SPEAKER_02 0:04

Oh fuck it's sci-fi.

SPEAKER_04 0:10

Greetings and salutations and welcome to Hacker Slash. If you're joining us again, welcome back. But be warned, somebody in this camp ain't what he appears to be. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the party. We are a horror movie review podcast dedicated to telling you whether a movie is a hack, a total joke, a waste of time, or a slash.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Totally killer. Fun intended.

SPEAKER_04 0:30

We believe horror is for everyone, and as such, we're rating these movies with the perspective we've all gained from our varying walks of life and the flavors of fear we fancy most. My name is Chris, I'm your friendly neighborhood slasher enthusiast. This week I'm joined by the Superfly Space Sky Mac.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

There's a storm hitting us in six hours, and we're gonna find out who's who.

SPEAKER_04 0:47

The gore lover Alexis. Hey everyone. The cowardly creeper Ryan. Hiya. And the Scream Queen Paris.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

They're not Swedish, Mac, they're Norwegian.

SPEAKER_04 0:56

In honor of John Carpenter's 73rd birthday, we're taking a look this week at one of his classics, and coincidentally his personal favorite, a 1982 sci-fi horror film he considers to be the first in his apocalypse trilogy. We're also comparing it to a 2011 film by the same title, starring Mary Elizabeth Winston. Now, when last we saw her, specifically, she was playing a sorority sister in the 2006 remake of Bob Clark's Black Christmas. So before we get to what she was up to five years later, we have some follow-up.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

We do have some follow-up, Chris, and it's the gift that keeps on giving because it's both Black Christmas from 1974 and the 2006 remake. Now, our 1974 rewind episode recently posted for our patrons. If you are interested in becoming a patron and listening to this episode, you can access that for $1 a month and visit patreon.com slash hacker slash. We have a couple comments from our patrons, one from Daniel, who said, The one scene that always gets me was the collar is in the house. Because that would be freaking terrifying. Another beautiful shot I've always loved was the hand coming from the stair railing and pulling Jess's hair. This movie is always freaky to me because I have a fear of someone secretly watching me or being inside my house.

SPEAKER_04 2:03

A totally rational fear, Daniel, and also such an underrated shot, and I can't believe I didn't take the time to comment on its beauty during that episode. Absolutely amazing, and makes me fearful of ever having long hair again.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Yeah, it'll just get snatched. We also have a comment about the original Black Christmas from one of its biggest fans and one of our favorite patrons, Anthony. He said, This movie is one of my favorites. Like Chris said, I do in fact own all but one release this film has ever had on DVD slash Blu-ray. I have to point out that the door that Jess and Phil answered during the search party, I knocked on a few years ago. Nobody answered, but it was still a thrill to knock on that house. The front is all gated up nowadays. I could go on and on. I love this movie and can forgive those two hacks who, by the way, had some really nice things to say about the girls' themes and murders, so that sounds like a slash to me.

SPEAKER_04 2:50

Oh yeah, I 100% agree with you, Anthony, and I'm also so jealous you went to that house. I I need to add that to the list of places I want to see on a horror movie road trip.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Yeah, going to that house and knocking on that door does seem like a very fulfilling thing to do if you're a super fan of this movie. Also, that house was just gorgeous.

SPEAKER_04 3:07

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Fast forward to 2006, and we have some more comments about the remake. Our first is from Rob, who said, listening to the new episode of Hacker Slash on the 2006 version of Black Christmas, this movie did not get a universal hack, and that is the most tragic thing to happen in all of 2020.

SPEAKER_04 3:21

I'm Team Rob.

SPEAKER_02 3:23

Well, who's Team Greg? Because he said, Rob is absolutely wrong. The 2006 version is better than both the original and the 2019 version. It should have been a universal slash. It's a super fun ride that doesn't take itself too seriously. Once it starts going, it doesn't really let up. He got more backstory, which he wanted, and we got more gore, which I think we all were looking for. The cast is wonderful, plus flesh cookies. Therefore, slash.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

I know. I'm like, it did give me everything I was looking for. That that one was missing that the OG one.

SPEAKER_06 3:52

There's like things people that don't take themselves too seriously are really great until they start doing meth. And then maybe they need to take themselves a little bit more seriously. Oh god. Did I take it too far? I don't know.

unknown 4:03

Maybe.

SPEAKER_06 4:04

But so did this movie. I don't take myself too seriously.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

To quote Tim Allen.

SPEAKER_06 4:08

Or Scooby-Doo.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Okay. To quote Scooby-Doo.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

We've also got another comment from our friend Allison on Instagram who said, I actually had a lot of fun with this movie despite the terrible reviews. So many eyeballs. I really enjoyed this episode. You guys were so divided. I agree with the comments that the deaths were like little sprinkles planted through the movie. Also, the mom and the flashbacks was also my favorite character because she was grotesque and clearly unhinged.

SPEAKER_04 4:29

Now that's a hot take.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

And I think Allison and I are truly in alignment on that. And finally, to round out our follow-up segment, we have a call from the Hackerslash Hotline. Chris, roll the tape.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Happy holidays and happy new year, Hackerslash team. This is Jersey Ryan. I'm calling to follow up on Black Fest from 2006. I've never seen this or the original 1974 version ever, so I just did a double feature viewing a few days ago. I agree with the majority of you that the 2006 version is a hack. While there's a lot of great lore and high-five films, the dialogue of the female characters and other portrayals is pretty weak in comparison to the original film where the characters have some death and female films. In closing, I know Chris, you said you used to watch the original 1974 Black Christmas with your family, and that leaves me wondering how uncomfortable was that to hear all the things the moaner was saying to the girls in front of your family. That must have been a little drawing for everyone. There must be a good story there. Take care, everyone, and I'll talk to you in 2021. Happy New Year.

SPEAKER_06 5:59

That's awesome. First and foremost, I hope, Ryan, that you only go by Jersey Ryan in your life. That's it. That is the only way to be addressed at this point.

SPEAKER_04 6:08

I love that. To answer that question, Jersey Ryan, it's it's a really good one. I had the blessing of being the youngest of five kids. So it was for sure awkward for my family, but I was too young to perceive that awkwardness. And over the years, I've always wondered, why the hell was I allowed to listen to this? I don't know. But I did watch this movie at fake Thanksgiving at my sister's house in preparation for that episode. And I sat there watching it with my oldest sister, with my grandmother, who's in her 80s, with my aunt, with my mother, and with my very young nephew walking around. And he was mostly in his bedroom, but I was cringing. I'm gonna be honest, especially since we had subtitles on. It was ooh, it was chilling, honestly. And my grandmother, as she was watching it and saw Mrs. Mack boozing, was like, oh my god, it was a little uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Not the booze.

SPEAKER_04 6:59

It was at that point I was grateful that my grandmother doesn't speak great English.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

I just want to give another shout out to our friend Rob, who recently became a patron. Rob, thank you so much for your support in the new year, and we look forward to hearing more from you.

SPEAKER_04 7:11

Thanks, Rob.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

And that's our follow-up.

SPEAKER_04 7:14

All right, now, as we all know, John Carpenter changed the face of horror with his 1978 slasher, and that was an iconic movie made for a mere $375,000. Now, in that film, two children are spending their Halloween evening by watching the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, a movie based on John W. Campbell's novella, Who Goes There? Four years after his famed Slasher, John Carpenter actually landed a $15 million budget to help introduce the world to his own take on the novella. The end result? A film that's since been considered one of the best horror films ever made, famous for its practical effects, eerie atmosphere, and tense paranoia. Carpenter's film explores what happens to a team of American researchers in Antarctica after they discover a Norwegian research base burned to the ground, its inhabitants dead or missing, and are then hunted by a shape-shifting alien. Now, of course, as we've seen plenty of on this podcast, the early to mid-2000s were a time ripe with remakes of horror classics, some better than others. Now the goal of a remake is to offer a different interpretation of its source material, whether that be thematically or stylistically. Many reap the financial benefits of retreading classic materials with little else than a shot-for-shot remake, like we saw with Psycho Alexis, or a decision to just be as brutal as possible. When faced with the opportunity to remake Harpenter's classic, a team of producers actually opted to take a different direction instead, as they felt his film was already perfect. Instead, they chose to tell the story of that Norwegian base to reveal what happened before the famed events of the original film. This week, we're talking about the 1982 film The Thing and its 2011 prequel. Now who has seen either of these before? Y'all know the deal. That's it. Haven't seen them.

SPEAKER_06 8:54

Oh, surprise, surprise. No, I I haven't seen either. And I actually just recently, like, I guess I had heard of the thing, but I just recently like have been having conversations about it and realized that I have never seen it.

SPEAKER_03 9:05

It's funny because I have seen the 1982 version, but I might have watched it one or tw once or twice. So I couldn't recall other than like some of their iconic scenes, um, some of its iconic scenes. I swear though, I had seen the 2000s version because I lived through this um and I watched a lot of them. So I'm like, I've had to have seen this. I did not, believe it or not. It's so weird. I've never seen this movie. Oh, really? Yeah, I watched it and I was like, I don't recall any of this. So he was it was either I watched it once and forgot about it, which I wouldn't know if I saw a horror movie. Any other movies? I'm not sure. Horror movies, I know if I've seen them.

SPEAKER_06 9:44

I mean, there's a few Antarctica films you could be confused by.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

I mean, there's a lot of influences in the 2000s version that I probably was confused. I was like, maybe I saw this.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Yeah, I've definitely not seen either of these movies before. Uh, I had a feeling that maybe I'd seen the 2011 version because that was around the time where I was seeing a lot of horror movies in theaters. Uh, but turns out I did not.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

I'm the Superfly Space Guy, so of course I have seen the thing. 1982. I have not seen the 2011 until now. But yeah, this is this is iconic, and it's up there with the classics of sci-fi horror, like alien for me. I know not all of you agree, but uh I've I've definitely seen the thing several times.

SPEAKER_04 10:21

Mm-hmm. That's surprising that you didn't see the 2011 one. Now I've seen both of these before. I've seen the 1982 version several times, and I have always appreciated it as classic carpenter, but I'm not super compelled by sci-fi horror like Mac is, so it's not something that I've just, you know, slipped on because I'm in the mood. You know, it's not one of those kind of movies for me. I I've only seen the 2011 version once, probably around the time it came out. But I did go to both houses at Halloween Horror Nights in 2007 and 2011, inspired by these movies. So those were pretty fun. But for those of you who have seen neither of these, what were you expecting?

