Worrying comments printed by Bloody Disgusting from Eric Heisserer on Thursday, the man currently re-writing Ronald D. Moore’s original draft for a prequel to John Carpenter’s suspenseful masterpiece The Thing, hints that he is doing a paint by numbers job of making sure the origins of all the elements contained in the original film are explained in full detail in his script.
A script he claims could be ready for Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. as early as January…
“It’s a really fascinating way to construct a story because were doing it by autopsy, by examining very, very closely everything we know about the Norwegian camp and about the events that happened there from photos and video footage that’s recovered,” he continues, “from a visit to the base, the director, producer and I have gone through it countless times marking, you know, there’s a fire axe in the door, we have to account for that…were having to reverse engineer it, so those details all matter to us ‘cause it all has to make sense.”
Which to me sounds very close into entering Gus Vant Sant and Psycho territory. It’s that kind of forced methodical planning that devalues creative thought, and instead works as a fun lateral thinking exercise but not particularly one that forms good storytelling.
“We explain how it got there,” he continues referring to the axe, adding that he found a way to bring suspense back to the film. “We’re finding so much from Carpenter’s movie that you think you’ve seen, but in actually it allows us to come up with certain twists on what we have that will allow people to be on the edge of their seat, and not know who’s going to make it and who’s not.”
And is it just me, or is a prequel set in the same Norweigen camp, with a similar sized crew who become victim of alien shape shifting “The Thing”, in reality, simply function as a remake with even more restrictions (as you need it to tie in with an already packaged film, instead of being allowed to divert into new avenues if you wished) and less of a chance of success?
via – /film
One Comment
I have zero faith in that film. I see it as a worse version of the carpenters movie that will try to unveil the mistery and by doing so will kill the film. A bit like Cube sequels/prequels ( I really liked the orginal) explained everything and made it look very silly.
Lets stop the remake craze and do something orginal. Even though deep inside I’d like to see my childhood films remade I know it’s better to see something new so hollwood should stop being lazy if they want me to switch back from japanease VA’s back to mainstream cinema.