I'm a huge fan of John Carpenter's The Thing. I've seen the movie more times than I can remember, played through the game another dozen or so times, watched the entirety of 1951's The Thing From Another World just for comparison's sake, and even, for a time, participated in the Outpost 31 forum where we discussed, among other things, the precise order in which the members of the U. S. research station became infected/assimilated by the eponymous alien. In fact, the only piece of The Thing-related media that I've never been exposed to is the original novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. So I'm extremely overqualified to be reviewing the new prequel to The Thing, which is obnoxiously also titled The Thing because Kami forbid we avoid confusion when discussing the two films. From this point on I'm just going to refer to the new movie as The Thing and the old one as the original, for clarity's sake.
Being a fan, you know that this review is going to go one of two ways: either I'll love the film in spite of any glaring faults it may have, or I'll hate it for failing to live up to the original. Contrary to any impression you may have from reading anything else I've done on this site, I'm actually a very positive person who's willing to give anything a chance to stand on its own merit. Even when I reviewed Epic Mickey, Aliens vs. Predator and MadWorld, I was optimistic enough about each game to actually purchase and play it for myself before deciding it was shit. So, I like to think that I have a fairly objective viewpoint when I approach anything for review, and I'll try to keep that up as I discuss The Thing.