SPEAKER_06 10:58

So one of our coworkers showed me a trailer for the thing, the original, and I have seen the art for it, and that's it. I had no idea what else was going on. And my expectation was like 80s killer, maybe like I I don't even want to say supernatural, but like some sort of like monster killer, but I had no idea we were gonna be in in Antarctica. I didn't know we were going uh extraterrestrial, you know? I didn't know I was going in ET territory. And for the sequel, honestly, I had looked a little bit at the description and I saw that it was a prequel, which was interesting. So I was expecting like an origin story there and kind of to understand why things were happening and stuff like that. And I would say none of my expectations were correct.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Yeah, I kind of thought the um remake was gonna be a legit remake. I didn't think it was gonna be a prequel. And when Ryan was telling me and I was asking, what order do I need to watch these in? Because I was like, if it's a prequel, it needs to go before. Like I was just so confused. I'm glad I watched them just in the order they were, but I think the expectations, you know, I had for the um 2011 version was just that. I thought it was gonna be just better visuals, but same characters, same, and you know, I was quite surprised it wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

Yeah, I was going based off of the title, which is so vague, literally the thing. And I was like, I don't know, the blob, I guess. So I was expecting some kind of like honestly 1950s, like shitty black and white creature feature. And I was like, okay, I'm obviously probably gonna hack that, just going into it. And then I was like, but the 2000s one, you know, that has some hope for me. That's that's more recent. So I'll I imagine that I would probably think that that one was better, but still probably wouldn't like it. So I I watched these in chronological order. So I started with the original, and literally the first shot that you get is of like uh of a flying saucer in space, and I said, Oh fuck, it's sci-fi. And I don't know why that wasn't part of my expectations, but it was.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

That's a pleasant surprise in my book.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

I thought of you immediately, Mac.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

I was like, oh, well you know, Chris, going back to watch the 1982 again, I expected tension and practical effects, and holy schnitzel, the death scenes. Going into the 2011, I had no idea. Uh so I honestly just expected CGI because 2011. So that was my only thing to look forward to was they're gonna use a lot of CGI for good or for bad. You know, I I didn't know.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

I feel that I was absolutely expecting this to be like a compare and contrast in practical versus digital effects.

SPEAKER_04 13:25

For sure. And yeah, similar to Alexis, I expected this to be a straight-up remake. I was surprised to find out that they did market it as a prequel, like it wasn't supposed to be some big surprise. But the 2011 thing entered development after I went to boot camp and was already on a ship for a while. So, like, this is from like a black hole in my life where I paid attention to no music, I paid attention to no movies. If I saw it, it was probably because we received a high eight tape on the ship to play for entertainment at certain times. So that was the only way I saw movies for like a few years. So expecting it to be a remake and then to find out, you know, when I saw that it was a prequel, it kind of reframed the whole experience for me. And I will say that I was entertained thoroughly watching both of these movies. The 82 original, it's obviously a slow burn, but it still fully captivated me. And I deeply, deeply appreciate the sense of paranoia it gives you. And for me, it's more successful in that way than Alien is. Alien felt too slow for me. Alien felt like a slow march to doom, and I felt more connected to these characters, I think. I will say though that when I watch it, it's more out of an objective appreciation for the technical execution of things rather than it being a riveting joyride. How are you guys feeling?

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Watching the original was like, yeah, suspense, tension, Kurt Russell being a bad arse. All of it was, like you mentioned, highly entertaining. Going into the remake, I was expecting to not be entertained, but I was entertained. And having Torman Giant Spain, you know, Christopher Hivew involved was also a fun surprise. Game of Thrones reference.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Yes, he was very handsome, both in Game of Thrones and in this, so a pleasant surprise for me as well. Honestly, after I saw the saucer and knew this was sci-fi, I was like, okay, here we go. And I feel like I had a roller coaster experience during the original because first chunk of it I was like bored as hell, nothing's happening. And then crazy shit happens. Some of the greatest practical effects I've ever seen in my life happen, and I'm like, oh damn, okay. Um, and then it just kind of like hit kept hitting me with these like peaks and these valleys. So I felt like going into the remake, I had a much more consistent experience where it was able to like build tension, avoid boredom, um, and keep me pretty engaged to right to the end.

SPEAKER_06 15:43

I think I have like a really simple, boring answer for this, and I was just entertained throughout both of these. And it's like I have very specific things to say about the other feelings that I had, but overall, like there is an overwhelming sense of like I was in these movies, you know. I probably did scroll through Instagram, but you know, I wasn't compelled to scroll through Instagram, it's just an addiction at this point. But it these are both, I would say, very entertaining. Honestly, no matter who you are, I feel like there's something that you could enjoy out of them.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

Chris mentioned while uh she was talking about the beginning of this movie, this terror that it like this movie brings out. And that's what I felt throughout this movie. Like it's in both versions. Um I definitely was like, you know, this who done it, this, oh my gosh, who could be infected? I don't know. I love that. I I love and then because I think I'm paying more attention, I'm like, oh, but who could it be? Oh my gosh, who touched this person? And it's like this logical thing I work through in my head, which helps me like dive into the movie a little bit more. So I was very entertained, but there and uh completely engrossed in the movie, but also um had a lot of tension, was like picking up my nails, you know. Who was this? Ryan and I were like, it might be him, it is him, you know, especially when they're doing these tests and stuff to figure out who's who. Those are just like you don't need any music in the background. They're already, it's already building attention for you.

SPEAKER_04 17:09

Hell yeah, absolutely. And I actually have so much to talk about for that scene later because this was one of those times where there's so much built into the 1982 version that you could miss on your first watch and your 50th watch. Like there are little clues everywhere. But let me also just just state this. I think I neglected to say this earlier. I have what could be perceived as a character flaw of mine. I'm a sucker for a good prequel. I'll admit it. I love it. Like Star Wars, I'm a huge Star Wars fan. My favorite Star Wars movie though is episode three, Revenge of the Sith. So I love seeing something, getting the story and the experience, and then something coming out later that explores how we got to that point. So I'm gonna admit I had more fun with the 2011 one.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

Not that it's a better movie, but I for some reason was more entertained. I could totally see where you're coming from in that because you you like to look in the details of things. So you're like, oh my gosh, that connects, oh my gosh, this connects, because that's kind of how I was. Um just for that was my two first time watching the 2011, but having watched the 1982 version, I was like, oh, but there's that. Oh, this is cool. It's taking influence from this, and I I love that too.

SPEAKER_04 18:17

For sure. And I know I just talked about how riddled this thing is and how layered it is with clues. This is one of those movies that there's so much in there that it almost changes the experience watching it over and over and over again, even down to specific lighting choices by the cinematographer. There's also like these subtle sound effects that give away key plot moments. The answer to the greatest questions asked in this movie are actually found within the sound effects or the shadows. So there's a lot of mystery, but there is so much potential for answers there. But I will say that I have two disappointments with the 2011 prequel. And the first is the decision to go with CGI. I mean, at some points it's great. At a lot of points, it's pretty awful, at least in my opinion. And so much of this movie is just a perfect lead straight into the 1982 film that the CGI really just destroys the feeling of continuity that I think you can have there. I'm gonna be honest, I was disappointed how much I felt like a lot of it was lifted from Alien. It didn't feel like just a reverential nod, you know, because there's sometimes a little cute, clever thing you can have there. This felt more like, no, this is these characters, these kills, these are straight rips and less of a homage. Now, granted, the first time I saw this, I hadn't seen Alien, so that wasn't something that I felt back in 2011.

SPEAKER_03 19:31

Yeah, and I definitely get that vibe from 2011 too. I'm like, okay, they ripped Alien off and they ripped like, you know, the character, it's characters and especially well, I should say when I'm talking about the 2011 version, I'm more speaking of Prometheus than I am anything else. And I do get those nods. There are a few from the 1982 version from the original Alien. Actually, I have that in my notes. And Ryan and I were like, are we watching Alien though? I would love to see a crossover. Uh yeah, but my disappointment was because I was like, oh my gosh, this 2011 is gonna be great to see what they have with the CGI. And I was just disappointed because I felt like my imagination would have been carried a little bit further if I was, you know, the person creating this thing in 2011. I just feel like I didn't get that. So that was also a disappointment for me too, Chris.

SPEAKER_06 20:20

I kind of have some similar thoughts. So as far as the Alien thing goes, both of these movies to me scream Alien. And it's interesting because, like Alexis was saying, we brought up Prometheus when we were watching it, but Prometheus came out after this remake. However, both of them came out after Alien. And I mean, even to the point where he's asking the computer in the original, asking the computer the odds, like that's Alien. And it's like three years later. So that was something that really surprised me. And then also, I I I'm gonna say this without having like fully trudged through my brain to make sure it's true yet, but I'm gonna go with it anyway. I've never seen a prequel or they call it a prelude that leads up to a film like this with such a gap in between. Like to have this movie from the 80s and then this prequel that comes so much later, but I actually watched them in chronological order, not necessarily intentionally. So I watched the newer one first and then went backwards in one day in between. So I had a little bit of space. And it was like, as I was watching the original one, I was just like, oh my God, all of this stuff is so related. And I just I don't think I've seen something down to some of the details that did it like this.

SPEAKER_04 21:40

Oh man, Ryan, I am so excited for you to eventually see this. And I'm saying this because your statement is accurate, you haven't seen something like this. Rogue One perfectly leads into the first original Star Wars film, but like they use unseen footage from Star Wars, so you get characters and actors. From the 70s, perfectly blended into this modern stage, and it is fucking stunning. It's so good.

SPEAKER_06 22:05

I would like to note I do love Star Wars, I just haven't watched any in a long time, and that sounds lovely, so I'm I'm on board.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Chris, I'm actually with you there because that that ending scene and or the scenes rather in in Rogue One, there's one in particular that I don't want to spoil for you, but there is there's a character from the original trilogy that when they show up, it just like makes you sweat a little bit, and it's such an amazingly well done scene. So yeah, I I think having a prequel come out that like completely like meshes into the to the movie that came before is a brilliant thing to do, and more people need to do that when they do prequels.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

I totally agree. I was very surprised by how seamlessly this transitioned into the original. Uh, I was also really pleasantly surprised with the gore in both movies. Um, and after seeing what I've already said is like really great pack practical effects in the original. I was almost expecting for the CGI to be a disappointment because I was like, watch this is the one time where the practical is actually better than the CGI, which is never my take. I I know it's a lot of people's takes, but usually I'm CGI all the way because it's objectively better. And for the most part, I was still very pleased with how well it was handled in uh the remake.

SPEAKER_06 23:12

Can I ask, did all of you guys watch them in release order, or did anyone else watch backwards like me?

SPEAKER_04 23:18

I watched backwards this time around.

SPEAKER_06 23:20

But you had already seen the original.

SPEAKER_04 23:21

Having already experienced both films. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 23:23

Interesting. Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

I was just curious. So I actually watched the the original, the 2011, and then the original again for like the first 40 minutes because my boyfriend wanted to watch it and I just fell asleep. Um, so it was it was really fun to see more details in my second watch of the original after being informed by the remake slash prequel.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

I don't know that I've ever gone back and watched the series in chronological order and not in order of release. And I'm curious what the experience is like. You know, I mean, obviously Star Wars is the perfect example. I've never gone back and watched episodes one through nine in order of episode number. I've only done it in the order that the movies came out. Uh and I'm curious what kind of experience that would be for this one in particular, because like you mentioned, I know that there is all the little links that you would get between the two. Um, so I feel like I'm gonna have to do that again just to watch them in chronological order.

