Film Friday: The Thing (1982) & (2011)

John Carpenter’s The Thing is a classic in the world of science fiction/horror. It’s tense, it’s creative, and it’s solidly acted. In 2011, they remade The Thing. . . sort of. The remake is an ok film, but doesn’t hold a candle to the original, and it’s the “sort of” which becomes the real problem.

** spoiler alert **

Carpenter’s The Thing is the story of a small group of scientists at an American research station in Antarctica. As the story opens, an Alaskan Malamute rushes into the camp where the Americans are gathered. The dog is being chased by two Norwegians in a helicopter, who are trying to kill the dog. They fail and are killed in the process. After this, helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Doctor Copper (Richard Dysart), fly to the Norwegian camp to learn what happened. Everyone at the Norwegian camp is dead, but MacReady and Copper discover that the Norwegians found what appears to be a spaceship in the ice, and they brought its occupant back to their camp.

MacReady and Copper return home with the alien, where they examine its body and discover that the cells in the dead alien are still alive. Moreover, these cells attack any cells they come into contact with and duplicate them perfectly. Soon it becomes clear that one or more of the Americans has been duplicated by the alien, and the group struggles with not knowing who is human and who is now an alien.

Although the critics hated this film when it was first released and it barely made its money back, this version has withstood the test of time, and for good reason. This version is tense, interesting and eminently rewatchable, and the reason is that the story isn’t about these scientists being chased by a monster, it’s about them turning on each other out of fear. Indeed, the monster is rarely seen in the film and it only exposes itself when it is discovered. It doesn’t run around stalking the other characters. Instead, they fight amongst themselves.

The heart of The Thing is its characters, who are all uniquely written and uniquely acted. Russell play MacReady in the mold of all antiheroes. He’s quiet, detached, and yet highly aggressive when needed. Besides him, you have a group of actors who are easy to tell apart – some are short and fat, some are tall and thin. Two are black, one small and one muscular. You have a hippy/UFO nut, an armchair warrior, a simpleton, an old guy, etc. They all dress very differently. They all wear their hair differently. They speak in unique styles, using unique words and phrases. They have unique personalities.

Indeed, their personalities are key. These people act like people who’ve been cooped up together long enough for personality conflicts to abound. They don’t all like each other, their quirks annoy the others, and they know that not each of them can be trusted in a crisis. All of this causes them to struggle to work together, which is what gives this story it’s true tension: waiting to see if someone is an alien is tense, but not knowing who to trust with the gun to shoot the alien is inspired tension.

And that brings us to the remake. If I’d never seen The Thing before, then this remake would have been a decent if forgettable movie. It’s not stupid or nonsensical. It’s well-enough shot, though it uses the shaky cam for no apparent reason. The story itself doesn’t hold together nearly as well as the original as there are too many “yeah, but” moments, but all in all, this is better than a lot of the indifferent garbage that passes for science fiction horror today.

Still, this film doesn’t hold a candle next to the original, and I think there are two specific and related reasons for this. The first is the cast. Whereas the actors in the original really stand apart, these actors and their characters don’t. There’s the chick (two actually) and the black dude floating around somewhere, but beyond that you’ve got 8-10 middle age white dudes. They are all the same size and shape. They have the same blondish-brown hair, all cut to the same length. They are all unshaven and wear the same clothes. And even worse, they are almost all Norwegians, so they all have nearly identical accents and inflections. You won’t be able to tell these people apart easily, nor will you catch their names.

Moreover, the main characters, Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Dr. Havlorson (Ulrich Thomsen) and Carter (Joel Edgerton) are all outsiders, so this cast lacks the interpersonal relationships which drive the original. We don’t know who has gotten on whose nerves, who they have all recognized as a hothead or useless or as their natural leader, and we see no sense of any friendships. Because of this, this film is little more than a monster chase movie rather than a psychological thriller like the original.

Secondly, the main actors simply don’t compare to the originals. Kurt Russell brings an incredible intensity which tells you that he will make it through the film alive. That gives the film energy as you watch him struggle to overcome the hurdles in his way. It also gives you a shock when the film ends. By comparison, Winstead is a cutie, but you know this little girl would never survive ten seconds of a monster attack. She also never radiates leadership and she doesn’t even seem to know what she’s supposed to do -- she just looks pensive a lot.

