfer its memories and needs to donate a larger amount of itself to the assimilation process. Otherwise why have would there be damaged clothing?
The thing didn't infect Clark despite spending a considerable amount of time around him, if only a little bit of saliva was necessary to infect someone, then it could've gotten everyone while it was roaming around as a dog, instead of just Palmer and/or Norris. So that implies it needs to actively attack, perhaps small quantities of its cells are unable to overcome the body's immune system, or lose their individuality as things so once they do assimilate, just act like normal cells, but by attacking, the thing injects large quantities of cells that subvert the host to assimilate into the alien's goals.
@tau-5-smsra I assume a droplet of xenocell would take more time, than half a liter of biomass, but according to biochemist and his assistent, the single cell is more than enough to infect and the things keeps taking over the tissue. They looked at it in a microscope and made projections. But more dramatic, horrific and faster assimilations serve the plot, the atmosphere and the "readability" of the movie better than quiet infections in the background. I think Clark is an oversight or his assimilation didn't progress enough to infect his blood yet. Or the scene of the biochemist looking at the thing cells was an oversight, that should've been cut 🤔🤷♀️
Honestly, if Childs was the thing... I think they would both be beyond caring at that point. The fight was over, and it's been clear since near the beginning of the film that the alien sees MacReedy as a worthy opponent. At that point it doesn't really matter, neither of them have the fight in them anymore. If Childs was the Thing... it was probably more human than ever in that moment. There was zero chance of escape anymore, the battle is lost. Might as well share a drink with the only human worth its respect in their final moments.
Actually hitting the chest is a medican thing, its a way to shoch the heart into beating again i believe but its very risky and only used when theres no other options
I don't know I'd call it risky, the person is clinically dead anyway and at that point you're just sending one last ditch effort to save them. Doing nothing could be considered "riskier" since that would have an even lower probability of success than the already incredibly low probability of success from a percordial thump.
According to Wikipedia he only has one child, but if he had more than one and had each of them receive a different letter from his will with a different ending, _that_ would be hilarious.
20:30 What if it’s not a normal bottle of alcohol, but one with a drop of MacReady’s blood in it? What if he was assimilated, and the chuckle was The Thing showing relief after realizing it won? The Thing showing unnecessary emotion when it’s out of options isn’t unheard of due to the scene where “Bennings” screams his head off, and Mac being assimilated could also explain why his breath is cloudy while Child’s isn’t.
People who say the thing would know what gas taste so child’s wasn’t the thing are forgetting that he was a mechanic so he would know what gas smells and tastes like so if he was human there he would smell or taste the gas
@09:50 It's called a precordial thump. It is used for V-fib and pulseless V-tach. Given the time of the film, it was a known and well used technique, cutting edge actually. It's not as good as defibrillation, but it can work. The more you know.
This is just a shot in the dark proposal but since John Carpenter talked about the idea of not knowing if you’ve been assimilated Then what if both Childs and McCready were assimilated and neither of them knew if each other were the parasite since it doesn’t run on a hive mind
Leaving Childs alone was the most ridiculously stupid thing they could have possibly done! THERE WAS 4 OF THEM! 2 stay, and two go! Or you all go together to check on Blair!!! WTF!? 😡
it's chiles, the thing at the end is definitely gasoline so him not reacting would prove it and make macready laugh in knowing he is 'sharing a drink' with the thing
Btw, MacReady was assimilated from the J&B that he got back from Bennings after he whipped dog saliva over the bottle. The "Chuckle" WAS a victory laugh. He infected Childs the same way he infected Blair, saliva transferred from bottle tops
my theory is that they're both the thing. Because it wouldn't need to hide if there was only one person to kill. The reason it isn't immediately aggressive is because it can't, and hasn't been able to win against multiple people, so that deception and disguise is born simply out of necessity and vulnerability. One on one, it has proven to be able to easily take down another person, especially with flamethrowers around. But neither child nor mcready attacked each other. Since the thing perfectly imitates people and their behaviour, it can imitate mcready deciding to give child gasoline, then he laughs because he knows they both won.
Mac is suffering from ptsd from nam, a man with his skills could be a private contractor and fly wallstreet guys around, he chose the most secluded dangerous place on earth to get away from people, the way he plays chess gives clues to his command and strategic thinking, though he was a pilot he likely was a medichopper and saw tons of men bleed to death on his watch, his hat has a cavalry rope on it so he was bringing guys to the front lines and taking fire,
I don’t think it’s gasoline/ petrol why was Mac about to take a drink before Childs shows up, also the thing is an identical imitation so it would now what gasoline/ petrol smells like and what whisky tastes like. Like if it doesn’t get the person’s memory then how could it speak English. after Mac destroys the thing there’s a cut to the out side and you can see his shack but in the final shot it’s on fire so he could have gotten the bottle from the shack before touching it
@JoshuaKelly-i8x na, Mac a heavy drinker but I wouldn’t say alcoholic.like from when they first became aware of the thing till the end he doesn’t really drink like he has a scotch when he’s recording the voice message for the rescue team and when they lock up Blair he take a sip of vodka. But even if he is did say theirs a different between alcoholic and people that would drink petrol.
@donatodiniccolodibettobardi842an alcoholic is someone that constantly drinks day in and day out a heavy drinker is someone that when they drink, drinks a lot in a time frame.same way a lightweight is someone that has a lower tolerance. Basically the difference is an alcoholic with suffer withdrawal symptoms if they don’t drink where a heavy drinker won’t.
@rfcfanj7911 "Alcoholism is the continued drinking of alcohol despite it causing problems. Some definitions require evidence of dependence and withdrawal." I guess, we use different definitions. The way you describe it and the way I see it "heavy drinker" is a subtype of "alcoholic". Simple as. But I see now, that heavy drinker still is a useful distinction, I just don't think it matters in a context of whether the person has a drinking problem and in need of some kind of (non-judgemental) help.
I like to think that MacReady was still human and knowing that they were going die/The Thing would hibernate, MacReady wanted to make sure there was no opportunity for The Thing to survive. So by poisoning himself and Childs and suggesting that they stay by the fire, it gives time for the poison to go into effect before The Thing has the chance to hibernate. The chuckle was for defeating the thing, even knowing he was going to die to do so.
not necessarily. The language centers of the brain and memory centers would be co-opted by the thing, but it may not see use in taking over the olfactory centers, as it doesn't see smell and taste as a way to infiltrate and predate. If it survives this encounter, it may decide to do so in the future, but that's more data it would need to store and reserve.
@kirknayThat just makes no sense. It perfectly replicates the entire host. Every cell. Why would it even decide that olfactory senses are so unnecessary that they can be entirely ignored? Especially if such a flaw could expose it
@fasthink864 being able to smell is easy. Having to transcribe to your own memory not only what you think is important info, but also what you might think is useless such as the association of smells to weird fermented foods is difficult. In a process taking maybe minutes, it would cut costs somewhere.
Mcready goes to drink the bottle just before child's comes, about to just quietly end it causes its over. But then child's comes and instead he hands it to him to see if child's drinks it, as a test.
Could also conjecture that closing scene quietly reveals that both mcready and childs were "turned" and were unaware of the other. And that thing mcready was trying to see if childs was human by testing him with a bottle of gas. And that awkward moment afterwards in which mcready chuckles is their shared realization that they succeeded and there are no survivors.
I have always had the theory that both of them at the end of the movie were the Thing. The gasoline test was to see if he was still human, he laughed because he knew he was safe.
The only issue with the gasoline theory is that the Thing would surely know what it is drinking. It's stated by Carpenter/Kurt that it replicates you so well that you might not even know your the Thing. It must then have access to the logic/memories of the person to some extent, so, it would also know the difference between gas and liquor
My interpretention is that they have both been assimilated, and by this conversation they confirmed to each other they are not a threat cuz they are the same species
I respect the fact John Carpenter may pass away without revealing who The Thing was, that shows dedication and care to his craft. I also appreciate that everyone on this film is actually smart and has common sense...
Something that’s always bothered me is that the Norwegian can’t speak English. Most Norwegians can speak a little English and a lot are completely fluent. In that era, a Norwegian research scientist in Antarctica would absolutely be able to speak enough English to be able to say “No. Stop. Dog bad. Dog very bad.”
even if the prequel didn't exist i think it's a reasonable suspension of disbelief to say that there might have been english speakers at the norweigan camp previously but the 2 survivors just happened to not be among them
Of course the film showed us that he had access to whisky (in a green bottle). You showed us yourself at 1:38. He even poured one for the computer, that beat him. Just as he gives whisky to the thing at the end. The thing that escaped his burning down of the research station. So the movie closes the circle at that point. The last chucke of him was accepting defeat and seeing the irony.