SPEAKER_04 24:16

You're missing out on a real nice street. Star Wars and this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 24:20

There's also a level of like uh a quality appreciation that you guys have for like the 80s and those films that you don't get the letdown when you go to 2000s after, right? So you go the other way around, it feels great. Yeah, you know, if anything, you're like me and you have a little bit of a letdown because it's the 80s, but you know.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Well, I'll I'll tell you with the with the original, I guess you could call it, with with the 1982, I was, or maybe wasn't rather surprised by how well it holds up over time. Um, I was surprised during this rewatch how little backstory you really need to just like jump right into what's going on in the thing. Like you don't need a 20-minute like epilogue or prelude or whatever it's gonna be. You can just like first scene jump right in and see some cool stuff, which is really cool. I didn't I didn't need uh, you know, a first part just to start watching the thing. It was it was it's nice that you can just start watching and you can kind of pick up with all the characters, like who they are, where they're going, what their motives are, and it it flowed really well. With the 2011, I was surprised by how different the story was because I did not know that it was a prequel going into it. I didn't read about it, didn't watch anything about it. I just you know rented and hit play. So although they're very similar, it it was not a direct remake, which was nice, I think. It was surprising. It was also surprising that Norwegian actors were actually playing Norwegian characters and actually got to speak Norwegian uh do some talk. That's all I can say.

SPEAKER_04 25:42

Wish the same could be said for the Kurs of Layorona, but you know, hey, it's fine.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Yeah, that's painful.

SPEAKER_04 25:47

The 1982 version, it it doesn't it doesn't scare me, but I do think that there are some sudden things that happen that might startle you if you're prone to being startled. I also think when you when you stop to consider the creeping paranoia of it all, you know, when you live in a world where there's a pandemic raging and you have to wonder, like, okay, well, should I be staying away from you? Should I be staying away from you? This is just this classic tale, right? Like we covered a few movies like this last year, but it also raises that bigger question, right? Like, how would you know if you weren't you? Which is like a really weird thing to ponder. How would anyone else know if you weren't you? But that 2011 prequel though feels real heavy on the jump scare.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Yeah, a couple of those jump scares actually got me to be scared. I jumped twice. I wrote both times down. Yeah, that was a surprise to me because I was like, you know, I haven't been scared in a minute, and the the original didn't really scare me so much as like give me an unsettled feeling. Uh, so I was surprised by a jump scare in the remake.

SPEAKER_06 26:43

It was the opposite for me. I got a little scared from the old one and the new one. I didn't have any jump scares or anything like that. But they both have a creepiness, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 26:52

Yeah, they definitely do. I know Ryan and I were like WTF on this movie, just so shocked, staring at some of the scenes, and you just can't help but like be like, what the heck is going on in this place? Um, you know, all this built-up paranoia and everything. Um, it's funny, I don't recall any um jump scares, and y'all know I'm the queen of jump scares. Uh they get me every time. I don't know, maybe it's because I was watching it on my laptop, um, you know, at like 9 30 in the morning. So that'll do it to you. But uh Yeah, that's that launched tracks. Yeah, I mean, it was really dark here in Virginia during that time. So that's true. It was dark and rainy. Yeah, it was rainy, so it was kind of perfect weather.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

I think the first one, you know, there's there's a different type of like horror. I think you get in in older movies where it's like the horror of a scene happening. Um, it really gives you that sense of of true dread. And movies later on kind of move to trying to scare you with a moment. And you know, that gets us jump scares, obviously, where they have to do a real quick scare. And I think they can both be effective, but I do miss like that scene in Jaws where everyone's out at the beach. I've mentioned it 20,000 times, um, but something's wrong in the background, um, where the you know kids get needed and whatever. But it just it kind of shows that movies from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, before they moved to all jump scares in the 90s, you could have something scare you just by what's happening over the course of like several minutes. Like it could just be the terror of a of a whole scene versus a singular moment, which I like. And in the 2011, I didn't really feel that there was too many jump scares, but it is a more like short dose, little quick dose of scaring.

SPEAKER_04 28:35

I do think the 2011 version is built so perfectly to be a Halloween Horror Night's Haunted House that I do remember jumping a few times in that one, even though I typically don't jump. Here's the thing about the thing, right? It's based on a novel. So when you talk about its originality, you're really talking about how does a director and how does a production team infuse their own identity into this property. I think that 1982 stands on its own two legs within that regard. Granted, yes, there are similarities to Alien, absolutely. It's undeniable because that film has far-reaching impacts. But this film is considered the most faithful adaptation of the original novel on which it's based. It's classic scary. I also feel like it doesn't drag as much as Alien. So I do think it's able to differentiate itself in that. And I can't say enough how pleased I am that a team of people had the opportunity to remake a classic iconic film and they chose to just respect it and leave it alone. So that gets originality points for me based on that alone.

SPEAKER_06 29:37

Yeah, I'm gonna uh stand out here as uh not the Chris of the group and say that it's not original to me. It just feels like alien, it just feels like most other movies that have a group of people trapped somewhere trying to get away from something. Not that there aren't original parts, for sure, but it doesn't stand out to me as original. And I'm okay, as always, with being wrong.

SPEAKER_04 30:01

I mean, I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying, I'm giving it a couple points here and there.

SPEAKER_03 30:04

And I know you were like, oh, so it's just gonna go back and forth on who has this thing and da-da-da. And she's like, this isn't like fun, this isn't original, or and I was like, oh, I get that part, but it still felt original to me, although it had, you know, it reminded me of a lot of alien, especially the like specific scenes. But I thought both were original. I you know, I think even the remake slash prequel stands on its own, too.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

I mean, I don't feel like I'm somebody who's well-versed enough in alien sci-fi bullshit to really answer this question well. It did feel like a an alien sci-fi movie, which to me they kind of blurred together, but again, my palette is very unsophisticated in this in this area. There were parts where I was like, oh, I've literally never seen anything remotely like that before, and I enjoyed those moments. But I did feel like the the approach that the 2011 prequel took does earn it some originality points because I feel like that was a really good take.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

The 1982 is totally original. I don't know what you guys are smoking, but it's a sci-fi pillar, uh, and specifically a sci-fi horror pillar. It stands alone, its iconic kills are absolutely insane and very different from Alien, the 1982 version. 2011, I'll give you some some credit there for the alien linkage. Um, but yeah, the the alien just gore that we get and how strange and otherworldly the gore in this movie is, is so different and so probably shocking back then. Now it, you know, nothing shocks anyone. But total originality points coming for me for the 2011. You know, obviously it's not original, it's got the idea coming in from 1982, but it it took that inspiration and it did good things with it. So while it's not super duper original, its handling of the material was original.

SPEAKER_04 31:48

I dig it. Much respect. Actually, when we talk about the handling of things, I think both of these movies handled the ending spectacularly, in my opinion. I was super satisfied by both. That may not be a popular opinion, I don't know. But both of these endings have well, there's actually an element of the 2011 third act that I could have just done without. But I think when you think about the final moments and the final outcome of everything, it's the only ending that makes sense. I think it's the ending that needed to happen.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

I thought the um 1982 version had an anti-climactic ending, to say the least, without talk spoiling the ending. Interesting. Yeah. Um, I I'm I feel uh hopefully other people get on the boat with me. If not, then I'll be sadly disappointed. But a solo sailor. But I like this fusion of the end of you know the 2011 version to the 1982 version. And I know Ryan was like, oh, oh, oh. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to see it. And I didn't, I was I was happy about it. Um, because I think it gives us mystery that I mean you kind of get in the 1982 version. I just wanted a lot more than what I got.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

I totally feel that. The original ending I watched at this point, like two and a half of these movies ago, because I watched so much of this content over the past 48 hours. Um I can't say that I really remember the ending of the original. Um, but I will say, just like you, Alexis and Ryan, as the prequel was coming to an end, I was expecting some very specific things. And when they happened, I was like, oh, there it is. Um, so I really enjoyed that ending, but I doubt I would have had as much enjoyment had I not already seen the original content.

SPEAKER_06 33:30

Yeah, for me, I actually didn't care for either of these endings. There are definitely parts that are fine and some parts that are good. I think that I prefer the ending of the remake more than the ending of the original, but they didn't really do it for me. It it wasn't quite it wasn't quite it. It wasn't what I was looking for. Although, Chris, you are right. A lot of it is just logical.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

I can kind of see where you guys are coming from, but I feel completely differently. So the ending of the 1982 is a train wreck on the highway to hell. It ends in a very satisfying way for me, especially the final moments of the film, which follow up some great paranoia themes in a wonderful way. In the 2011, it was pretty darn good. It was almost there. There's just one extra scene I wish they would have added. We were talking about prequel overlap earlier, and I wish they would have just added one little thing that would have meshed perfectly and shown us the first scene from the 1982 movie. If that were in there, I would be completely happy with it. Um, but aside from that one scene I wish they had added, I didn't have any issues with it.

SPEAKER_04 34:32

Ooh, okay. I want to know exactly when you wanted that first scene to be cut off.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:37

Let's go ahead and start making our way to our ratings. Obviously, we have two films this week, so we gotta have a high body count. Alexis, what you got? How many deaths were in each film?

SPEAKER_03 34:45

We have um, surprisingly, 13 in each movie, which I really like the count on both of them because they're identical, but they're different people, obviously. I will say there's a lot more deaths to follow for sure.

SPEAKER_04 34:58

Yeah, what a uh horrifically unlucky number. But uh, you know, you shouldn't be in Antarctica, I guess. At all. With barely any clothes on, clearly. All right, and Ryan, what about that animal report?

SPEAKER_06 35:08

Listen, this is not how I wanted to start my year. Okay. There are movies that we've watched and things happen to animals, and you're like, man, this is so sad. But like these movies? First off, I had no idea. So this is your warning. The animal report is not good. It there's a lot that goes on, and I can't even really describe like if things happen to the animals. It's just a lot. There's just it's just a little bit overwhelming. I will say, to bring some joy to the animal report, some good Halloween costumes for your dog came out of this movie. So you can uh take it as you please, but be warned that it's not cool, it's not good. If you if you're sensitive, this is not the one.

SPEAKER_04 35:49

Yeah, it gets real cute and then real sad real fast.

SPEAKER_06 35:52

Yeah. In in both. There is uh there are moments in both.

SPEAKER_04 35:56

All right. Well, let's go ahead and start breaking things down then. The 1982 version of The Thing by John Carpenter. Is it a hacker slush?

