Talk:The Thing (1982 film)

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The Thing (1982 film) is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 25, 2022.

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March 1, 2018	Good article nominee	Listed
July 31, 2018	Featured article candidate	Promoted

Current status: Featured article

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Kennel-Thing removel

I don't know why but the addition of "Kennel thing, otherwise known as Dog thing" has been removed twice now. If there really is a problem with it then I won't bother, but I feel it's a very minor change, right?

Honestly, this is my first edit so if there's something wrong with it that makes sense, but I would love to know what's wrong with it so I could learn for future edits. thanks in advance. TheGoofyGobo (talk) 14:59, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wait nevermind the person who removed it just explained, that makes sense. sorry TheGoofyGobo (talk) 15:00, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Plot Location

Is there any reason McMurdo Station is not mentioned for the supposed protagonist location of the movie, if by only namesake alone? It's on the signpost in the movie. SquashEngineer (talk) 17:25, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The signpost says United States National Science Institute Station 4. McMurdo Station is a real place. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 18:30, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

typo

you have Dr. Cooper's name wrong, it's not "Dr. Copper".

please correct this. 2601:245:8104:7EF0:74B3:8B77:5715:924B (talk) 19:32, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is Dr Copper. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 20:00, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just watched the widescreen 4K version

Nobody who saw the film in the 1980s or the 1990s ever saw it at home in this high quality, widescreen aspect ratio. It's a completely different film and it shows that Carpenter was decades ahead of his time. There's a few details this FA-quality article misses or glosses over:

In an interview, Carpenter emphasizes the "uncertainty" of the ending (its defining characteristic) as the reason it failed at the box office,[1] and there's a lot of truth to this, but there's nothing in the article about this. The fact remains, US film audiences in 1982 were fairly unsophisticated (they had just voted for Ronald Reagan in a landslide, enough said) and went to films to have their hands held and wanted to be told what happened. They did not want to use their brains or to view the paranoia in their own hearts and minds like a mirror being held up.
The criticism of the film's pacing and continuity by Spencer seems off, but the claim that it was "devoid of warmth or humanity" is essentially correct (for various reasons I won't go into here). One of the interesting things about the pacing is that US audiences were not really used to this type of film, yet it is this kind of pacing today, in 2025, that dominates the majority of action films. Again, Carpenter was many years ahead of his time, and audiences were not yet ready for what he was doing.
In the home media section, it is said in passing that Sidney Sheinberg "edited a version of the film for network television broadcast, which added narration and a different ending, where the Thing imitates a dog and escapes the ruined camp." This was the version I grew up with, and quite frankly, it was horrible. What confuses me here is reading it was made for "network television". I don't see that in the sources, and while my memory is bad, I recall watching this version on subscription cable television, not network TV.

Thanks for the article. Viriditas (talk) 00:42, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]