Counterpoint: i have alcoholic tendencies and if someone gave me a bottle while we were likely to freeze to death in ANTARCTICA overnight i wouldnt give af anymore if hes the thing bc both of us would die anyway
9:56 The "cardiac thump" is old school. It was this idea that a sharp strike to the heart could kick arrhythmia back into a normal heart rate . I remember learning it as a sort of 'this is old timer but it might work as a last ditch' when I went through medical training. We never used it in practice but we discussed it in training.
i like how this alien landed on the best planet for assimilation style takeover. and still ended up in the middle of nowhere. a place with like 12 dudes total
Number one detail about the characters is that McReedy is a chess player (albeit not the best) I would probably assume that he is trying SOME sort of tactic even in the last moment of the film.
yeah bro skipped over the opening scene saying mcreedy is just a sore loser completely skipping the fact the pc cheated and mcreedy didnt lose yet he has no chess ball knowledge
So ... At the beginning: 1. Mac is a strategic thinker. 2. He doesn't like to lose. 3. He uses whiskey to destroy his opponent. At the end: 1. Mac is a strategic thinker. 2. He doesn't like to lose. 3. He uses "whiskey" to destroy his opponent! I can see why Carpenter would "go full circle".
To solve this you have to think to how people thought when movie came out. The beginning scene is your answer, he fails at a game against something unnatural and spills spirits at it= at the end he beats the unnatural by being cunning and laughts about winning this game, he won. Plus back in the day protagonists lived as a happy ending type of thing
This is definitely not always true, especially of horror movies. Ripley ended Alien drifting through space cryofrozen with a relatively slim hope of being found and resuscitated, Dutch is a broken man by the end of Predator. And The Fly? Even if you just look at Carpenter's movies, a happily ever after is fairly uncommon. The answer is that both men (who were both men) died, they froze where they sat or they self-immolated for the safety of whoever found the remains of the camp.
The beginning scene is your answer, he fails at a game against something unnatural and spills spirits at it= at the end he fails at a game against something unnatural and spills spirits at it Plus, imblying that every single movie ending featured the same outcome in the past is... silly--still, to this day
good video but this theory is pretty much disproven by the fact that mac was about to take a big ol sip out of the bottle he hands to childs before he revealed himself. plus, its stated multiple times that the thing can perfectly imitate someone, it retains their memories, speech patterns, and would infact retain their taste buds. it would in fact recoil by the taste of gas.
This is likely why the thing avoided spreading through contamination. Sure it is a VERY viable strategy, but you'd end up with other Things who entirely lack information about both themselves and their allies causing far too much chaos and potentially infighting. Not to mention another THING is actually more dangerous than a person to a things existence.
One thing that I can't recall anyone bringing up is how MacReady takes charge of the situation, comes up with theories incredibly quickly and is basically right about all of them. I've played a decent amount of Mafia, One Night and Town of Salem, and one of the common tactics employed by newer players is trying to lead the discussion and getting overly involved when anyone else is suspected. What better way to get everyone else to trust you than to (correctly) guess how to detect who's been infected and then immediately kill them? As far as we know, it doesn't care about any "offspring" from assimilating other beings, so why wouldn't it kill others to "prove" that he's still himself? It also works perfectly to get the viewer on his side, because again, who would ever think that a Thing would be the one working the hardest to find and kill everyone and everything that's already been assimilated?
Only partially related but... In these deduction/deception based games, being "a genuinely helpful villager" who actively participates in trying to figure things out, defending innocents, etc... Is actually a great way to get people to trust you. In among us for an example while being the Impostor, I used to actively help keep track of where people went, give alibis and look at behaviour patterns to inform crew about. Sure I am effectively doing detective work for them, but usually it's so much information at once that they can't make use of it. Too bad that the average kid nowadays just screams "[person] is sus" and suddenly the entire server votes them off without any evidence :/
@shorewallI watched a different video this morning about the cinematography etc and that scene is shot in a manner that suggests someone is watching. It could have been a ploy because it assumed someone was listening or it could have been playing the long game and used that as planted evidence to get its frozen body transported back to the US by whatever crew likely would have shown up in the future.
Still to this day, The Thing is by farr the most terrifying Alien monster I've ever seen in a movie, and it's not because it has acidic blood or tentacles or hunts using technology far beyond what we have - rather it's for 2 very simple reasons : it has the same survival instincts and intelligence as us
"We should keep the thing alive..." Exactly what the thing would say. You are the thing
Right?!?
They blow it all up, but all the fires will go out eventually and now you blasted pieces of it everywhere, increasing the chances of some part of it being frozen and survived
@TreborPaulson clank!
Yes but the thing would also accuse someone else of being the thing.
You are the thing.
@TreborPaulson the way it works in that smaller bits have too low of an intelligence
While we’re here take a sip of this whiskey for me
"It was me MacReady! I was John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) the whole time!"
He never said that
@MNOrthodox John "The Thing" The Thing absolutely said that, it was his whole deal
The thing video game has the pilot mcgreedy survive and the games cannon.
He says "Thing ring! Do your thing!" Then he turns into The Thing and eats MacReady...it was a deleted scene.
@j.halleytang8871 my favorite part was when he said "it's Thingin' time" and Thinged all over those guys
Maybe the real Thing was the friends we made along the way.
No, they said that there would be Paranoia. (But we have Paranoia at home.)
the friends we assimilate along the way
The real The Thing
✋ Absolute Cinema 🤚
Yes 😌
My thoughts on Mac being strangely calm at the end of the film makes sense if you try to imagine yourself in that scenario as a non-infected human; he just went through all that crap, and is probably thinking he is as good as dead. Most people would either panic, or shut down emotionally. To me, that feels like Mac accepting his fate.
That's always been the reason why i think it's Childs, Mac just did quite literally everything he could, he knows he'll be dead either mauled or frozen in less than 24h , he has no more reasons to be afraid or panicking
Or he is simply exhausted, sleep-deprived and slowly freezing.
@flow185 | Yup. Childs meanwhile SHOULD be panicking, since he's been out of the loop for a while. You'd think he'd ask what happened to everyone else, be suspicious of Mac, etc.
He's either going to freeze to death. Or be assimilated by the thing. At that point he was probably exhausted and like you said just accepting his fate
Also by now he's had enough contact with the pre-exposing contact with The Thing that he might be wondering what the cast was, is he even sure he isn't the thing suppressing all but the Macready personality to better impersonate...
The Thing is one of a few times where I’m supportive of never knowing the truth.
Yeah. I kinda hate hearing theories unless it’s based 100% on the creator or the creator itself. If not, u get a bunch of nerds bringing in lore & canon crap they made up and it comes off as cringe fan fiction
@Puppy_Puppington The entire film is based on paranoia and trying to figure out who is infected, so can you really blame people for wanting to share personal theories?
@Puppy_PuppingtonWow, you mean people are investigating a mystery? Damn, who knew!
@Pugkin5405 yes but often to the detriment of the mystery/work in its entirety. its hard to encapsulate all things when you're literally anyone but the author himself/herself. there's a factor/angle that you just can't account for and its why we have stories in the first place. when the author PURPOSEFULLY leaves breadcrumbs and gives it for yourself to figure it out, then it feels earned. crackpot theories are fun but sort of feel like flipping over the chessboard and deciding to play checkers. to be clear, The Thing is an example of a deliberately ambiguous ending
@zzthedon4kHey, so theories people make are literally based off of things from the story. That's what theories are
The computer at the beginning was in fact cheating, though. It called out an illegal move. Recontextualizes Mac in an interesting way.
Maybe the clanker is The Thing, trying to drive him mad so it can make him reckless and take him over
so he burnt his finger, wasted whiskey, and broke a computer because he was being petty instead of a sore loser
@idrk3707no point in playing with a computer that objectively cheats but can't be argued with. Same reason I stopped playing Mario Kart 64 after losing the 150cc Star Cup by having the lead on Rainbow Road, getting rubber band AI'd, getting the exact same time as the computer in second place down to the millisecond but getting second place for some reason.