SPEAKER_02 36:06

I will say that I have said this before. Sci-fi is not really my jam. When I saw that flying saucer in the opening scene, I was like, oh fuck, here we go. And honestly, there were I clocked it in at 16 minutes into the movie where nothing at all has happened. And I was like, oh, can we get something? And then we get so much. We get some of the greatest sci-fi gore I have ever seen in my life, some of the greatest practical effects, regardless of genre that I'd ever seen, and so much like really unrelenting just gore. And there were moments where I was like, is the camera gonna like turn away? And no, it doesn't. You just have to look at all of this. But then, you know, it kind of plateaus again, and you get a little bit more of nothing, and I guess they're building tension, but I didn't really cling on to the characters too much. Ultimately, I have to hack this movie uh because it committed one of the cardinal sins that I can just never get into, and that is this movie takes place in a world where women do not exist whatsoever. And that is something I just can't latch on to. Uh, we recently reviewed uh one of the Saw movies with Jordan, and they mentioned that they have a hard time relating to female characters, and I was like, that's so true of me, except the complete opposite. Like, there wasn't an ounce of femininity for me to like relate to or care about in this movie, and all these straight dudes just blurred together in my mind. It got to the end credits where it said Kurt Russell, and I was like, holy shit, I thought that was Patrick Swayze the whole time. My bad. So ultimately, if you like gore or you like practical effects, watch this because it's got some excellent stuff. But for me, this is not something I will watch again, and it's a hack.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Well, this was definitely my jam and my toast and my morning cup of tea. This is an enthusiastic slash for me. It's a horror classic, it's a sci-fi classic, it's a sci-fi horror classic. It has, like you've mentioned, an amazing use of practical effects. It is a joy to watch, and I think anyone who likes a little bit of aliens in their life, they should watch this.

SPEAKER_03 37:58

I appreciate the significance of both movies. I really do. Um, I, like everyone else, appreciate the gore in this. It was very shocking, very uh perplexing to look at. And I think it really was like beautiful. I was like, oh, I'm not like solar. I'm like kind of grossed out, don't want to watch. It was like very artistic gore. And I appreciate that, and I love that, and I love the storyline. I felt tense throughout the movie. I knew what was going on based on what the characters were doing. There was a there was character development, even it when you had so many characters, or they they were able to give me pieces of the puzzle that I was missing, and you know, you're dropped into this thing and you really feel the story come alive. And for that, I'm definitely giving this a slash. I don't think I could give it anything else.

SPEAKER_06 38:48

Um so for the original, you know, I I go into something like this a little bit skeptical, I think similar to Paris, right? Like, just not sure this is gonna be my cup of tea. Um, and there is just so much good in this movie, and it's really surprising when this isn't your cup of tea, right? You get some interesting characters, you get incredible practical effects, which are generally not my favorite. I know that's the uncool thing to say in the horror community, but like sometimes I can tell it was a toilet paper roll when they use it in practical effects, you know? Like it sometimes it just doesn't work for me. In this movie, it's incredible, and I did not expect the thing to be what it is. I had no idea I was going into a monster alien, like uh take over the world type of situation. I thought I was going in for like one killer thing. Um, and so it was such a nice surprise. I've heard so many things about it. I will say I think the plot of this movie gets a bit stale, and it's kind of like the circumstances. I mean, there's people trapped in Antarctica with a monster. There's only a bit so far it can go, there's only but so much they can do. You can't really introduce new characters, you can't really introduce new settings. And so that's a place where this movie lets me down a little bit. But with that being said, it's totally a slash. This is a really good movie. It's honestly one of my favorite. I don't know, is this an 80s slasher? It's not, but it's one of my favorite, like classic 80s horror movies that I've ever seen. And I I really, really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Oh, I'm so happy to hear that.

SPEAKER_04 40:29

I'll keep this brief. Hell yeah, this is a slash. I mean, this movie is a clear indication of why John Carpenter is a master of horror, regardless of sub-genre. He's not just a master of that one slasher he did. You have beautiful cinematography bringing us the set and characters to life. You have the insane quality of practical effects that we've all spoken about and will continue to speak about, I'm sure. But above all else, this movie does the ultimate thing right, and that's create atmosphere, both in terms of its setting and in its tension between its characters. I don't know that I've seen a movie that does paranoia quite like this, that still feels so relevant even to today. And that's saying a lot because Contagion felt real relatable last year. And Paris, you're absolutely right. It's a bummer that there are no women in this movie, but I'm not docking the movie for that because there are also no women in the story upon which this is based. It's also in the 80s, the original film is for the 50s, and we know that in terms of feminism, right, it has been a journey. And, you know, there are many roles in the military now that women still can't have. So I'm not mad at it, but the 2011 version has some problems. There are some areas where it's really, really strong, and there are some areas where it's really, really weak, particularly in its third, in its third act when things get off the rails. And that corrects the mistake of the original, and it does have two female characters in it. And I actually particularly enjoy them. This isn't this isn't a movie that I'm ever gonna take super seriously. It's not gonna be a movie that I remember for the rest of my life. Honestly, give it a couple months, I might forget about this movie by the time we do our end-of-year recap. But it was a fun ride, and for that, it still gets a slash. Ooh, interesting. 2011, The Thing. The prequel to The Thing.

SPEAKER_06 42:14

It's a hacker slash. So I want to tell you guys about a silly thing that is happening in my mind with these movies, and maybe nobody here on the podcast will know what I'm talking about. But um, this movie, the set of movies, The Thing, and this video game that's really popular right now called Among Us exist in a Venn diagram where the middle is there's an imposter among us, and it's both in this movie and in this game. Anyway, I just wanted to share that. These movies got into me and I like them. I like them a lot. I've never seen a prequel like this. And I I evidently there are others that exist, but I've never seen anything like this. And for me, the CGI in this movie is not bad. You guys just hate CGI. I hate to tell you that, but it's not bad. There are a few moments where it's like, eh, okay, but it's it's it I've seen so much worse. I will say that the characters in this movie are not the strongest for me. Like I didn't care that much, but I kind of also didn't care in the original that much either. And just like Paris said, in the original, all the people kind of mixed together for me. I didn't know who was who at that point, honestly. But then we get to the point where they start to kind of give like not backstory, but like when they go to the ship and like we get the Prometheus feelings, all of that really didn't do it for me. And it it was it's a situation where the more background information or like the more context they gave me, the less I wanted. And so for me, it's a slight hack here, which is weird. I am usually the opposite, but I just I it dragged on a little bit too much. I wanted it to end sooner than it did. And once again, the storyline gets stale because you're in Antarctica, everything's stale. There's nothing to do. So I got sick of seeing people think other people were imposters, you know?

SPEAKER_03 44:05

For where this movie came from, so out of the 2000s, we get we've discovered a lot of uh bad remakes. Um, and this is not one of them uh at all. I'm glad they took um it as a prequel, and I'm glad they infused some of you know the terror and the you know little nuances that connected the two movies. And I just love it. And I also love, you know, it doesn't feel like it's supposed to be for this movie, it does definitely not feel like it's in the 80s where it's supposed to be set during at all. Not because of the sci-fi ness, because of their clothes, but I'll talk about that during the spoiler section. But I do appreciate this sci-fi ness. Like I love, I love Prometheus, I love Alien, and probably not as much as Mac, but I love how they infuse that into this. And it to me, it's very well done, and I like the high-techness of this compared to the 1982 version, at least in that sense, not in the gore. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:07

I can appreciate that the 2011 is not a direct remake or reboot in in a way. It's it's really an actual prequel that's it's kind of cool. Uh, it's unfortunate that it wasn't like in name a prequel. You know, they they couldn't come up with a good like subtitle for it that would make it, you know, the thing it begins, the thing, the first thing, the thing, the other base. You know, they just couldn't come up with a good one. Um, thankfully, not the thing too, electric boogaloo. But um, you know, it's it was really cool. I didn't know it was a prequel going into it. Um, and so I think it was it was cool. It was a good use of the source material, it was a good use of that inspiration coming in. It's really entertaining the CGI, and I always almost I almost always hate CGI, but the CGI wasn't bad. It didn't really do a huge disservice to the thing. Um, obviously, I think the practical effects were a huge part of the first film, and I would have appreciated you know some updated practical effects, but we didn't get that, and that's okay. It didn't it didn't really hamper the film's performance. So I think it's a slash. It's you know, it's not as enthusiastic a slash as as my as my slash that I gave to the 1982, but it's it's still a slash of a movie.

SPEAKER_04 46:18

It's a perfectly serviceable slash.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

Exactly. Uh so going into the remake, I was expecting to enjoy it more, which I did. Uh first off, we get two female characters that I have that I can kind of follow through the storyline, and I think that was a big reason of why I was able to stay so engaged with the film, uh, where in the previous one I had checked out a few times because I was like, oh, what's going on? Who even cares? Um and you get a lot of the same great things that I loved about the original. Like you get like a really wet, juicy autopsy scene, you get like a lot more unrelenting gore scenes where you're forced to look at some of the most horrific, disgusting things you may have ever seen in your nightmares or otherwise. Uh but ultimately this movie kind of helped me to realize something else I didn't really like about the original, which is that it's very much an action movie. There's tons of explosions, there's tons of like fire, and it's all very much not something that I care for. Like by the third or fourth explosion, I was like, okay, now we're just blowing shit up to blow it up. It felt very much like that to me. Uh towards the end, we kind of get into the more sci-fi, like spaceship shit, and I was like, okay, now you're really losing me. Uh so ultimately, this is also a hack from me. I will say though, that I think between the two of these movies, there's a slash in there somewhere for me because each one helped me to appreciate the other in a really unique way that I haven't experienced before. So if you do watch these, watch both of them. Uh, I think either order is fine because you're gonna get something out of each um each path that you take.

SPEAKER_06 47:52

Paris, this is one of those things where like you're kind of predictable, but then this happens, and like I thought you were gonna be into the the remake, but now that you say it, it totally makes sense. So I don't know. I can never predict you at all.

SPEAKER_04 48:04

Well, there we have it, folks. The 1982 The Thing is an icon and it stands up pretty well here. We have four slashes and one hack for John Carpenter's film, and the 2011 version certainly had room to tank here. It hasn't, it's happened in the past. It managed to escape by with just two hacks compared to three slashes. So we have quite a bit to break down here. You can find the original The Thing available for rent, but if you have HBO Max, you can actually find the 2011 prequel streaming there. So check them both out and join us in the second half so we can compare and contrast. We'll see you in a bit.

SPEAKER_01 48:44

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SPEAKER_04 49:27

Welcome back, folks. You are now entering the spoiler zone for the thing. Both 2011 and 1982. Now, the 2011 prequel earned two hacks and three slashes, which fares a little better than most remakes we see around here, while the 1982 iteration racked up four slashes and one hack. We have a lot to get to here, but before we get into the specifics of our ratings, Alexis, they're both known for intense gore. So what's our gore score?

SPEAKER_03 49:52

The gore score on this is high in both. I would say, and I never thought I'd be ever saying this, but something made in the 80s had more gore than its remake in the 2000s, in my opinion. I think it has to do with a lot of the practical effects of this movie. And you have this nasty slime on this thing. That's what she said. Uh just kidding. Just kidding. But it's made from the substance card carbapole. So I guess um choose in hair gels, also used in the inside of Twinkies, which I don't sound disgusting.

SPEAKER_06 50:26

I don't understand how it can be both.

SPEAKER_03 50:27

So when you they mixed it with water, this substance, they um end up using as slime. Well, like I said, it's also used on the inside of Twinkies, and I know you guys remember the kennel scene in the 1982 version. How can we forget this?

SPEAKER_02 50:40

Never forget.

SPEAKER_04 50:41

Rest in peace, all the good boys and girls.