Or compare Childs (David Keith), who was Russell’s foil in the original, against helicopter pilot Carter. Keith commands respect with his deep voice and his violent presence. He seems like a man on the edge, torn between wanting to lead and being terrified of this creature. He is tightly wound and ready to explode at any moment. Carter is a wimp who never really does anything, least of all challenges Winstead. The other foil they give Winstead is Dr. Halvorson, but he’s a wimp as well, and he’s snotty about it. He’s the type of whiner who sends sternly worded letters, not lead flying downrange.

So not only does the remake lose the interpersonal struggles which define the characters and make the original so tense to watch, but it gives you characters you can’t care about -- an indifferent girl with no heroic traits, a wimp, a jerk and some Norwegian red-shirts.

And all of this comes from the second failure. What failure? Well, I said above that this film was “sort of” a remake. As you’re watching this film the first time, you’ll notice that it basically tracks the original by and large. That makes it feel like a weak remake. But once the ending credits begin rolling, you are given a glimpse of how the story continues. This includes a new Norwegian arriving by helicopter, finding a survivor and finding a dog, realizing what it is, and chasing the dog in their helicopter. In other words, this is how the original opens and we are now led to believe that the remake is in fact a prequel which tells the story of what happened at the Norwegian camp MacReady and Copper find.

This is a mistake for two reasons. First, this feels like a gimmick since the entire film felt like a generic remake of the original. It feels like something that is tacked on to the end to give the audience something to take home, because the rest of the film had nothing to offer. Secondly, this forced the filmmakers into using the Norwegian camp as the setting, and that led to the problem of these characters being too alike. Then adding the outside Americans as the leaders feels fake, disrupts the personalities (if there are any), and probably seems a little insulting to anyone in Norway who watches this. All in all, this was a truly unwise decision, especially as it had no real payoff.

So I absolutely recommend the original and I think the remake is worth wasting some time on, but the remake ends up being a truly wasted opportunity because it failed to build on what worked so well in the original.

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Film Friday: Unstoppable (2010)

Directed by Ridley Scott’s brother Tony, Unstoppable stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pine as two guys who need to stop a runaway train. This film is based on a real life incident where a train got away from an engineer who hopped out of his cab to manually flip a switch. In some ways, this film is completely brilliant and I absolutely recommend it. Indeed, it’s an enjoyable, exciting film which will keep you on the edge of your seat. Unfortunately, it also pushes its brilliance too far and becomes a parody of itself.

** spoiler alert **

● The Challenge: Before we discuss what Tony Scott did so brilliantly (and so unbrilliantly), let me point out that making this film exciting was a much harder challenge than people may realize. At first blush, a runaway train seems exciting. Trains are ultra-powerful and can do immense damage when they derail. Add in an explosive cargo and you’ve got the makings of a real disaster. BUT don’t forget, trains are highly predictable. Even a runaway train will move at a constant rate of speed down a set path, meaning you know exactly where it will be, you can clear out the area of impact, and you can even knock it off the rails at a point of your choosing. Thus, in practice, a runaway train isn’t as exciting as it seems in the abstract.

So how do you make a runaway train more exciting? Scott found three ways to inject a lot of tension into the film. Unfortunately, he also pushed each solution too far.

● Solution 1: Frenetic Direction. Scott has an eye for color and scenery, and manages to get the most out of each shot by filling each scene with lots of action, e.g. people and cars running all over the place, and using quick edits and some shaky-cam moments to create a sense of frenetic motion which makes everything feel urgent.

Unfortunately, the shaky-cam annoys the heck out of people, me included. The problem with the shaky-cam is that it makes some people motion sick and will cause them to turn their eyes away from the screen and takes them out of the movie. And even if it doesn’t make you sick, it still wears you out because the shaky-cam is the visual equivalent of being blasted by high decibel music. This eventually makes you numb to the movie.

Further, there is a longer term problem with the shaky-cam: desensitization. As people get used to the shaky-cam, it will require ever increasing visual-stimulation to get the same level of excitement. Films that rely on this visual trickery to generate interest will soon seem boring and outdated. In effect, films shot like this are giving themselves a limited shelf-life, and I suspect this is one of those films.

● Solution No. 2: Aggressive Acting. Scott also added large amounts of tension into each scene by apparently telling his actors to fight with each other constantly. These characters don’t talk to each other, they shout at each other. They challenge each other and violate each other’s orders. He even has characters throw phones at each other. This gives the film a sense of tension and makes it feel like high stakes are being played out in each moment, even though they are all just waiting for the derailment.