I had to rewatch it a few times when I first heard him accuse the computer of cheating… I was like.. oh snap it robbed him.
@wyssmaster it's a skill issue. Git gud wahooooo
I heard a different theory about that bottle which makes more sense to me. It is thought that the actual human would be too vigilant and worried to be infected by a transmission, so if childs was in fact a human, he wouldn't have sipped from that bottle. The only one who wouldn't be worried about being infected is the thing, so MacReedy checked him this way. That's why he made that laugh.
truth, with me watching this movie no less than triple digits this way my theory.
i think they're both just resigned to death at that point. they only have minutes, might as well die with a buzz.
I also think The Thing would be too smart to drink gas, like it already took over the Norwegian base and the dogs and it acted like a dog so it's possible it's got some alien 'power' of being able to have some kind of understanding of how the things it takes over behave and not to mention the fact that the blair thing was already able to start building a fucking flying saucer with just human tools. But you're gonna try to tell me it doesn't know humans don't drink gasoline? There's no way. It also destroyed the blood samples and I don't think something that can understand the complexity of what blood samples could do, wouldn't be able to understand people don't drink gas. HOWEVER do I think that it could slip up in a socially complex situation like not sharing a drink with someone who could possibly be infected? Absolutely. That's why it's a "I got you" laugh. The childs thing thinks sharing the drink is the "right" thing to do to blend in but McCready knows none of them, ESPECIALLY childs at that point in the film, would share a drink with anyone else. Also McCready "winning" the game by finding out childs is the thing with the whiskey mirrors the beginning of the film where he loses at chess and dumps the whiskey into the machine. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
Nah, that's a weak theory. At this point, with the station burning to the ground and the prospect of them both freezing solid - it would be too late to be thinking about infections when offered a beer bottle.
That's the worst theory I have ever heard.
what if mr carpenter forgot who's who and is trying to cover his ass
Haha awesome comment!
@GiraffeCrab thank you kindly
what if the thing infected him and made the movie or shieeet
He didn't forget because he never knew in the first place. He never had to decide which one of them it was because the ending was so ambiguous anyway.
mr carpenter never intended any of the 2 to be the thing. and only after the fans came up with the theory he went "huh. yeah that WOULD be more interesting"
There was still a scalpel in Clarks hand. He wasn't trying to punch MacReady, he was trying to stab him
1:50, the computer played an illegal move that's why he poured the drink in it.
Just a character moment that shows the type of person he is… when something plays unfairly, he’ll do what it takes to beat it.
@Puppy_Puppington or foreshadowing. He used whiskey to destroy something attempting a poor imitation of human behavior
Like (potentially) using the whisky bottle full of gasoline to expose an alien imitating a human
@bafelix89wait that’s absolutely genius I didn’t think of that at all
@Puppy_Puppington like shooting the guy who tried to sucker punch him.
@bafelix89 I don't know if that's intended in the movie, but welcome to my headcannon, if nothing else.
Cant wait for disney to buy the rights and explicitly explain who the tbing was
"Somehow The Thing returned"
"They fly now? They fly now"
@ChucksSEADnDEAD and they/them were just misunderstood
Then might get to finally see that Will Ferrell casting for MacReady
We'll get to see the Thing planet with many happy, loving, inter-species Thing families, that some evil white male wants to eradicate.
Theyre gna make the thing a gay rights activist
One of the most unrealistic things is that a Norwegian scientist in the 1980s wouldn't be fluent in English or at least know enough to warn the Americans.
if the prequel is to be believed, that's Matias, who is a pilot, not a scientist, and who doesn't speak as much english.
He was completely stressed out and in panic mode. Critical, life-ending mistakes happen in crisis like that.
The prequel specifically states he cannot speak English
@brandoncoleman673the prequel was a steaming pile of💩
@Sir_Modus I disagree, I admit the cgi was awful and definitely takes away from the film as a whole. But it has good bones and explains a lot of the questions from the original film quite well. Whenever my boyfriend and I watch the thing, we always watch the prequel first because we enjoy it. There's no need to be rude about that
Ever notice there's both a Windows and a Mac in this movie?
Maybe Linus was on the norwegian base?
What the fuck. what the fuck. What the Fuck. What the fuck
@donatodiniccolodibettobardi842there are definitely penguins about
Borth have similiar looking cuts too 😂
@ratking7383 borth
I once heard a theory that both MacReady and Childs are assimilated but neither are aware of that fact so now there are two aliens paranoid that the other might be a human wanting to kill them. To me that’s some poetic irony that the Thing thrived on fear and paranoia to survive and now is paranoid that the only other living being in that frozen wasteland is not one of its own.
I originally thought this too, but thought it was way too beautiful for John to think of. But this is my favorite one
There's no way the thing would be afraid of a human once there's only two of them.
@Ojja78well one of those humans just blew the entire base up and took out its main body thing so if it’s smart it would be wary.
@Ojja78
I think there is a theory where you could be infected and not know through saliva. Like passive. Slowly taking you over (which some think it wasn’t a heart attack it was full assimilation)
So if there was one person infected and hid, then came across someone else who was infected. It would be like a battle of infection so if macready in that one back shot (giggity) scene got infected like Kurt and John wanted. That would mean the thing was taking out a bigger badder thing in the caves, and he did that in order for him to survive and infect others (it’s lowkey what made me think of a pretty solid sequel idea for this universe, like imagine a thing that was really really intelligent using everything it learned from this and the prequel movie).
Tl;dr:
I personally don’t go with that theory, I like the idea Childs is a thing, and macready isn’t (typical movie trope) and the thing knew macready couldn’t run or escape so he played along. Helps with the chess game at the beginning of the film makes it be foreshadowing for the ending.
Macready fights a computer that’s cheating, so he blows it up and goes into the cold to his friends/crew
Great, beautiful idea! Though we heard at Carpenters interview that only one of them is the thing
People always forget the 'perfect' imitation aspect of the Thing, including all memories and knowledge. So both Childs and Mac would know the difference between liquor and gasoline even if one/both were a Thing.
Personally, I think the funnest ending is both Mac & Childs are Things and are discussing the best way to escape Antarctica.
I could even see both being things, unaware that the other is also one. Keeping eyes on each other as part of replicating human behaviour.
That is the funniest way ive heard of the ending. Would make wait it out seem more literal
Where is it said that its a perfect imitation including memory?
@Kubistonek if the thing doesn't recall memories then it wouldn't be able to assimilate certain speech patterns. As far as we know, the characters hardly act different than how they were pre-assimilation (aside from obviously wanting to survive).
The Thing wouldn't know English and would actually strangely if they didn't gain at least some semblance of the host's memories
@zombiezes I haven't watched the 2011 movie, but he could have learned speech and maybe even the language from norvegian camp. Language seems to be a pretty common concept and even ancient languages can be decyphered with some knowledge about languages itself. Im kinda stretching here but i think the writers did not intend for the thing to gain memories, there is even this one scene where they are arguing about who had the keys and the thing doesn't seem to know the person its imitating gave the keys away
I love the “ giving the dog food “ and “ giving them a million dollars “ bit
this bit alone earned a sub from me.
I'm excited to get to the bit. 8 just started the video 😅
Creative way of evading demonitization
I like the idea that this final scene is a gesture of respect between two species, effectively saluting each other - we both lost.
But didn't the thing WANT to be frozen? - Humanity lost if either of them are the Thing
@Galaxy613 Being fair, even if one (or both) of them are a Thing, it doesn't actually mean humanity is doomed; the fact that at least one Thing was building a ship to get off planet indicates the Thing probably doesn't have much interest in being on Earth.
It might have been a ship just to launch it far enough south that it lands in water or on some northern land.
@iancasleton6356yeah but in the end it's just about chossing whatever theory you wanna believe
@papapalps2415Not by itself alone at least
Mad respect to Carpenter for keeping his lips sealed on the ending even all these years later
Gotta be something he keeps a smile on his face about when he sleeps 😅
@Dackjaniels51126Absolutely lmao
There is no ‘ending’. He constructed the story so that multiple valid conclusions can be made by the audience.
People keep assuming there is one correct interpretation, as if the movie was a documentary of real events.