SPEAKER_03 50:43

To make that alien yellow sort of stuff, and that's what they used. Um, they didn't want it to look like blood, they really wanted it to look like something um extraterrestrial. So, out of that movie, like some of these kills are really intense. I think we'll break it down the gores and we'll talk about 1982, and then we'll talk about 2011, just because this movie is profoundly, like Chris said, known for this. To go along with that, I know there are a lot of bodies in this movie, but I feel like there's only a few that you really see this intense gore with. A lot of them are like, oh, they're done, oh, they're off, oh, off screen. Some something happened. You don't get to see as much gore um in every single person's death, um, including Knowles as well. Um, Knall's death scene was originally filmed um with him being attacked by this um box blair creature. So a much longer and gorier version uh was planned for us where Knolls uh was appearing out of the crack of the floor. Do you remember him down in like the basement sort of area? And he's screaming um for McCready, like just you know, it was he's both getting assimilated at the same time. Tentacles were gonna be popping out of him. It was supposed to be great. Knolls, unfortunately, the last death of the movie, had to be cut short because of budgets. So I really wish they had this in the movie because I really, really appreciated it. Also, um, when they were doing a test audience, a lot of the people laughed during this scene. Definitely, John Carpenter's like, we're taking this out, it's just gonna be ambiguous, and we're leaving it at that.

SPEAKER_04 52:12

Oh, I'm really happy that they made that decision because this is this might be a weird thing. I every time I've seen this, I've always felt the worst for Knowles. He's the dude there, he's a cook. You know, he seems like a young kid who probably is there, maybe because he has to be. I think you know you make choices to be in Antarctica, but for some reason, he just has this like air of innocence to him. I know he's a grown-ass man, I get it, but for some reason, his death I always feel the worst about. I feel very sad for him.

SPEAKER_02 52:41

Was it the rollerblades?

SPEAKER_04 52:43

Honestly, it might be. I think it's like the relatability of the rollerblades listening to superstition. I just, you know, everybody else I could give two shits about, but Knolls and the dogs, they're my boys.

SPEAKER_03 52:54

So I definitely wish there was more gore in that part. For a favorite death of mine, it's definitely like Palmer. You have this build-up for Palmer, and it just pays off. And honestly, it's kind of funny, you know, when they're all tied together. Ryan and I were like, oh my gosh, she's just going off. And they're like, no, no, like it was just like it was kind of funny to me. And I just thought it was a very interesting scene when you have the buildup of these the tests that they're doing. You're like, what's gonna happen once who's it gonna be? And every time. Um, usually scenes like that, I'm sure people are like, All right, I know which one it is, but I essentially didn't know who it was, so it ended up being on a funnier note, too. So Palmer's death is definitely my favorite.

SPEAKER_06 53:33

Yeah, that one was definitely a good time, especially because they're like not only were these people tied, like their hands tied together, like handcuffed, right? But they're tied together, which is such a like I don't know, back in the day thing to do. Um, but that was a really good time. And I would say that one I didn't I don't think they gave any like hints that it was gonna be him. And then also this test that they were doing, nobody really knew that it was gonna work. So um I enjoyed that one, but my favorite kill from the original was uh our boy Microsoft, aka Windows, mostly just because I liked calling him the wrong name the entire movie. But like you can't be mad at somebody getting eaten, you know. I mean, eventually he gets like everything else in these movies, attacked by a flamethrower. He gets burnt. Um, but the the eaten the eaten part was a good time.

SPEAKER_04 54:28

I feel that. We'll talk about hints when we get to visual element because I'm very excited to break down that scene. But I think my favorite from the original is actually Copper when he's trying to use the defibrillator on Norris and he just caves in like a hollow turkey or something. I don't know. It reminds me actually, this is a very weird thing, Christmas Vacation, where they cut into that dry ass turkey and it just breaks apart. For some reason, this reminds me of that.

SPEAKER_06 54:52

That scene is amazing, and I it it will stick with me the way like the misery ankle breaking scene does. Like I was not prepared, and I was like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 55:02

Yeah, it's like one minute you're trying to save a man's life, the next your arms are gone. So lovely.

SPEAKER_02 55:08

Is my favorite death allowed to be the wolf? Because it is. Oh wow. Watching that like husky burst in 12 different directions, revealing layer after layer of like more mucous membranes and like tentacles and teeth was one of the most like jarring and deeply personally scarring things I've ever seen. My grandma has always had like husky puppies since I was a baby. And just like seeing that visual just like shook me to my core. And I still think about it. And it's actually the reason I made my boyfriend watch the original one because I was like, babe, at least just watch it until you get to this one part because it's absolutely wild. And it's again one of the best practical effect scenes I've ever seen in my entire life.

SPEAKER_04 55:47

I absolutely love Huskies and Malamutes, and that broke my heart so much.

SPEAKER_02 55:51

Oh, it was sad, but it was also like, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_06 55:54

Yeah, I was wholly unprepared, especially since I had watched the remake and I was like, oh, the dog dies, but like, you know, nothing crazy. And Chris was like, What? And I was like, Yeah, it's nothing crazy. And she was like, uh, okay, I wait, we talk tomorrow.

SPEAKER_04 56:07

I couldn't remember. I'd only seen it once before, and for some reason I just remember I thought a dog died more viciously, not just a blood trail. She was like, I'm sure it's the same.

SPEAKER_06 56:17

And I was like, This doesn't really seem like something you could make a Halloween costume out of.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

For me at that point, I knew nothing about what I was in for, so it really quickly went from like zero to sixty, and I was like, Oh, holy shit, what movie is this? So true. So I I that's something that will always stick with me.

SPEAKER_01 56:34

I think I'm I'm gonna pick one that kind of catches you off guard, which is gonna be Clark just getting shot in the head. You know, because you're you're going after the guy who's obviously now in charge of everything and making the decisions. Uh, and you're bringing a knife to a gunfight and it's game over. And uh it it quickly was for him.

SPEAKER_06 56:51

He also like seems sus the whole time. You know, you're like, oh, it's him. Like, why is nobody really paying attention to him? You guys need to pay more attention to him, and then he it it wasn't him. But honestly, though, if someone killed all my dogs, I would too.

SPEAKER_04 57:03

Uh truly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:04

Truly. I'd be the most sus, I guess. With an axe. To me, I think the practical effects make the um 1982 version seem a lot more gory. My favorite, honestly, connection and or death would be Collins. From the new one, from the new one. So I know you know it's shown as a deleted scene. Um, and we've all seen the aftermath of it. It's, you know, slit wrists, it's like super grisly, slit wrists, and you know, you have this whole throat, which I don't know how someone could do. Like it's it's the throat part at least.

SPEAKER_06 57:37

For me, my question is which comes first? I know that's a horrible thing to say, but like what the wrist came the order of operations, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:44

The wrist came first. The freeze in blood. Yes, yes, and I love that. So funny thing is, they that these two movies, like the director from the 2011 version, paid a lot of attention to certain things, especially the Norwegian camp as well. Like a lot of screenshots were taken from the 1982 version, which I thought was super interesting, but they're also there's an inconsistency with um Colin's death. So in the 2011 prequel, he's made to seem to have these deep cuts. Um, meanwhile, in Carpenter's uh film, when they're when Mac and Copper come and find his body, he's misses missing a significant amount, but he's um pretty much almost close to being decapitated. So it's way more grisly in this one. The expressions of both characters are also noticeably different. Um, he seems more calm in the prequel. Like it's like, hey, just gotta do this and get this over with. But in Carpenter's version, the mouth is like extremely wide open. Um, like you said, you get all of these like extra stuff, and I think that has to go with all of the attention that was paid um to all the special effects. So radically different um in their perception of the appearance and the location as well.

SPEAKER_06 58:59

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_03 59:00

And like, I mean, what's more chilling than uh bloody icicles? It is the most chilling thing that they should have had that in Jack Frost, in my opinion. Like, why where were the bloody icicles? Yeah, I mean, or maybe we don't need more bloody icicles. I don't know. We'll see that in the Norwegian review. I'll take that. What about you guys? What do you think about the gore? What did you appreciate about the gore or even had a favorite death in this movie?

SPEAKER_01 59:24

You know, it was interesting watching it because again, while I had started watching it, I was like, oh, they're playing, you know, they're paying homage to the origin story in the 1982, but I didn't realize that it was a straight-up prequel and it made more sense as I was watching it, of course. Um, but the the gore is interesting because sure it's not practical, but it looks pretty good for using digital effects. And I think Adam Finch's was probably my favorite uh death from the 2011 uh because of that that split face. You know, that was such an iconic corpse from the 82 film. Uh the fusing was like super fast and super interesting to watch as they're like literally their heads just like get like close together, and it's like, well, you're you're part of me now. Um, so that was really cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:04

Totally agree. I also think that character deserves a hell out of it. That actor, it plays the douchey-iss, dude.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:10

Honestly saying, I was so happy to fucking see him go. And I'm like, look, man, I know you're not making it out of this, but I hope when your time comes, it's satisfying. Agree.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:19

He is a hella jerk in Hot Chick with Rob Schneider, which is honestly a non-horror movie related on my top five. Don't ask me why. I love freaking love Rob Schneider movies. I don't know why. It's a good one.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:33

Something that's funny about that, like that version of that monster is seeing the remake first. I when they when their heads like fuse, I was just like, eh, like, what are we what are we doing here?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:46

Like, why did we do this? You knew the 18, 1982 could do it better, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:00:50

Well, I didn't know that it was gonna be there. So then going back and watching the original, when you see the two heads, you're like, oh my god, this is not like 2011, let's just do something crazy. This is John Carpenter did something crazy, and we had to make an origin story for it. And it just made it so much richer because it really does seem like this is just something ridiculous that they they decided to do in the 2000s and have these two heads merge together. But you're like, no, no, no, this is canon, this is original, this is what's there. And that made like seeing the two together made that so much better. Because in 2011, that standing by itself, I was like, ugh, this is dumb.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:28

Yeah, it's kind of weird. It's like John Carpenter was like way ahead of his time. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:35

For me, my favorite kill from the remake is in the helicopter, and it's Olav's death.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:41

Really?