But there’s a problem with this. Telling the actors to be as angry with each other as possible creates believability issues, which some of these actors aren’t able to overcome. Denzel Washington can. He’s angry about the way the company treats him and he’s angry at Chris Pine being an indifferent idiot. But Washington is a great actor, probably one of the best of our time. He’s got amazing screen presence and has never turned in a bad performance, and he absolutely has what it takes to carry off this character as angry, but not so angry that we doubt that he would do what he is doing in this film.

Chris Pine, however, lacks the skill to play the role. He’s not capable of convincing us that deep down this angry jerk would care enough to go on a suicide mission. Rosario Dawson also isn’t believable as the dispatcher because she’s so angry at her boss that she would have been fired long before, especially as her boss (Kevin Dunn, who plays a generic corporate villain) is equally angry in return and would never allow a dispatcher to be that disrespectful to him. Their relationship feels Hollywood-fake. And ultimately, all of this anger becomes too much and this constant fighting for the sake of fighting starts to feel like a parody of itself. And that brings me to the real issue in this film.

● Solution No. 3: Insane Writing. Dear God. As someone who loves good writing, this film appalls me. . . and I’m sort of laughing when I say that, but not really. The modern school of screenwriting says that each scene should involve conflict and should increase the stakes in some way. You should avoid scenes that don’t push the plot to a higher level of tension. Unstoppable takes that advice far too literally and becomes absurd.

To give you a sense of what I mean, here’s how this film comes across (assume each ellipse marks a new scene about a minute apart): we just learned there’s a runaway train! ...and it’s speeding up! ....and it’s heading for a populated area! ....and it’s packed with explosives! ....and uranium! ....and nerve gas! ....and it’s going to derail in the middle of town! ....and the phone lines are down so we can’t reach the town! ....and there’s a daycare center where it will derail! ....and every kid in town is at the daycare center today to receive an award from the mayor! ....and the Pope is a surprise guest! ....and the kids all brought puppies! ....one of the puppies holds the key to fighting cancer! ....and your wife just called, she’s pregnant! ....she’s calling from the daycare center! ....and there’s another identical train coming from the other direction! Ahhhh!

See the point? The first couple add to the tension nicely. But at some point, the writer goes too far and this takes on the feel of parody. The problem I had with Unstoppable was that every minute, they added some new complication and after a while this became a distraction. Rather than making the plot more interesting, it began to feel like the writer was showing off. Indeed, I found myself wondering whether the title, Unstoppable, wasn’t meant as a reference to the writer’s view of their ability to keep ratcheting up the drama rather than the train.

The best way to describe what happened here is that Tony Scott was absolutely brilliant at finding ways to make a rather dull story -- two guys chase down a train to apply the brakes -- into something exciting. But he lacked the feel his brother has for taking his foot off the throttle to reset the audience. It’s hard to keep the audience red-lined for 98 minutes no matter how many things you throw at them, and maybe it’s not a good idea to try?

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Film Friday: Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

Battle: Los Angeles looked like a big blockbuster film designed to attract an audience for two weeks and then be forgotten. Imagine my surprise to find a truly inspired film. And do you know what makes this film stand out? An utter lack of cynicism and a strong sense of patriotism. This IS a conservative film!

** spoiler alert **

Battle: Los Angeles is the story of a platoon of Marines who are called in from Camp Pendleton to defend Santa Monica when aliens begin an invasion of the Earth. The squad’s initial orders are to rescue civilians who are trapped in a police station which was overrun. But things get complicated as the aliens grow in strength and numbers and the squad finds itself stuck behind enemy lines.

Everything works in this film, from the effects to the acting to the writing. For example, when they fly to the battle, you never once doubt they are in actual helicopters looking down on a burning city. Explosions are realistic. There is no wire fighting. The battles are believable as well. They don’t overdo the damage to the city or the power of the weapons, nor do they downplay it to give the characters an easy out. Indeed, the battles feel entirely real and the city looks like a city that’s been under attack -- the level of damage even increases as the film advances and the battle spreads. Even the use of the shaky cam (something I normally HATE) is done well here to add to the sense of motion rather than just annoy the audience.

The aliens are great too. They are original looking and yet also completely believable, and we are constantly given little moments of insight, such as when we learn their weapons are surgically attached to their bodies. The story also does an excellent job of ratcheting up their threat level as the film progresses, and neither side ever acts stupidly to create drama.