It’s disturbing so many viewers can’t understand the difference between real-life and fiction.
that's because it was a fan theory all along
@s4098429 you are giving the wrong reasoning. A lot of people want there to be a single correct ending because they are invested in the story and want closure. They want to understand, especially if it is something they have invested energy into. It is not disturbing that people want to understand the directors intent. It is disturbing that you aren't able to realise that.
I think the "The thing wouldn't know that we don't drink gasoline" thing falls flat once you consider that they seem to perfectly copy memories and behaviour.
Including smell and taste?
@soxpeeweeI don't know why that would be randomly excluded
Yeah it is specifically stated to be a PERFECT COPY, PERFECT. Meaning there is no difference between it and a human being(other than it being an alien but its so 1-1 that it doesn't matter)
@karmagrey69420that’s what the thing said about itself. Can’t be trusted.
I think Childs would've needed to know what gasoline tastes like for the Thing to have recognized “this is gasoline and humans don't drink gasoline therefore I should spit this out if I want to convincingly pretend to be human”.
"The Thing replicates perfectly"
"The Thing would never ever know that humans don't drink gasoline"
Replication and actually having sentience are 2 entirely different things goober. What the FK rock have you been living under? It's exactly the same as when a primate copies an activity that we do (thus "replicating") without knowing or even understanding what it's doing
@your_god_lucifer2386 Go watch the movie
Well. It knows humans drink alcohol, but it might not know that humans drink specific types of alcohol.
well it replicates their bodies and everything nigh perfectly, but it wouldnt be accustomed to the norms of humanity besides what it has seen so that it could perfectly immitate, it replicates perfectly, if it hasnt seen any evidence to prove humans cannot ingest gasoline than it cant replicate that behavior
@your_god_lucifer2386 this is a bit harsh
What if they were both the thing? They showed earlier with the blood test that once separated the thing doesn't care about its other parts but its current self. So both men could have been the thing at the end and neither one knowing the other is also the thing.
What if separate things are also antagonistic to each other.
Palmer-thing alerts the rest of the group of Norris-thing's head trying to scuttle away, while he's already been assimilated, so yeah separated masses of thing cells are individuals, not a hive mind. And that's why the blood test works, the infected blood isn't as intelligent as a larger organism, focusing more on survival at all costs even if doing so would give its parent's identity away.
I’m not sure that if you are infected by a particle of the thing, how long it takes before your human consciousness is replaced by the things.
@commo@commonman4413without a doubt are. Palmer didn’t have to point out the Norris head at all.
@s4098429Isn't the whole thing that the thing replicates your consciousness? You probably wouldn't even know if you're a thing
Childs was a mechanic. He was well aware of what gasoline smells like. Probably knew what it tastes like too.
Do with this information as you will.
Right. I don't understand how people take this theory seriously. The thing can copy a human so accurately that it keeps its heart disease, yet doesn't notice it is drinking gasoline instead of whiskey? Makes no sense.
Neither was the thing. Childs is wearing the same coat and has visible breath, they're just harder to visually identify because of the lighting and footage quality, and if he was, wouldn't be fooled by gasoline. Mac was just about to take a sip of it before Childs showed up, so it's not gas, and there's nothing left that could have assimilated him up to that point.
@tau-5-smsra What "a visible breath" has to do with it?
@donatodiniccolodibettobardi842 Some people say that you can't see his breath in the shot and that means he's the thing, except you can see it, and earlier when it was imitating Bennings, you could see breath then too so it wouldn't prove anything one way or the other.
@tau-5-smsra Thanks. Makes sense.
Copper gives Norris a "Precordial Thump," it's an outdated procedure with a low success rate for when you don't have a defibrillator ready. It's no longer part of CPR or BLS guidelines.
I've seen it work twice
it is a last ditch effort, and it absolutely can and does work, and there is zero reason not to try.
We learned it at the MedUniversity
Thanks. I couldn't recall the name of the procedure.
I mean it did work, the dude he was operating on did survive.
20:50 except John Carpenter has stated conflicting things about this ending over the years, on the original director commentary he states that neither MacReady or Childs is a thing, and in an interview conducted years later he stated both of them were a thing, maybe he's never decided? maybe he likes creating confusion? whether he does this on purpose or not is irrelevant because it still makes whatever he says unreliable...
i mean he worked on the game and there both are human ...
maybe he’s instilling paranoia like the movie is trying to do? that could explain why his answers change so much
@poltgaa I think the truth is what he said in the director commentary, but then later regretted revealing his thoughts and has pulled a wild misinformation campaign ever since ... and I only say this because this is exactly what I would do if I accidentally revealed a secret
only thing i ever heard as a quote from carpenter was that at least one of the two at the end of the movie was human, never that both were or weren't
@notster7114listen to the director commentary
John Carpenter's The Thing
John Carpenter IS The Thing
It was in the title the WHOLE TIME! We thought it was possessive but it's actually a contraction!
The computer cheated at the beginning, btw😊
How?
@mattmarzulaknight to f7 made his 2nd queen commit sepuku. Hope this helps
Nah bit for real the quewn moved to a apot it shouldnt have been able to move to. Which i think out him in check or checkmate.
Valid crashout agter being in the artic for who knows how long
@mattmarzula it performed an impossible chess move.
@TwinStargazer makes sense since the thing is cheating by sabotaging itself just so its left alone to build a spaceship/trying to freeze itself. Macready's solution to both was to burn everything down
@TwinStargazer what do you mean? what was impossible about it?
Childs is wearing the same coat, it's just covered in snow and frost.
Problem. When we see Childs in the room with the coats before Mac and the others go out to look for Blair the coats on the wall are arranged one way and the door to the supply room behind him is shut. When we get the shot showing him missing the coats have been rearranged and the door behind him is opened. Carpenter was very careful about maintaining object consistency throughout the movie. I obviously cannot confirm it but it seems certainly plausible that the Blair-Thing got to Childs while the others were out
@Draco-9158 yeah, gasoline theory seems to make the most ense
doesnt make sense the coat is missing, so it wouldnt be the same coat
@Draco-9158 I don't know if the coat is necessarily intentional, but I agree that the Blair Thing got to Childs. The Thing hunts isolated individuals, Blair wasn't in the hut, was likely already in the main building, & Childs was alone. It would be odd if Childs wasn't assimilated.
^ Also, it makes absolutely zero sense to conclude that MacReady is a Thing when he just had a standoff with the main host right before he walked back to the Research Station. We have full clarity as to where MacReady was when Thing attacked him; we do not have insight into where Childs went or what happened to him. Also, the excuse that he 'thought he saw Blair' seems extremely weak and almost effortless. That seems like Thing trying to come up with a quick excuse to dull Mac's initial suspicions, but it's not giving much effort because they're the only two left so why even play along? Clearly, the idea was that Childs was assimilated and Mac was supposed to be himself. People just like to contort the movie and create their own narratives. Carpenter should've given an actual answer. The movie is like 40 years old now. It's fine. It isn't going to be making anymore money now. Just give us an answer you old bastard.
The "Childs was a Thing" theory always bugged me because it makes a ton of dumb assumptions and makes up fake evidence as proof. Firstly, why wouldn't The Thing have visible breath in the cold, or not know the difference between whiskey and gasoline? It's seemingly able to perfectly imitate any living creature, and a big part of imitating humans is imitating the fact we're warm-blooded and don't drink gasoline. It would be insanely obvious to figure out who wasn't human because you'd just feel their forehead or take their temp and it would be cold.
And this doesn’t even get to the fact that most of the "evidence" like the visible breath is just not true. Childs has visible breath, it's just harder to see, and besides, we see Thingified people blowing vapor clouds in the cold anyways.
I think it's pretty clear how the movie ended, it's not ambiguous it's just bleak. Mac and Childs die of exposure, it's inevitable. The movie fades to black because there's nothing else to see, just two men who saved the Earth but couldn't save themselves sitting down for the end of their stories.
I like the idea that the thing knew it was gasoline,but drank from it anyways. Not to “fit in” or trick mac but because he WANTED him to know that it had won. Almost like a slap to the face. It makes sense since the thing is seemingly incredibly intelligent but also malicious, it knew Mac had no weapons left and by drinking the gasoline revealed itself knowing Mac would freeze.
Also it could be that the bottle had whiskey, but the thing drank it because it wanted to trick him, instead it revealed itself because no real person would risk infection over a drink. This would be cool since the thing is smart enough to realise that sharing a drink is a way humans bond and possibly build trust BUT may misinterpret social norms around infection given the complexity of the situation and therefore accidentally expose itself.