SPEAKER_06 1:01:41

Yes, because you think it's gonna be Olav. Yeah, because he's the one that's sick, he's the one that seems like he's gonna turn into a monster.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:50

He did seem like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:51

And then nope, it's not. And I didn't I didn't necessarily like love the uh effect of like that. I think that was the one where like his face like splits sideways, right? Yeah, that was like our first, like, dang, that's some CGI, bro. But okay, it was okay. Um, but just the the buildup to it and then what actually happened, it just was something that I really enjoyed.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

Okay, I I appreciate that. Because at first I was like, that face split from Griggs was one of like the lower moments of CGI for me. I was like, oh, that's that's bad CGI.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:21

But so fun that it wasn't Olaf.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:23

Yeah, no, that was definitely uh unexpected. And with the the two faces fusing together, I'll be honest, having seen the original first, when they found that corpse, it didn't register to me that that was like two faces attached. I just saw like teeth and eyes, and I didn't know what I was looking at. And then I saw it actually happen in the remake, and I was like, oh, that's a cool thing that they decided to do for this. And it wasn't until I rewatched the original that I was like, oh, that was, and it took me so long to make the connection. But once I got there, I was like, that's very cool. Uh but I have to say, best death of 2011 uh in my favorite death of the year so far goes to our girl Juliet. I think it was a very good use of uh depth of field because they have her in the background, uh kind of like bubbling apart. And I was like, you know, if we had seen that CGI in focus, it would have been a little shoddy. Cast it in the background, blur it out. Let's see her bubble open and then her tits just like split open into a giant like alien mouth, and then literally her legs running around with her like torso mouth and her head like dangling off the top was both comedic brilliance and horror movie fuel for nightmares.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:25

So that's actually also my favorite death, Paris.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:28

Excellent.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:29

I think it's one of the bet better moments of CGI in the movie. There's a a certain death later where you just see someone's face on a CGI thing and it's just weird. But her death is my favorite only because of like the torn humanity in there, because her facial expressions give the impression that she is aware of what's happening and she's looking for help. She's looking like she just has no control of the situation, and there's a point where Kate, you know, says to burn it, and up until that point, you've only seen like Juliet's face, and then all of a sudden the thing turns, and it it's just it seems like this weird duality because you know, in the 1982 version and you know, even in the ones that you had seen up until the point in the 2011 prequel, it seems like once the thing is in you, it's in you, right? And it has full control to so to see that humanity from her. I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I absolutely loved it because it felt more emotional than just oh, it's a fucking weird alien.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27

I love that, Chris.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

That makes me like this kill even more. It's kind of cool that the the cast was like sitting around for for the 1982 trying to like decide if you're the thing, do you know it?

SPEAKER_06 1:04:39

I asked the same question.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:41

So they decided, they came to an agreement that if you are the thing when you're like still in human form, you don't realize it yet.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:48

That's what I thought too, because otherwise they would tell on themselves, maybe without even realizing it. Because humans are not very good at keeping secrets.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:56

Exactly. But see, for me, it was like the moment that Juliet started to like point the finger at someone else, I was like, oh, she's the thing. She's starting to cast blame, she's trying to deflect.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:07

That's the thing. And then it was revealed that she was. So I kind of thought that you lose all sentience as yourself and you are like just the thing.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:14

I think you're still you, but it takes over part, like it makes you do things that you wouldn't normally do. Because it definitely is definitely playing some games, right? Like trying to say, like, oh, I saw so-and-so acting funny and like stuff like that. So there's definitely some part of it that takes you over, but I think you don't know. And I think we saw the most evidence of that in the original where they're like tied up and like they're actually waiting to see if it's them.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:37

Yeah. I think my impression of it was that it takes full control over you and it's fully aware of what it's doing. But for some reason, Juliet just struck me as so good, like just so innately good that there was just this bit of her that shined through while that transformation was happening. That it was like kind of like suppressed, buried, buried deep down. And that was just like her last remaining. Gaining bit of a consciousness. Everyone else, though, super suspicious. Not a fan.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:05

Now I I can tell you something I am a fan of. I don't know if you feel this way, Chris. We talked about your favorite kills already. So the doctor losing his arms, that whole scene for me was so amazing. So separate from the actual like death itself, that's what I'm talking about. A whole scene, you know, causing that sense of terror and of dread. Um, I mean, practical effects, of course, were absolutely amazing in it, but you're just not taken out, you know, in the moment with the effects happening. Like you're still dug in deep. CGI sometimes, like as soon as it is an effect happens, you're like, okay, this is a movie, that's a digital effect. I'm seeing something basically a form of artwork shown on top of a film that I was watching, and you can get separated. But I think like from the start to finish of that whole scene, you're just like mouthagape just watching.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:50

I gotta say, my favorite scene in really both movies was the autopsy scenes, because they were really so wet and juicy. And like the deeper you dug into these carcasses and these creatures, the more like layers you found of like, you know, membranes and like mucus and organs and tissues, and like they were so artfully done in both movies that I was like, I could just watch this all day. Even though, like, if this was a person, I'm sure we wouldn't have seen as much. But I think because it was sci-fi, they were less afraid to force you to look at it for so long. Um, so I really enjoyed the care that was put into those little dissection moments.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:28

Yeah, they use real animal organs in the 1982 version.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:31

I absolutely believe that.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:33

Totally believe that as well. Um, it reminded me of Independence Day, you know, when they're an autopsy, doing an autopsy on the alien. I love the like stickiness and the membrane and stuff. Yeah, it's it's definitely cool. My favorite was in the 1982 version was the generator room when they're going down and doing like sort of the tunnels, um, setting up, getting ready to blow this whole place to shreds. Um, and I love it because then you have I know tremors came out after this, but it reminded me of tremors when you have the thing like coming through the sand. But it was like I got tremors wives too. Yeah, so I I mean I really enjoyed it. And I mean I've said this before, but in the remake, um, it's I love the ending where you see this all, you know, it's a visual thing too, but mostly in my opinion, it was my favorite scene. But when they she first slides down, she gets onto this spaceship, and it it gave me Prometheus vibes, alien vibes, and I love that. Um, and I love the look of it too. So it was just like an interesting scene to like see her walk in, and there's like all these nooks and crannies, and like just the feel of that whole scene was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:41

Another scene in the remake that got me good, and this is where the two jump scares occurred, is when we have Derek going on his own to investigate like the ice block. And at first I was like, okay, this character would never do this, nobody would ever just go and wander into this thing alone. Uh, and then they like got me with the fake out jump scare when the guy comes to like investigate, like, he's like, Hey, what the fuck are you doing in here? And then they got me the second time when the alien actually burst out, uh, and both times I was like, oh shit, oh shit. So that that was a very good moment of tension for me, and I was vulnerable enough to get got twice.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:12

Yeah, that's that's so true. That honestly, that whole like uh area where they had the just the giant ice block was super creepy. I don't have a favorite scene from the remake, uh, but to go backwards a bit when Dr. Blair in the original is just wrecking everything with an axe, like all the I guess he had also wrecked the helicopter and everything, but like the the all the computers. I don't know, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:37

It was radio equipment.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:39

Alien technology, you know, 80s radios. That for me was one of the scenes where I I actually still believe that Dr. Blair was a good guy, not an imposter, however you say it, but he was going crazy, and I would do the exact same thing if I'm stuck in a in a room, basically with a bunch of people and I don't know who's good.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:58

Yeah, that's like the overwhelming burden of this crippling knowledge, right? Like if this thing gets out, humanity and the world as we know it is over. I don't know. It's like the burden of brilliance and being able to connect the dots and have the foresight to what's to come. That's enough to drive anyone crazy.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:13

Yeah, and the other side of it is if it doesn't get out, we're all dead. So it's like, you know, do I try to save myself and risk humanity or uh, you know, just give in. It's it's a weird one. It's tough.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:25

Yeah, there there are a lot of good moments in the 2011 version. And while it was a lot of fun, none of it stood out as like a particularly big favorite for me. But what was a favorite was that blood test scene in the original that was actually taken from the novella that this whole movie is based on. And obviously it it's hard to watch it and not see it as an allegory for the AIDS epidemic in the in the 80s, but it feels like such a great culmination of the stakes and how broken down their trust and sense of humanity already is. Most of the people in that room were human, and Clark didn't have to die. He was still a human and McReady killed him. Now, granted, he killed him in self-defense and Clark was being aggressive, but it shows that yeah, the alien the alien may not have infiltrated him, but they already lost their humanity. And actually, you know, we're talking earlier about hints, and you know, are there any hints that Palmer was it? There are actually hints all around the movie about who is assimilated and when. And Dean Cundy, the cinematographer, actually made a lighting choice to make sure that every actor in that scene that's still human has light catching in their eyes. But Palmer doesn't. He has these dead eyes and they're just completely shadow.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:41

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:41

So that is like the first subtle indication that he is the one.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:45

I love that like extra mile that they've gone for such a tiny detail that me as a dumb bitch didn't notice at all. But now it makes me want to go back and see it.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:54

There's a lot of those things, and there's a point where Windows sees someone being assimilated, and he runs out of the room, and you can hear the sound of keys hitting the floor. That's the moment that the keys then become accessible for the blood to be tainted later. So that is when possession is lost of the keys. There's all these little things that you seriously could take a hundred viewings and never pick up on. But visually, for me, the most important backbone or the most important foundation that this whole movie's built on is its lighting for exact reasons like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:25

Wowzers. I had no freaking idea. I knew his eyes looked, he just looked not like everyone else, but I wasn't sure why.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:34

That means it was effective.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:35

Got a prominent brow, blocking the light.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:38

They went really hardcore with everything, and I and I appreciate it so much. You know, my I think my favorite stuff about this this movie, and I mean b both movies uh honestly, but visually, it's just like the practical effects, the set, they're both amazing. Um, and Universal up to this point have never made you know uh this type of monster movie before with this much like budget needing to be spent on effects. They offered them like 200 grand for creature effects originally, and then of course they're like, we need way more than that, because they had no idea what it was gonna take to make this thing, and they went to such extreme lengths. So they needed this to look like obviously Antarctica. This wasn't filmed in Antarctica, of course, because you know, we don't like to freeze. They filmed it um in sound stages in LA, and they had to refrigerate them down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh my god, literally 100 degrees outside because it's LA, and then they they had to refrigerate the sound stages. They like thought about you know, instead of like filming them in like a cold locker or something, and they realized you don't have any room for that, so they just cooled the whole darn thing down.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:42

Imagine living your life to the point where you live you move out to LA, you're in the show biz, right? You are a person who is acclim uh acclimated to a very warm temperature, and you show up to work one day and you're in that kind of condition for production. That's a big no from me, dog. I'm not trying to live through that. It's a hard noise.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:02

So just like the AC bill of it all.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:03

That's what $14 million of the $15 million budget is.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:08

I will say there was a significant portion of this movie when they would walk outside, and I was like, I don't think y'all are wearing enough clothes for Antarctica, bro.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:14

Yeah, we both were like that. A leather jacket, dude. Yeah, McReedy shows out there with his thermal on, with his sleeves rolled up with a Henley top on top of it, and it's like, what the where the fuck are you, dude? This isn't like Ohio, right? This isn't like, oh, I'm so cool. I haven't done like the cold, so I'm wearing shorts. This isn't that. You're in the coldest fucking place on earth. Alexis, literally the whole movie was like, no, that's like when we were in Ohio.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:38

Yeah, exactly. Some Midwest shit right there. It was pretty funny. We were like, what the heck? Like, we've seen you can't fool us because we've seen a lot of cold weather movies, especially on how sometimes we like to group our movies. Um, but everyone's always wearing heavier jackets in Alaska out of all places.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:00

Yeah, nobody was this bold in 30 Days of Night. Exactly. And look, man, you got some hair, but you don't have enough hair to make that make sense.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:07

