You, doin' that Thing you do...

The Thing 2011, while seeming to win over part of the general population, is being considered a failure on many levels by critics and horror die-hards.

One of the largest complaints I have seen in regards to the film is it's CGI effects. Almost every shot in the film that involves The Thing are in very amateur, unfinished looking CGI; a complete departure from the brilliant practical effects in the original. Another is that the characters have little backstory or personality, and that instead of building paranoia and suspense with the characters, the film devolves into little more than a creature feature film. These two things run very contrary to what I had heard from the cast & crew during filming. They promised they were sticking very closely in tone, and effect wise, to Carpenter's 1982 film. It appears they did go out there with good intentions. What went wrong? Maybe it wasn't even their fault.

Ronald D. Moore was the original screenwriter for the film. Afterwards, his script was scrapped and Eric Heisserer was brought on board to do a complete re-write. He said he wanted the film to be a "slow boil of a movie" with "a lot of character work". Later, Scott Frank, screenwriter of 'Out of Sight' was brought on to do a slight polish of the script"

Screenwriter Eric Heisserer: "In terms of it being a slow boil, another victim of the test screening process was the character introductions. [..]Coming from the standpoint where I know everything that is missing, it's hard for me not to go, ‘wait a minute!' Scott Frank and I both talked about 'Jaws' as a benchmark when it comes to character introductions. Scott did a quick pass on the script at one point and wrote some fantastic material for when you first meet Carter, Griggs, Jameson, and of course, Kate.  So when we lose [those] moment[s], we lose good character building stuff that glues the scenes together. Right now we get to the monster as fast as possible and, since the test screenings proved that's what those audiences wanted. I can't say yay or nay to it. But it does feel like there are pieces of it missing."

From the beginning, Director Matthijs Van Hijningen Jr. had been speaking of his love for Carpenter's film. He had expressed that he wanted to shoot as much practically as possible. 

Heisserer: "I got this job going in with the firm, fervid belief that no CGI should ever be in this movie. That it should be all practical.[...] And I felt that, what little I saw being onset and in the dailies, the practical stuff looked great. But that's an argument that I was out of and it's an argument that I trust Mattjis stuck with for as long as he could and for his reasons. While I'm not quite as qualified to talk about the specifics, I know that as a storyteller, we were all onboard with this being a practical movie"

With the crew on board, they proceeded to film the movie, practically. 

Tom Woodruff Jr. Creature & Makeup effects: "They came to us because they wanted a predominately practical approach. It’s easy to go overboard with digital work today. They wanted us to create and produce animatronics, makeup, and all kinds of puppet effects, which meant we could show up on set and these things could exist on the set in the proper environment, in the proper lighting, and in concert with the performance of the other actors.

"There’s a scene in the film when things have started to happen but it hasn’t hit the fan yet. They bring a guy into the rec room and he’s not feeling well at all. They’re carrying him, supporting him, and he’s got his arms around the other guys’ necks. His arms pop off and sprout legs and become creatures. His legs come off and become their own creatures, and then, in an homage to the upside-down head in the Bottin version, his entire body sprouts a weird cluster of asymmetrical legs and a tentacle out of the chest. He starts attacking everybody in the room, spearing another one of the Norwegians and bringing him down to the ground, climbing on top of him and then melding faces with him, which sets up the two-faced creature from the Carpenter version. After that everything starts going to hell. It was a fun sequence to design, and it required a lot of overlap between the animatronic effects, makeup effects, environmental effects like fire, and also the visual effects aspects.[...]This was probably one of the most complicated effects because of all the working parts. Probably three and a half or four months out of our build was dedicated to this effect."

Eric Christensen Olsen, who plays Adam: "That scene took eight days, and there’s eight dudes all dressed in black with levers working that machine as it comes towards you and that’s the movie they’re trying to make. [...]So I think that’s…that scene I think it’s one of the reasons I’ve seen worse because that creature actually rose up, crawled over to me, rose up, slammed me into the ground, and then the neck extends and turns and literally pushed my head so hard into the ground that I almost had a concussion for that half a day. "

Woodruff also did extensive makeup effects: "Probably the coolest one was. . .there was a great sequence where what used to be the arm of one character morphs into a creature and climbs up this other character’s arm and latches onto his face. We did this very cool makeup where these tendril-like claws on the front of the creature are extended through the skin on his face, and it’s distorting his skin. And again, all this is coming from guys who aren’t crazy about gore makeup, who are more about character stuff—but this was really a cool effect, and a very involved practical effect."

So, with all of this, the film appeared to be on the right track, and in good hands. So what went wrong?

Universal screened the movie to some test audiences. Response seemed to be that people wanted more monster carnage and less talking. 

Heisserer:  "Test screenings really changed the shape of this film from what I wrote to what the audience will ultimately see, for better or worse... I can say that going through this experience that no studio would make a film like 'Alien' or even Carpenter and Lancaster's version of 'The Thing' today. There is a sense of impatience from the audience to just get to whatever it is they paid their ticket for. And that can hurt filmmakers but it can also help box office. It's a strange argument to have."

For some reason, Universal had also changed their mind on the practical effects. They sent the film into reshoots, opting to replace almost every practical effect with CGI

Heisserer: The other re-shoots as I know them were more of a fight between practical effects and CG. When I was on set and when Mattjis shot a lot of this, and he's a great director by the way, it was all practical. We had Mary using a flamethrower on an animatronic and it looked great. It's hard to say what it looked like once they got into editing, I wasn't a part of that process, but I do know that there were two definite sides of the argument. There were people saying we had to replace with CG and there were people saying we could make the practical [effects] better in places where they fell short."

Also, based on test screenings, Universal had the ending changed to a much open ended, 'happier' one

Heisserer: "I was very clear with Kate's fate in the draft. I understand that what I gave them doesn't help in terms of growing a franchise. But there's no way that she could survive. [...] So that doesn't happen [in the final film], but then again, that may be what audiences want". 

So in the end, who is to blame? This is a case where studio melding and the idiotic general public may have hurt a film that genuinely had some potential. Would the film be better with all the character development & practical effect re-inserted? I have no idea, but just knowing all that stuff was originally in there and was removed/replaced sort of stings.

Bibliography:
Bloody Disgusting.com Interview w/Eric Heisserer
Popular Mechanics - 'The Creepy Creature Effects of The Thing"
Screen Crave interview w/Eric Christian Olsen