@Icyman43-g1d a good counterpoint to one of them being the Thing is "Why not drink from the bottle?"
If the Thing is Mac, then he's going to kill Childs and escape. If the Thing is Childs, then he's going to kill Mac and escape. These people have no supplies, and Mac just used up the last of their explosives trying to finish the fight. There's not only no way to definitively figure out if the other guy is the Thing, but there's no way to fight back either.
So why not just drink from the bottle and wait? If Mac is the Thing, Childs is now also the Thing and would know the moment before he's fully assimilated. If Childs isn't the Thing, then now Mac knows because Childs hasn't killed him after taking a drink.
@Icyman43-g1d Good point there and nice idea.
@ARokanten That's the genius of John Carpenter and this specific movie...it doesn't matter...the only thing that matters is that he did his job right, and here we are, pointing fingers at each other all these decades later, proclaiming that certainly not *I* am the thing, so you must be! The scary part? We already know who The Thing is...it was: John Carpenter's The Thing...it was him all along! So you can't trust anything this movie says...maybe he made the movie to assimilate YOU, and YOU are now The Thing too! Just don't tell John Carpenter...if he knows you found out...
@TheCaptainSlappy If we got any surprises for each other I don't see we're in much shape to do anything about it. Why don't we just wait here for a little while, see what happens
When a helicopter is chasing a dog. How could you be like oh this dog is probably fine
Not that thinks it's weird , either sign that Norwegians lost the plot or something else is off but then you forgetting Yanks are not known for their intelligence 😂
Idk that's what I thought at first too. I watched the movie with no prior knowledge of what it was about, and my thought at first was that the Norwegians had gone insane, which would seem to be a perfectly reasonable response to seeing people hunt a singular dog across miles of wasteland in a helicopter shooting at it with assault rifles & grenades & then shooting your friends for touching it. The only reason to see this as reasonable is to assume prior knowledge of shapeshifters.
@TheGreySage0You think people that don't instantly assume a dog is actually a shapeshifter monster from another planet based on a helicopter with Norwegian guys shooting at it in a location known for making people go stir-crazy through isolation are just stupid people that aren't very intelligent? Whatever European country you are part of that can't brush their teeth and only eat grey flavorless mush must be really proud of your vaunted intellect.
@TheGreySage0 setting aside your bias on americans all the people in both bases are high level scientists and on paper should all be smart and should recognize the people from the other bases are of similar capabilities
@zacriewright5258Just read my reply. It explains clearly why he is a dunce.
19:17 I don’t get this take. MacReady has just won the boss battle and saw his colleagues die in most obnoxiously disgusting ways possible prior to said battle. So… Him now just trying to somewhat relax is only natural, isn’t it?
The man's exhausted, sad, and probably terrified. He knows he's going to die, and there's no telling if any of what he's done will work. Childs showing up is an x-factor, but honestly, in his shoes, I'd probably do the same. I'd just want to die in peace, and try not to worry about it any more...
If you watched all your colleagues die and blew up your one chance of survival just to stop the alien from surviving would you then go "man im tired, guess we can give up on that" and throw it all away?
@zatorith.what chance are you talking about? I always thought that MacReady in that scene was sure alien was no more, well until Childs drank gasoline
Yes that's what we are meant to assume and relate to, from the other perspective it's " the alien has finally won as long as they give up now" also a double win bc childs drinks from the same bottle possibly infecting him
@zatorith.
On the physical side, yes I can see why he is tired. (Not to be rude idk where you live) but this guy did 100x more work than any firefighter in 2001. Not only is he running around with heavy equipment and with heavy clothes on, it is also like negative thirty and crunchy thicc snow, slippery ice, and cutting wind. I’m not saying I deal with that but in my experience yeah dude 5 minutes in that environment even trained you will feel tired.
Mental side I can’t talk on because every one is different but judging on how there is nothing left and just burning rubble, what are you gonna do ride an iceberg back to South America? I think it’s more he did all he could and as far as he knows he just killed the one in control (seeing the space ship, only him, and how that was the biggest he seen)
Tl;dr: nah bro it’s valid trust, let him rest
You see mac about to drink from the bottle before childs shows up
least silly viewer, right here
It suggested that he was gonna kill himself after all that
@mynamedontmatter4796he was at least going to drink scotch till he froze to death
@mynamedontmatter4796nobody would drink gasoline to off themselves -.- freezing would be less painful than the pain drinking gasoline would bring… most people end up feeling warm and taking off clothes when freezing because of that one effect.
Exactly 😂😂
If not friend, then why friend-shaped?
Please tell me you mean the dog pre transformation.
That's exactly what The Thing would say on social media
@GetSoupedSoHard obviously talking about palmer
@GetSoupedSoHardtentacle loving Japanese are calling….
Nobody would ever talk about this movie again if we had the ending ruined for us. This was a masterpiece, and Carpenter was a genius.
I mean, people would still talk about it, it would still be a great movie, but I know what you mean.. It definitely wouldn’t be being discussed anywhere near as much or just like it is, now. The end is what turned it from an amazing movie into a literal masterpiece.
@ldawg7117 True. Saw it the first time with my old man when I was 5 and it terrified me. Didn't see it again until Sci-Fi channel ran it commercial free, paid for by the XBOX game that was coming out (maybe by Activision??). It blew my freakin' mind in my early 20's when I knew what was really going on. Not just the story and acting, but I was amazed at how well the special effects held up too. I've probably seen it a dozen times since then and I love that I've never really figured it out beyond a shadow of a doubt, and love it even more that nobody else has and, frankly I don't think anybody ever will. That's why it's a Masterpiece. Many of the theories could be correct and are very convincing, but nobody has ever put one forward that makes an unbreakable case. What an awesome thing Carpenter made. THIS is how you remake a movie. I hope they stop remaking good movies and start remaking bad ones like Carpenter did here.
How would getting answer ruin it TF
@stevandjuric1479it kills the mystery and leaves no room for speculation. Its a pretty basic narrative method to have a story linger with a viewer/reader. It's like you tell a story and shut the book on the last 3 pages. Its like narrative edging 😂 the movie is perfectly fun without having it explained. Having it explained would satisfy the itch yes, but it would also just be less intriguing for your brain to remember or rewatch or talk about
@the_Googie Room for speculations is only good if there is a sequel, story will linger in my mind way longer if it has satisfying ending where we whole story concludes. "It's like you tell a story and shut the book on the last 3 pages." do you see how moronic that sounds, eh it's about journey not about the destination type bullshit. It's not just the itch it's way more, itch would be how we even got to the chase at the beginning of the movie which luckily got answered in the prequel, this is more of a listening to the 3min song but instead of releasing full 3min they cut last 10s in the middle of guy singing last verse that would never make me rewatch it ever and only thing i would talk about is how shitty and unsatisfying ending was. I do understand that some things are better left unanswered but this is just too big of a thing to be left hanging especially when director said that one of them is the thing, you can't just go and say hey there is like 50% chance that your interpretation of the ending is right, ending was bad enough even without him saying there are 2 options instead of 4 now it's just straight up shit. I am kinda making a few stories so i know that mystery can be very interesting thing but not when it's this important to the plot, we literally did not get conclusion it's like a some TV series adapting book but they just never finished it, no final season no anything, you got your first 90% of the story now f*ck off no more fun for you.
The gasoline theory falls apart the millisecond you realize the thing also absorbs your memories. That’s why it can imitate you so perfectly. Every human knows what gasoline smells like and reflexively knows not to drink it. If Child’s was the thing, he would spit it to keep his cover.
Does it absorb memories though? When is it ever shown in the movie to do that?
@B@BulbearGamingve always assumed it’s implied because of how it avoids deception. Of the assimilated characters they all behave like their former selves before being found out.
I'm not so sure, looking at all the confirmed instances of infected crew members none of them say or do anything that couldn't be inferred from context clues or eavesdropping. I only looked at the original movie so it could be confirmed elsewhere but within the movie there isn't really a moment where some advanced knowledge is demonstrated from an infected crew member.@andrew1498
The film never shows he has access to alcohol? He is drinking alcohol THE ENTIRE MOVIE.
When I first watched the movie I only learned about the gasoline theory later. My instinct reaction was that both of them are still human.
Sure when Childs enters the shot he is to be mistrusted, at that point we don't know whether or not he is the thing.