Listen, speaking of that hair, earlier, Chris, you were mentioning the lighting in the original. And I felt like the scene where Patrick Swayze slash Kurt Russell is exploring the Norwegian ship, I feel like that, like one, he was totally giving a look, uh wildly impractical look, but a powerful 80s look nonetheless. Um but the lighting in that scene like really stood out to me, um, partially because whenever there's like glacial, like large structures of ice, the the way light interacts with those is always so like beautiful to me. So you have this like really cool lighting coming in like through the ice, through the snow, and then you have his like warm lamp light that's kind of just like setting him apart from everything else in the scene. I thought it was just a visual uh like delight to see that contrast.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:51

The set in 2011 was absolutely insane. It was so pretty, so like fun to look at. Uh, I don't know if it seemed quite as like lived in as the 82s film, but it did seem like very like European scientific research station, and I definitely appreciated that vibe. But it's crazy when you think about the fact that this is a prequel. If that existed in the first movie, you want to like recreate it as best as you can. And they were not about to be really lame about it, they wanted to put in the hard work. They literally had to use Kurt Russell's height as an estimate of how big you know the doors and the rooms and the whole set should be to bring it close to the original movie because you don't like keep the blueprints and crap, you know, from a movie 50 years ago or whatever. And they had to like even keep screenshots from the first movie on the set just to make sure that they could get all the small details the whole time, all the way down to having the right version of a Norwegian helicopter. That is so satisfying.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:47

I'm gonna hit you with a few random details, and one of them relates to that, which is there is a lovely arched doorway that goes out of this camp in the original, and they like uh a couple of times, I think Kurt Russell is standing outside of it, and it's just like such a nice I literally in the middle of this movie found myself thinking, what a nice doorway! I'd love to have a doorway like that one day. And that, my friends, is what's wrong with me as a person. I have two other things to bring up for the original movie here. One is a least favorite visual element, and one is a most favorite. The first is the fade to black transitions that just randomly happened. Yes, I was just it was like things were happening, and then it was just like, ah, no, we're not gonna tell you yet, fade to black. And I was just like, okay. So that was like two or three of those that I was very unhappy about. However, that's the 80s of it all, as Paris would say. The absolute best thing visually about this movie, Chris Stop Smirking, it's obviously the title sequence of the thing. Hell yeah. It's amazing. That text on the screen, there's so little to represent the thing in the marketing. It's just like a shape and a light, and it's not even the shape of the thing, it's the shape of a person. But ooh, that title sequence, though, it's so good.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:10

Yes, and I loved that. Loved what everyone else said too. So the practical effects, and I'm just like, yes, yes, and yes, yes, yes. But I also loved it how they took that element, kind of similar to what they did um in Halloween, is they took that and made that a part of the 2006 version too. So I love that because it's I wasn't sure what I was expecting, and then bam, you got the lasers or whatever the light from the spaceship, whatever I want to call it. And then that's what it was, and I was not expecting that, and I loved that part.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:44

The thing is known for its practical effects, and I just want to give a shout-out to Rob Botton, who worked himself to exhaustion, had to go to the hospital because of how hard he was working on this film. You know, when I think of practical effects, it's this movie, and then it's the original nightmare on Elm Street for me that have like these great creature elements that feel, you know, in some parts they may look hokey with modern eyes, but they feel so good and timely. For me, the effects are hands down the best part of the original for me.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:13

I mean, we're talking about a head that was removed from a body by gravity, separates itself and then grows eight legs and becomes a whole new monster. Like that part. This stuff is unrivaled, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:28

One of the things that I'm really happy about is there's a pitch to make to shoot a lot of these scenes in stop motion, and Jaron Carpenter is like a hell not of that. So I think being able to take Rob Botton and his team and actually put the level of love that they did into these effects. And even when you think of like, you know, we talk all the time about puppets and how many people it takes to work a puppet. It took 50 technicians to work the thing, the final thing that you see in this movie. I just love it so much. I think so rarely do things come together that well in a movie where it can stand the test of time. And, you know, obviously, we don't look at stomachs exploding with green stuff in 2021 and think, oh, yeah, it looks fucking great. But for being a practical effect, it's amazing that someone took physical items together and just made that happen. It still blows my mind to this day.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:20

Yeah. And like so much of it you know was like we have to get it with this take because there are layers of tissue here that are going to be torn on film that we are gonna have to completely recreate, or maybe we have backups. I don't know. But yeah, like specifically when uh the head was coming off of the character, I was watching it and I was like, there's so much depth to this practical just prop right now. How are they actually getting this head off of there? I I was trying to imagine like the mechanics of it all, and I couldn't wrap my head around it while also just being so visually traumatized by what by what was happening.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:51

Those rubber bands, lots of rubber bands.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:53

So it's funny you mentioned that, Paris, because we talked about like Rob Botton and just the work that he put into this movie, sometimes spending months on models, one of which Norris, right? And the whole head separation and all that good stuff. When they were actually filming, John Computer was like, Holy shit, continuity, we need flames. They had to reshoot some things with flames. There are some highly flammable materials and everything caught on fire, completely destroying the model that Bottenhood worked months on.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:23

You know what? Put the ashes of that in the Smithsonian and kick Alien out.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:26

Wow. That's a bold move.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:28

Because that prop work was just impeccable.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:31

For me though, I mean, I think when you think about the worst part of anything, it's gonna be the effects in the 2011 version. Actually, I'm gonna say second worst because the whole spaceship thing for me was just awful. Cool is to see it in the beginning. Okay, there's a whole origin story, but revisiting it at the end, seeing the weird pixelated lights powering the ship, I could have done without all of it.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:51

Yeah, I really, really, really gotta agree with you. Um, that's definitely the worst part of this movie, and it's kind of a bummer because it it just doesn't like I don't care about a ship. I I know that like we had to give it somewhere that they just that they discovered it, but I just didn't care and like I didn't care that she like fell in through the vents and like just didn't care about that. But I will say to balance that, since I did hack that movie, I gotta give you a best part. And the best part is everything else. It's the story, it's the the way they built this prequel, and I feel did such good justice to the original. For me, that's that is the best part.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:30

The best and worst part of this movie was Kate not knowing who the Cavs were, but also having a Cavs reference in there, you know, and she's talking with um our nice and steamy pilot, and he's like, Hey, how are the calves? And she's like, Yeah, I don't know that football team. Essentially, it is a football team, but it's a college football team, I guess. Um but he mentioned it as the basketball team, which is what it should be known for.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:56

Yeah, I was gonna say, when he's accepted when he mentioned that, I thought he was talking about UVA.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:00

Because you live here. That's why.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:02

If you didn't Okay, I thought she exactly, I thought she was making a point to be like, because they were kind of like not accepting her.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:13

Douchey.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:13

Yeah, they were being douchey to her. And he wasn't being douchey to her, but all the other guys. Yeah, he's he's like, no, but remember, he's up there and he's like, Oh, that's fresh meat. I don't know exactly what he said, but something about like fresh meat. So I th I felt like she was like asserting, not asserting, but just like rejecting it, kind of giving a dick response. Yeah, that's kind of what I felt like she was doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:33

I felt it was a dick response, but I feel like she didn't know still. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:37

I thought she was being genuine, but I wasn't mad at the idea of her just completely trolling, but I feel like she would have eventually revealed it had she known. But I do gotta say, I actually enjoyed the moment that he takes a chance to ask her about basketball and not to just blatantly hit on her. People were assholes, but they weren't particularly like, I'm gonna take this opportunity to try to make a move on you and you know, objectify you, things like that. I also really enjoyed the fact that he he said, Hey, the storm's coming in, the last place you want to be is trapped in a place with a bunch of Norwegian a dozen Norwegian guys, because he's right, uh, there's a fucking alien there. And that is tragically how she ends up trapped in a place with a bunch of Norwegian guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:16

But also, like, foreshadowing aside, was that not just like a vague threat of rape? Because that's what I thought of. I was like, oh, we finally get a woman in the movie, but like, hey, you don't want to be alone with these Norwegians. I was like, what the hell is that?

SPEAKER_06 1:24:26

I think it's just because it's a place with people that you don't know, and like you don't, they're not, they're not, they're not their the you know, it's not your people.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:34

I took it less like a vague threat of rape and more like he's not super cool with them. They all make these fucking jokes about them being the Americans and all this and that. I just thought it was like, you don't want to stick around here. Also, it's fucking Antarctica.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:48

So I assumed it was a joke about them being smelly or drinking too much or farting or something like that. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:53

Well, we know they're douches by the comment jokes they're making in the first scene. Yeah, just very true.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:59

Yeah, the what was that joke? I forgot about that with the the son fucking the grandma. That was a hardcore bad joke.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:06

Yeah, weird incest joke. I forgot about that until this moment.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:09

I said, good lord, subtitles aside, this is not funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:13

I think the worst part of the remake for me is a really small part. And that's the end of the movie, I wish would have ended with Lars getting off the helicopter and shooting at the dog.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:25

Oh, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:26

Going into the American camp. That's what I think really would have taken it to the next level. That would have been the like the mesh scene between the two films for me, would have been like him running after them.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:36

So you needed a little bit more context.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:39

Well, not necessarily context, because there, I mean, we can tell like it's it's the Norwegian camp from the first film, but I just just like that bridge between the two.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:48

I feel like I feel like there was just enough, like I don't know what more that would have done, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:53

Just visual mesh for me. That's all. That's all just a little bridge, just a little like you know, a little sweetness added to it.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:59

I think the end of 2011 would have been better if it ended 45 minutes sooner, where we like didn't go on and on.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:07

There was so much effort that they put into burning the place down, just burning everything down.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:12

It's like but I kind of feel that way about both of these movies. Like this the last half is just like, okay, kind of got the point, everybody's kind of gonna die. And it's like, cool, like, how how long is it gonna take us to get there? There's not that much exciting, everything just catches on fire, basically.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:25

How long can we watch explosions?