Moreover, the film does a very credible job of presenting a realistic portrayal of how the Marines would deal with these aliens. Too often, films like this pretend that none of the characters has ever heard of an alien, a zombie or a vampire and thus has no idea how to deal with them. Not here. These Marines know what aliens are, just as you and I know, they just haven’t seen a real one. And when they do, their reactions are realistic, particularly with regard to how the Marines gather the knowledge they need to fight them. There is one particularly brilliant scene where the lead character, Staff Sgt. Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) tries to figure out where to shoot the aliens to kill them without wasting a lot of bullets. That’s the sort of thing Marines really would do.

Indeed, the military procedures throughout are highly accurate. The characters never ignore military protocol, rank, or the chain of command. They also use their weapons realistically, and not in cool “Hollywood” ways, e.g. standing out in the open machine gunning down dozens of aliens while firing two guns at once. In many ways, the procedures are so accurate this feels like it could have been a documentary about a real operation.

But where this film really hits it out of the park is in the writing. Modern war films have become cliché-ridden and are laced with noxious liberal messages: the military is power hungry, the military murders civilians, the military kills for oil and tortures prisoners, and our officer corps is full of stupid, arrogant racists. This film has none of that!

The platoon is made up mainly of minorities, which is the liberal myth that the poor and minorities do the fighting for America, but a funny thing happened after that starting point. Not one single character ever mentions race. . . not even in jest. These characters hang out with each other, care for each other and fight and die for each other and there isn’t one single hint in this film that they ever consider the race of their comrades. Moreover, the officer in charge of the platoon, Lt. William Martinez (Ramón Rodriquez), is an Hispanic character (several officers are minorities) -- something Hollywood rarely shows.

And while Martinez is fresh from Officer Training School, he’s not cowardly, stupid or unprepared as such officers are usually presented. And even though his veteran staff sergeant has to shake him out of his initial shock, he doesn’t fall apart or abandon his training. Indeed, unlike other movies that use this premise, the staff sergeant doesn’t ridicule him, doesn’t overstep him, and doesn’t try to take over the platoon to save everyone else. He does what he’s been trained to do: assist Martinez to be a better officer.

None of the other liberal clichés are here either. None of these soldiers is power hungry or bloodthirsty. They are instead proud professionals who do their job without complaint. No one whines about not knowing why they are fighting or tries to surrender or betray the unit. They don’t rape or loot or plunder or engage in an orgy of violence. Not one of them is shown to be a coward. The same is true of the civilians who prove to be heroic in their own right. In effect, everyone is shown acting their best at the moment of crisis.

The film also avoids all of the toxic geopolitics which pollute other films. There’s no politician or oil company trying to exploit the crisis. There’s no CIA operative who wants to sneak home an alien body to create a bioweapon. There’s no general who really, really wants to nuke American cities. And there are no gangs who suddenly appear to create apocalypse kingdoms. There are just good people doing their best.

I’m sure some would argue this film is actually a veiled metaphor for America as a resource plundering nation that exterminates indigenous people. But that’s just not the case. There’s never once a sense of irony that the aliens are now doing it to us and no one suggests this is turnabout. Moreover, the aliens attack the whole world, not just America. And the American military saves the day. That’s not anti-Americanism.

Reinforcing all of this are a handful of truly stirring speeches. Nantz was brought to the platoon because their regular sergeant was away. There is resistance to Nantz initially because it is believed he got some Marines killed in Afghanistan in a raid. . . he did not get them killed through cowardice or incompetence as is usually the case in recent war films. This issue gets resolved later in the film and when it does, Eckhart gives a deeply moving speech about the responsibility officers feel for their men. This is not a speech anyone who hates the military could ever have written. In fact, the film is strewn with excellent speech where the characters explain why they fight. None of these fit the cynical modern mold. Indeed, unlike Tom Hank’s horridly defeatist speech in Saving Private Ryan, these speeches are deeply patriotic, such as when Lt. Martinez tells his squad they are “fighting for our families, our homes, and our country God dammit!”

All of this is highly patriotic in the best sense of the word. These characters don’t wrap themselves in the flag and then dishonor it, instead they honor the spirit of our nation through their every action and their love of the country, its people and their sense of duty. This is a film about people who believe in America and who will never surrender or dump their duties on others.

That’s why this film is so fantastic. It’s populated by good people doing their best for all the right and noble reasons. There is no cynicism and no irony and none of the defeatist, disheartening hallmarks of modern Hollywood war films. It is thus no surprise that liberal reviewers hated this film, because it rejects their ideological expectations about how the military, patriotism and race should be presented and it is an affront to those who want to hate America, Americans and the American military. That’s why they trashed it.

I very much recommend this film.

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