But from a narrative standpoint MacReady does something he's been known to do throughout the movie which is testing if the crew is human or not.
Alcohol after all is poison and the thing has been shown to negatively react to damage to it's cells. It's drive to survive is it's strongest motivation.
Also very well edited video, really enjoyed you talking about this movie. I think the unsettling feeling and paranoia this movie produces is good in contrast with your calm narration.
Damn now u got me thinking McCready is the thing y would he share his alcohol?
As far as continuity errors goes this was 1981 (released in 82 but made in 81), movies back then were rife with continuity errors because it was long before home media was what it is and film makers had no way of forseeing people being able to sit down and pick apart little details like that, they simply didn't worry about things like that to the point where they had production and set people keep track of how many and what kind of boots and jackets are in a shot like that, for example if you watch the Kevin Costner movie The Untouchables you'll notice a scene where Charles Martin Smith has a Model 97 Winchester pump shotgun and Sean Connery has a Model 12 Winchester shotgun while they're in an office, when it cuts to where the camera is in the hallway and they come walking out of the office and down the hallway to an elevator they've switched shotguns, because of the magic of Hollywood people don't get that even though it appears on screen to be one continuous flowing moment the hallway scene could have been filmed after a break for lunch, the next day or even next the next month because of a reshoot and the actors or the on set armorer just couldn't remember which one had which shotgun, and nobody back then would have cared.
But because things are so different nowadays is why when they made the prequel The Thing and they shot the scenes where the Norwegian facility is burned down, which is what Mac and the Doc wind up finding in the 1982 The Thing the director had a laptop on set with him so they could look at shots from the 82 movie because he knew if he got one little detail wrong people would be all over him for it.
Carpenter himself said some years back not to make too much about continuity errors in the 82 movie because they just didn't go to the lengths back then to make sure they didn't happen like they do today, and I don't believe him when he claims that either Mac or Childs is supposed to be a Thing, years ago he said it didn't matter and that he never considered that one, both or neither should be, he purposely left it up to each person to draw their own conclusions, but nowadays he's claiming that one was a Thing simply to keep the public interested in the movie.
@absurdedward Because there's a bond that can form - even between enemies - when death seems inevitable and close. Everything changes.
Gasoline has a strong scent, and the Things are proven to have some or all the memories of their hosts. Childs would know what gasoline smells like, would know it's toxic and that a human wouldn't drink it, and would have rejected the drink. whether human or Thing.
The computer cheated in the beginning
After the test they all should’ve just stuck together when they knew they were all human
But yeah I get it’s a movie
Omg yes watching this and the amount of times the crew splits up physically hurt
Want to survive a horror movie?
Never have groups of less than three.
If you have groups of two and one of them has been replaced by the monster, you can't tell which one. Sure, they would incriminate each other, but that is just word against word.
But with groups of three, if one has been replaced, there will be two who can confirm each other's identity and a third without an alibi.
Could two been replaced? Absolutely. But if that happens, you have bigger problems.
What does the computer cheating changes about his his character
@DustunColemannothing in the video he said something like mac destroyed the computer for losing
But yeah he destroyed it Cus it cheated
@logansomerville1068 whats the significancece it seems like the same thing.
I think the only wrench in the bottle with gasoline theory is that the thing assimilates memory too, so why would it not know that it’s not alcohol?
On the other hand the idea of McCreedy never having access to to alcohol in the first place is pretty good too.
I forgot which is “canon”… but I think I can recall a comic book out of 3, that retcons the thing & states that it does take the thoughts & memories… before then, I don’t think it did. Yet again, that short comic series also 100% shows you that child’s was infected. Idk if John carpenter considers it canon or not. That’s all I care about when it comes to IPs & such; as long as the creator states it, then it is valid to me & concrete. Everything else by random people comes off as valid as cringe fan fiction to me… like wtf, no need to look into rationality or logic or whatever in ā MADE UP UNIVERSE. Haha. Only thē creator decides.
Seems to me McCreedy was sportin a bottle of JB pretty often.
And a massive wrench in the theory is Mac was about to drink it before spotting childs why would he drink gas?
@josh6689True, didn’t remember that.
3:00 the greatest censorship of all time
The way I took it, he laughed knowing that they were whittled down to just the two of them, meaning that regardless of who is the thing, they would both die.
But the Thing doesn't die from cold. So, freezing is the Thing winning.
Wait, hold up: How would Childs know that Blaire wasn't still locked away, when he wasn't with the group that went to go check on him? This gives credence to the statement "I thought I saw Blaire", because he wouldn't know to lie about that. He'd just assume Blaire was still locked away.
Also, if Childs was The Thing, why would he walk up to Macready? He would either hide to freeze, or ambush Macready after he passed out. I think we can definitively say that neither Macready nor Childs were assimilated.
Exactly my thought process.
John Carpenter said that one of them was the Thing
@GEONEgamingso it is macrady
If Childs was the thing, Macready would have a hard time doing anything against him. He has no flamethrower and no molotov cocktails left. (Even if the bottle was full of gasoline, it didn't have a tarp in it so he couldn't use it) Childs has a flamethrower and doesn't seem as exhausted as Macready. So why would he need to hide?
@jojomania1105exactly. every time the alien killed someone it did it silently like a predator if it was child’s he is the dumbest alien ever. Unless he likes to play with his food which he never showed signs off. In the prequel they also showed that the alien can’t mimicking inorganic materials likes metals and child’s had an earring so it’s not him.
19:32 I always saw this scene as MacReedy telling Child's that the both of them should burn to death with the station, to ensure the Thing won't be able to escape. Both of the two still have an underlying distrust that the other could be the thing, so for both of them to accept burning to death was not only a strange irony (I think it'd be an irony the way I'm using it) that both of them aren't the thing (MacReedy laughing because he realized Child's was human & Child's accepting the drink as a way to say he accepts his fate), reestablishing that trust in a bittersweet ending, but also showing that they don't know what else the thing's capable of and would rather kill themselves then leave alive on the off chance the thing is capable of lying dormant in a host or could possibly hide somewhere in their clothing. But ig I gotta throw away that interpretation lol
Mebbe they have both resigned to their fates for fear of being infected without realizing they are. Like instead of the creatyre taking control mebbe it hides in the host dormant unless it hss to take control to save itself so they are both willingly dieing just to make sure neither one accidentally carries it back to civilization. 🤷♂️
That was pretty much my interpretation for years.
That's the best way my gut feeling about the ending's been put into words, thank you
They wouldn't be burning to death though, what was shown was probably the peak of the fire and it would die out soon after, not flare up more. So in that way it could be Macready as the thing willingly freezing himself and Childs.
@BulbearGamingmaybe, I just saw it as the fire just didn't get to their area yet so it looked weak
10:58 You can literally SEE the scalpel, it even reflects light for a frame or two in there. Definitely attacks with a scalpel lol
Alex please stop with ur conspiracy theories lol
was just about to say, wasnt even a proper fist, that's a knife grip
@Sinsirink😂
@crazycat_9003 thank u
I think his thumb nails reflecting light
11:50 “he’s wildin rn” hmmm, idk, seems innocent to me
Child's is an android, the bottle was foreshadowing
Do androids dream of electric things?
He was George droyd developed from n-nn-nigga chain technology
We make assumptions the alien wouldn’t know we don’t drink gasoline, yet, how does it know anything at all? It obviously is able to understand language and communicate to humans enough to blend in.
Yep, this movie was never very deep. Not worth thinking about.
@bil1876-1it's not that it's not deep, it's that people are reaching for a less bleak ending. The two remaining characters surrendering to their inevitable deaths by hypothermia makes some people feel uneasy or unsatisfied, so they make up theories in their heads about how it goes down differently off-screen.
@riffler24im inclined to agree. As interesting as the theory is it seems more likely that they burnt the thing but are unlikely to survive the cold that follows their decision...and their last moments torn between hoping to survive the cold and holing they DON'T juuuust in case they bring a piece of the thing back with them.
@riffler24 Its dumb.
Chat. Who would win a fight. Kirby or the thing?
Kirby all day son
It would unleash a world of Kirby thing imitations
What do you think Kirby’s copy ability would be if it inhaled the thing?
Kirby
We do not need a Kirby-Thing in our universe
The fact that getting into a shootout with the Norwegians "didn't cause any immediate concern" is something I never noticed as being funny until you focused in on it a little. "Are we at war with Norway? Eh...Who's up for a little Texas Hold Em'?" 🤣
The computer was a pos.