SPEAKER_06 1:26:27

Yeah, exactly. And that leads me into my worst part for the original movie, which is the ending, where they're just sitting there staring at each other. And I think that some people find value in that and think it's interesting, and like that's I mean, I understand the point because there there really is nothing but uncertainty about who each other are, but I just was so underwhelmed. I was just like, really?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:52

We're just gonna leave y'all sitting here staring at each other. Yeah, to me, it wasn't a very good like ending scene where I don't know, I'm so used to like a big battle or something with you know, the I mean, which I get it was a battle the entire time, but I wanted like one final one that was huge where you thought, you know, everyone was everyone was gonna lose and it didn't happen. And that's why I felt like and I get it, Chris. That's the way it was supposed to end. Like it couldn't end any other way, but it was it left me very underwhelmed too.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:21

They tried, there's a lot of alternate endings to this movie. One of them involves them being rescued, another involves them committing suicide via dynamite, just the two of them. I might like that one. But for me, I like this exhaustion, and it shows their humanity, and it's just they're facing the inevitable, but also like child just kind of like showed up out of nowhere.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:41

And I understand that that's the point, but I was just like there were four, and then all of a sudden there were three, and I was just like, I d I don't know where this other person is, and then he just shows up, and I'm just like, eh, okay. I don't know. You guys were just running around setting stuff on fire again.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:57

I feel like having hacked both of these movies, I've had Quite a few nice things to say about them.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:02

Proud of you.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:03

So I'll I'll throw I'll throw another one out there. In the original, the husky acting was actually very great. There was like a group scene of these like dogs, and they were all on cue. Everyone is like in the right spot, doing all the right stuff, and I was like, wow, these dogs are brilliant and I love them. Didn't appreciate the opening of somebody chasing one of these dogs with a helicopter and an assault rifle in an attempt to kill them. Uh, if you're somebody that has no idea what the hell this movie's about, it's a little unsettling to see something like this. It feels like overkill, or like when people say they need a machine gun to hunt deer.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:35

I totally agree, obviously. Also, there was a moment where the dog creeps around the corner and sticks his head. He's like, he comes in and walks down the hallway. And it is maybe the scariest scene in the whole movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:46

It really is. Especially if you know dog. I mean, like, some dogs are very I'm like, does he have rabies? Like, what's going on? Oh, he did have rabies. He has something time 20.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:55

The dog had a lot of solo shots where it was like really finding its lighting, hitting its mark. And I was like, damn, this dog's killing it.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:01

He's really doing something. Staring at out the window at the helicopter when McReady and company arrive back, and he's just like, fuck.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:10

They're on to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:11

You put my dog anywhere near a helicopter, it's over. It's all over the place. For the remake, though, I my favorite part is just how they were able to make a few small changes to the general cast, you know, add a couple girls in there, add a more I don't know, I feel like the characters had a bit more personality in the remake for me. So I was able to follow the story, especially the psychological elements, much closer and I felt more invested in it. Uh, and ultimately it got me thinking about like this theory that I wrote in my notes. I just wrote thingception. But basically, what if they're all the thing the whole time and they're arguing about who's the thing because that's what they would do if they weren't the thing? So, in their attempt to pretend that they're not the thing, they're just like thinging about. Oh, you went too deep. Does this make sense?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:53

That's inception for sure. You went too deep. You went too deep.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:56

They're all the thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:58

No, I'm I I like it. That's a theory I can I can get behind 100%.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:02

See, I have a hard time saying that the 2011 cast is good because I just they're they're just there and they fit an archetype, and maybe it's because they fit fit the archetype of the original cast. So I just find it hard. I'm just like, I I got more out of the 1982 version of that cast, and they seemed, although they seemed very similar to the alien cast, um, I don't know. I just I feel like I didn't get much, maybe except for one or two characters um from 2011.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:37

It seemed like there was a lot of like the same type of people in the remake. I feel that. I like I missed our I missed our old man, old man, I miss our older like doctors, and like, you know, I I don't I know that there were different people at this camp that did different things, but they did all kind of feel like there's a set of Norwegian people and it's one person, and there's a set of American people and it's one person, one of them's a girl.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:00

How has everyone reached this exact level of success at the exact same age in their lives?

SPEAKER_06 1:31:05

Yeah, exactly. Whereas like in the original, we have like these people seem like they've been here for a while, these people might be newer, we have you know, a cook, we have uh random people just doing things. I didn't love those characters either, to be honest with you, but they're in my opinion better in the original.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:22

Talk about Alien though, because when I'm watching the 2011, I was expecting to see a new McCready in some way, and you get that a little bit with Kate because you're like, oh, she's like gung ho, she's like strong, she's a leader, because of course she's emulating Ellen Ripley.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:41

Yeah, that is 100%. They're like, oh, look, we're gonna make the main character a woman so that we don't have the attempt to recreate McCready, but then they recreate Mc McCready with Carter. Like they they just do that, and it's just it's frustrating. I do love her performance in this. I think she sold it 100% of the way, but she sold a second Ripley.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:05

Which was sad because I was honestly hoping to see her be more of a McCready character. And you know, we we don't get that, and that's fine or whatever. McCready was a really interesting character anyway, and some of that we don't get on screen. Like the backstory that they wrote for him was pretty insane. He was supposed to be this like Vietnam vet, he was a helicopter pilot, there's some kind of tragedy, he's feeling bad, he's suffering through it. He's got the PTSD, alcoholism, severe insomnia. So we don't get that on the screen, but it does explain that he's awake to hear the dogs whining. He can deal with all the crap that's going on without barfing every 10 seconds. Even he mentions, you know, I'm a real light sleeper, child. Why? Because he's like constantly suffering through PTSD from you know his service. So it's it's really interesting that backstory we get from McCreedy, even though they don't like tell us that on screen. So I was really hoping for that like really haggard kind of person in 2011 that you don't quite get. It's like split up between a couple characters, but it did take Kurt Russell a full year to grow that beard. Mad respect. Good for him.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:09

It just doesn't do it for me, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:11

I did I will tell you, my boyfriend walked by while I was watching it. He's like, Oh, is this that movie with Goldie Hahn? And I was like, Nope, just Kurt Russell this time.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:18

Man, you guys really assigned a lot of characteristics to him.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:20

I will admit, looking at characters in the 1982 version, most of them kind of bland. I'm not mad at it, but childs and seeing Keith David, who I've I've seen in so many things in my life. I can't remember the last time I watched the thing, but hearing his voice, I think now after seeing him in so many other things, it just struck a different chord with me, and I found a new appreciation for his character.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:46

It is a comforting voice.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:47

I think one of the things it comes down to though is in spite of its varying performances, in spite of its different different approaches to its effects, would you guys watch either of these again?

SPEAKER_01 1:33:58

Of course I would. And you should too. And everyone should see it for the first and second time. The the original is a classic. And I think it's it's one of those that like if you enjoy some sci-fi, if you're just starting to get into, I don't know, Stargate or something, um, eventually you should get to this point where you should add in some horror into your life. And this is a great example of that. The the sequel, the the remake, the prequel, whatever you want to call it. I don't know. But you know, yeah, maybe if they come out with another one that like remakes the original, and it's just as good as the original, but otherwise I'm just gonna watch the 82, most likely.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:30

I would suggest watching this in chronological order. Um, because I appreciated that, and I think seeing Ryan's perspective, um, but I'm really surprised I haven't watched this more often. Um, but I definitely will watch this. Both of those um have high rewatchability, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:47

Yeah, I totally would re-watch them, and I actually differ from what Max said. I would re-watch them like at the same time, one after the other. And I really, really enjoyed watching them new to old in the chronological order. I think it was just such a good experience, and you don't lose like you don't get the disappointment of going from the 80s to the 2000s, and I I I would recommend everyone re-watch them. I would re-watch them if I was a person that did that, but you know who I am.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:15

If I like something, I definitely rewatch it. So this one's hard for me. I think I very okay, don't hold me to this, but I'm considering once we wrap recording, going and re-watching the original. Because as I started it last night, uh, with all the knowledge I gained from the prequel, I was like, oh, I'm kind of enjoying this movie more than I did the first time. Because I literally ended the first one being like, oh god, what a piece of shit. That movie sucked. And then, you know, I learned more about it. I was like, oh, people love this movie, probably for the practical effects, but they loved it for so much more than that. Things that I didn't really appreciate. So I'm more tempted now than ever to go back and really watch it. But I will say I don't think either one fully stands on its own for me. So if you are at this point in the podcast listening to this and you haven't watched either of these, watch both. Probably watch them in order of events, so prequel and then original, because there's a lot that you can get out of it. More than I did.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:10

That's fair. And I think it's it's a good recommendation. There are so many folks who can watch an old movie and it's totally fine. I'm one of those, right? Like I'm watching a movie from like the 40s, 50s, 60s onward, and I'm totally there amid it. I'm submersed. But some folks need new new fresher hooks with modern technique. I dated a girl once who tried her hardest to watch the first Star Wars film and she fell asleep, not 30 minutes through, and I'm like, this this hurts. But I showed her episode three first to set the stage, and then she bought into the story, and then she powered through the rest. I think the thing is one of those situations. The 1982 version is a classic, right? Most people can probably watch it and be totally fine. If you feel like you need a modern, fresher take to set those hooks and give you some context, I think it'd be a good idea to watch the 2011 version and watch the 1982 following it. I am gonna watch these movies again, but I have a very specific decision I've just made in this moment with consideration. My girlfriend and I eventually plan to move to the northeast. I'm gonna save this for the first winter we spend in the northeast with a shit ton of snow everywhere. Great plans. Do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:25

She's in it for the long game.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:27

Yeah, I'm gonna shelve this until then. Listeners out there, if in a few years you see photos of me living in Maine or New Hampshire, remind me about this.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:35

Please get a projector inside of a tent and then watch it in there when it's dark outside.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:40

That is great. I'm all I'm also open to more recommendations uh from anyone out there. If you have ways that I should be enjoying the thing. Now, in lieu of factor fiction in our old versus new episodes, we do have one last bit of business to attend to. And although this time we're not pitting an original against this remake, we are pitting two movies by the same name against each other. Let's do a quick lightning round here. When you think of visuals, which do you prefer? The 1982 or 2011 version?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:08

1982.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:09

1982. 82.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:11

1982.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:12

Oh, it's for sure 1982 for me. So let's think then about the story. 1982 or 2011.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:18

1982.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:19

2011. Ooh. 82.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:22

I gotta give it to 2011. I cared more about that story.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:25

Man, I I struggle here, but it's gonna be 1982. It breaks my heart, right? The dogs of it all. And I do appreciate the storytelling in the 2011, but 1982 sets the foundation that everything is built on. So last but not least, let's go performances, 1982 or 2011?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:42

1982, obviously.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:44

Oh, 82. Wow. 82.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:47

Wow, I'm gonna give it to 2011. I don't mind standing alone, but 82, all of those people were the same to me.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:53

Oof, shockingly, you are not alone. It's actually 2011 for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:57

Because here's the thing Child, superior, McGready, superior, Jed, the dog, superior. But there are a lot of characters in that and a lot of weak performances that weigh it down. So 2011, as bland as they are for me, get the edge.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:13

I love that.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:14

So there we have it. Paris and I agree on something. Uh very rare occasion. But it looks like, in terms of visual story, and performances, 1982 has made a damn near perfect sweep. So this thing or that thing, it's the original thing that reigned supreme on Hacker Slash with the better score. Now, as a reminder, that 2011 prequel earned two hacks and three slashes. The 1982 original has racked up four slashes and one hack. You can find both movies streaming. Of course, the original, as of right now, as of this recording is only available for rent, but check it out. We obviously want to know your thoughts. The thing is such an iconic piece of cinematic history that there are bound to be plenty of opinions out there, and there's so many layers to this film that we can't even scrape the surface of. So keep in mind there are a number of ways you can reach out to us, starting with our website, hackerslash.com, and on our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:07

And if you ever forget your own phone number, you can always call ours. Our number is 757-606-0128. You can leave us an audio message or voicemail, or you can hit us up at hackerslash.com slash contact, especially if you're international.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:22

Or if you've ever been to Antarctica, you can send us an email to feedback at hackerslash.com.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:26

And if you've enjoyed listening to this episode, consider becoming one of our patrons. You can visit patreon.com slash hacker slash to earn cool perks for as low as $1 a month.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:34

We'll see you next time. And remember, folks, just as Paris reminded us at the top of the show, they're not Swedish, Mac, they're Norwegian.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:43

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:44

Bye.