Every chess piece was in different positions every time they showed the screen
There was MacReady's infected blood in the bottle. Now they're both The Thing.
Thing Assimilation seems to be more intense than just giving a small particle. Maybe the human body can fight it off, maybe the thing needs to transfer its memories and needs to donate a larger amount of itself to the assimilation process. Otherwise why have would there be damaged clothing?
The thing didn't infect Clark despite spending a considerable amount of time around him, if only a little bit of saliva was necessary to infect someone, then it could've gotten everyone while it was roaming around as a dog, instead of just Palmer and/or Norris. So that implies it needs to actively attack, perhaps small quantities of its cells are unable to overcome the body's immune system, or lose their individuality as things so once they do assimilate, just act like normal cells, but by attacking, the thing injects large quantities of cells that subvert the host to assimilate into the alien's goals.
@12halo3 It's much faster when it is dramatic with tentacle grabbing and slime all over, but a single cell should be enough to infect.
@tau-5-smsra I assume a droplet of xenocell would take more time, than half a liter of biomass, but according to biochemist and his assistent, the single cell is more than enough to infect and the things keeps taking over the tissue. They looked at it in a microscope and made projections.
But more dramatic, horrific and faster assimilations serve the plot, the atmosphere and the "readability" of the movie better than quiet infections in the background.
I think Clark is an oversight or his assimilation didn't progress enough to infect his blood yet. Or the scene of the biochemist looking at the thing cells was an oversight, that should've been cut 🤔🤷♀️
Exactly.. that's why he laughs 👍
Honestly, if Childs was the thing... I think they would both be beyond caring at that point. The fight was over, and it's been clear since near the beginning of the film that the alien sees MacReedy as a worthy opponent. At that point it doesn't really matter, neither of them have the fight in them anymore. If Childs was the Thing... it was probably more human than ever in that moment. There was zero chance of escape anymore, the battle is lost. Might as well share a drink with the only human worth its respect in their final moments.
That wouldn't be how The Thing would operate.
@Chris-ci8vs only the thing would know this.
@yeahey5947 the thing is a narrative device, it doesn't know anything
Actually hitting the chest is a medican thing, its a way to shoch the heart into beating again i believe but its very risky and only used when theres no other options
precordial thump
I don't know I'd call it risky, the person is clinically dead anyway and at that point you're just sending one last ditch effort to save them. Doing nothing could be considered "riskier" since that would have an even lower probability of success than the already incredibly low probability of success from a percordial thump.
2:27 they're wearing gloves, i find this a worthy explanation
Plus numb hands
It'd be really cool if he put it in his will that his children get a note saying who was actually infected
According to Wikipedia he only has one child, but if he had more than one and had each of them receive a different letter from his will with a different ending, _that_ would be hilarious.
My friends and I refer to a thing transformation as 'Thingin' out'
@6:53 Idk why is Aaaahhh hits me so hard. I can't help but laugh my ass off everytime I hear it. 😂
20:30 What if it’s not a normal bottle of alcohol, but one with a drop of MacReady’s blood in it? What if he was assimilated, and the chuckle was The Thing showing relief after realizing it won? The Thing showing unnecessary emotion when it’s out of options isn’t unheard of due to the scene where “Bennings” screams his head off, and Mac being assimilated could also explain why his breath is cloudy while Child’s isn’t.
Why would Mac actively kill the other thing? Makes no sense man and he’s the main protagonist
People who say the thing would know what gas taste so child’s wasn’t the thing are forgetting that he was a mechanic so he would know what gas smells and tastes like so if he was human there he would smell or taste the gas
@09:50 It's called a precordial thump. It is used for V-fib and pulseless V-tach. Given the time of the film, it was a known and well used technique, cutting edge actually. It's not as good as defibrillation, but it can work. The more you know.
Awesome stuff
This is just a shot in the dark proposal but since John Carpenter talked about the idea of not knowing if you’ve been assimilated
Then what if both Childs and McCready were assimilated and neither of them knew if each other were the parasite since it doesn’t run on a hive mind
Leaving Childs alone was the most ridiculously stupid thing they could have possibly done! THERE WAS 4 OF THEM! 2 stay, and two go! Or you all go together to check on Blair!!! WTF!? 😡
it's chiles, the thing at the end is definitely gasoline so him not reacting would prove it and make macready laugh in knowing he is 'sharing a drink' with the thing
Btw, MacReady was assimilated from the J&B that he got back from Bennings after he whipped dog saliva over the bottle. The "Chuckle" WAS a victory laugh. He infected Childs the same way he infected Blair, saliva transferred from bottle tops
my theory is that they're both the thing. Because it wouldn't need to hide if there was only one person to kill. The reason it isn't immediately aggressive is because it can't, and hasn't been able to win against multiple people, so that deception and disguise is born simply out of necessity and vulnerability. One on one, it has proven to be able to easily take down another person, especially with flamethrowers around. But neither child nor mcready attacked each other. Since the thing perfectly imitates people and their behaviour, it can imitate mcready deciding to give child gasoline, then he laughs because he knows they both won.
15:32 When the synopsis ends for anyone who has seen the hit film The Thing before
Yeah I think I enjoyed that big guy who spent an hour explaining it more, he also sums up the directors commentary really well
Mac is suffering from ptsd from nam, a man with his skills could be a private contractor and fly wallstreet guys around, he chose the most secluded dangerous place on earth to get away from people, the way he plays chess gives clues to his command and strategic thinking, though he was a pilot he likely was a medichopper and saw tons of men bleed to death on his watch, his hat has a cavalry rope on it so he was bringing guys to the front lines and taking fire,
I don’t think it’s gasoline/ petrol why was Mac about to take a drink before Childs shows up, also the thing is an identical imitation so it would now what gasoline/ petrol smells like and what whisky tastes like. Like if it doesn’t get the person’s memory then how could it speak English. after Mac destroys the thing there’s a cut to the out side and you can see his shack but in the final shot it’s on fire so he could have gotten the bottle from the shack before touching it
It’s a stretch but I think he’s an established alcoholic. Alcoholics are prone to drink whatever they can in a stressful situation on their down time.
@JoshuaKelly-i8x na, Mac a heavy drinker but I wouldn’t say alcoholic.like from when they first became aware of the thing till the end he doesn’t really drink like he has a scotch when he’s recording the voice message for the rescue team and when they lock up Blair he take a sip of vodka. But even if he is did say theirs a different between alcoholic and people that would drink petrol.
@rfcfanj7911heavy drinker and alcoholic are synonymic descriptors. Everybody who told you otherwise liee to you about the definition of alcoholism.
@donatodiniccolodibettobardi842an alcoholic is someone that constantly drinks day in and day out a heavy drinker is someone that when they drink, drinks a lot in a time frame.same way a lightweight is someone that has a lower tolerance. Basically the difference is an alcoholic with suffer withdrawal symptoms if they don’t drink where a heavy drinker won’t.
@rfcfanj7911 "Alcoholism is the continued drinking of alcohol despite it causing problems. Some definitions require evidence of dependence and withdrawal."
I guess, we use different definitions. The way you describe it and the way I see it "heavy drinker" is a subtype of "alcoholic". Simple as.
But I see now, that heavy drinker still is a useful distinction, I just don't think it matters in a context of whether the person has a drinking problem and in need of some kind of (non-judgemental) help.
RIP to T.K Carter!! He played Nauls and passed away last month :(
I like to think that MacReady was still human and knowing that they were going die/The Thing would hibernate, MacReady wanted to make sure there was no opportunity for The Thing to survive. So by poisoning himself and Childs and suggesting that they stay by the fire, it gives time for the poison to go into effect before The Thing has the chance to hibernate. The chuckle was for defeating the thing, even knowing he was going to die to do so.
The thing gets the memories it would know what whiskey tastes like
not necessarily. The language centers of the brain and memory centers would be co-opted by the thing, but it may not see use in taking over the olfactory centers, as it doesn't see smell and taste as a way to infiltrate and predate. If it survives this encounter, it may decide to do so in the future, but that's more data it would need to store and reserve.
@kirknayThat just makes no sense. It perfectly replicates the entire host. Every cell. Why would it even decide that olfactory senses are so unnecessary that they can be entirely ignored? Especially if such a flaw could expose it
@fasthink864 being able to smell is easy. Having to transcribe to your own memory not only what you think is important info, but also what you might think is useless such as the association of smells to weird fermented foods is difficult. In a process taking maybe minutes, it would cut costs somewhere.
Mcready goes to drink the bottle just before child's comes, about to just quietly end it causes its over. But then child's comes and instead he hands it to him to see if child's drinks it, as a test.
Could also conjecture that closing scene quietly reveals that both mcready and childs were "turned" and were unaware of the other. And that thing mcready was trying to see if childs was human by testing him with a bottle of gas. And that awkward moment afterwards in which mcready chuckles is their shared realization that they succeeded and there are no survivors.
I have always had the theory that both of them at the end of the movie were the Thing. The gasoline test was to see if he was still human, he laughed because he knew he was safe.
When the Antarctica or the Artic is chosen, it's very intentional and documentary like
"Are You Ready? Yes, MacReady!" 😎
The computer did cheat it made an impossible move
The only issue with the gasoline theory is that the Thing would surely know what it is drinking. It's stated by Carpenter/Kurt that it replicates you so well that you might not even know your the Thing. It must then have access to the logic/memories of the person to some extent, so, it would also know the difference between gas and liquor
My interpretention is that they have both been assimilated, and by this conversation they confirmed to each other they are not a threat cuz they are the same species
I respect the fact John Carpenter may pass away without revealing who The Thing was, that shows dedication and care to his craft. I also appreciate that everyone on this film is actually smart and has common sense...
Something that’s always bothered me is that the Norwegian can’t speak English. Most Norwegians can speak a little English and a lot are completely fluent. In that era, a Norwegian research scientist in Antarctica would absolutely be able to speak enough English to be able to say “No. Stop. Dog bad. Dog very bad.”
Is there any reason to assume he's a scientist? Multiple people in the US camp aren't.
"No. Stop. Dog bad. Dog very bad."
"Is that true little dogger? Are you a bad dog? I think you're a good dog! Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy??"
@captainnyet9855 he's in a research station in Antarctica. That is a good hint.
even if the prequel didn't exist i think it's a reasonable suspension of disbelief to say that there might have been english speakers at the norweigan camp previously but the 2 survivors just happened to not be among them
Of course the film showed us that he had access to whisky (in a green bottle). You showed us yourself at 1:38. He even poured one for the computer, that beat him. Just as he gives whisky to the thing at the end. The thing that escaped his burning down of the research station. So the movie closes the circle at that point. The last chucke of him was accepting defeat and seeing the irony.
First time watching a video from your channel and I must say, what a wonderful first impression.
Welcome welcome that means a lot thank you!
Counterpoint: i have alcoholic tendencies and if someone gave me a bottle while we were likely to freeze to death in ANTARCTICA overnight i wouldnt give af anymore if hes the thing bc both of us would die anyway
I still remember when Mcreed said, "It's thinging time!" and started thinging all over the planet. Truly one of the movies of all time.
9:56 The "cardiac thump" is old school. It was this idea that a sharp strike to the heart could kick arrhythmia back into a normal heart rate . I remember learning it as a sort of 'this is old timer but it might work as a last ditch' when I went through medical training. We never used it in practice but we discussed it in training.
4:55 Honestly, I don't see the pencil touch the alien because it waivers up and drop. If it touched it, the pencil would be stable.
The shadow is also separate from the pencil tip, if the pencil touched it the shadow would have connected to the eraser.
9:55 precordial thump mentioned
Damnit, you beat me to it! 😂
Even many years later this is one of my favorite horror movies.
i like how this alien landed on the best planet for assimilation style takeover. and still ended up in the middle of nowhere. a place with like 12 dudes total
❌ Landed.
✔ Crashed.
I'm surprised no one was like screw this and try flying the spaceship out of there.
Number one detail about the characters is that McReedy is a chess player (albeit not the best) I would probably assume that he is trying SOME sort of tactic even in the last moment of the film.
yeah bro skipped over the opening scene saying mcreedy is just a sore loser completely skipping the fact the pc cheated and mcreedy didnt lose yet he has no chess ball knowledge
So ...
At the beginning: 1. Mac is a strategic thinker. 2. He doesn't like to lose. 3. He uses whiskey to destroy his opponent.
At the end: 1. Mac is a strategic thinker. 2. He doesn't like to lose. 3. He uses "whiskey" to destroy his opponent!
I can see why Carpenter would "go full circle".
@Grubnarit’s so bad faith to say “he doesn’t like to lose” 1 no one enjoys losses 2 the pc cheated that’s not a fair game
To solve this you have to think to how people thought when movie came out.
The beginning scene is your answer, he fails at a game against something unnatural and spills spirits at it= at the end he beats the unnatural by being cunning and laughts about winning this game, he won.
Plus back in the day protagonists lived as a happy ending type of thing
This is definitely not always true, especially of horror movies. Ripley ended Alien drifting through space cryofrozen with a relatively slim hope of being found and resuscitated, Dutch is a broken man by the end of Predator. And The Fly? Even if you just look at Carpenter's movies, a happily ever after is fairly uncommon.
The answer is that both men (who were both men) died, they froze where they sat or they self-immolated for the safety of whoever found the remains of the camp.
very interesting comparison
No.
@riffler24Those both sound like good endings when the alternative was being glorped by some monster 😂
The beginning scene is your answer, he fails at a game against something unnatural and spills spirits at it= at the end he fails at a game against something unnatural and spills spirits at it
Plus, imblying that every single movie ending featured the same outcome in the past is... silly--still, to this day
When taking blood to test, they use the same scalpel - just wiping it between each new cut - possibly passing the 'thing' cells.
@5:06 The pencil never touched, it was a little above the thing.
Clark didn't settle for a sucker punch. He was clutching the scalpel in his hand, not just his fist.
good video but this theory is pretty much disproven by the fact that mac was about to take a big ol sip out of the bottle he hands to childs before he revealed himself. plus, its stated multiple times that the thing can perfectly imitate someone, it retains their memories, speech patterns, and would infact retain their taste buds. it would in fact recoil by the taste of gas.
Not knowing you had been assimilated is something I never thought about.
This is likely why the thing avoided spreading through contamination.
Sure it is a VERY viable strategy, but you'd end up with other Things who entirely lack information about both themselves and their allies causing far too much chaos and potentially infighting. Not to mention another THING is actually more dangerous than a person to a things existence.
One thing that I can't recall anyone bringing up is how MacReady takes charge of the situation, comes up with theories incredibly quickly and is basically right about all of them. I've played a decent amount of Mafia, One Night and Town of Salem, and one of the common tactics employed by newer players is trying to lead the discussion and getting overly involved when anyone else is suspected. What better way to get everyone else to trust you than to (correctly) guess how to detect who's been infected and then immediately kill them? As far as we know, it doesn't care about any "offspring" from assimilating other beings, so why wouldn't it kill others to "prove" that he's still himself? It also works perfectly to get the viewer on his side, because again, who would ever think that a Thing would be the one working the hardest to find and kill everyone and everything that's already been assimilated?
When you disclose the other traitor to gain more credit in your position.
Only partially related but...
In these deduction/deception based games, being "a genuinely helpful villager" who actively participates in trying to figure things out, defending innocents, etc... Is actually a great way to get people to trust you.
In among us for an example while being the Impostor, I used to actively help keep track of where people went, give alibis and look at behaviour patterns to inform crew about. Sure I am effectively doing detective work for them, but usually it's so much information at once that they can't make use of it.
Too bad that the average kid nowadays just screams "[person] is sus" and suddenly the entire server votes them off without any evidence :/
I don't buy it because he makes a recording about the Thing. Why show that if he is the Thing?
@shorewallI watched a different video this morning about the cinematography etc and that scene is shot in a manner that suggests someone is watching. It could have been a ploy because it assumed someone was listening or it could have been playing the long game and used that as planted evidence to get its frozen body transported back to the US by whatever crew likely would have shown up in the future.
Still to this day, The Thing is by farr the most terrifying Alien monster I've ever seen in a movie, and it's not because it has acidic blood or tentacles or hunts using technology far beyond what we have - rather it's for 2 very simple reasons : it has the same survival instincts and intelligence as us
I have a feeling The Thing won either way. Either McCready infected Childs or Childs got the one-up on the exhausted McCready.