Dualities between Alien and The Thing

Actually I have always likened the Thing as a pseudo-prequel to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Not only do they both deal with the same key theme of the paranoia of whether the guy next to you is who was but... At the end of the Thing McReady and the other guy burn the Thing alive, smoke billowing high up into the clouds. Maybe some of the Things cells got swept around the world by the weather fronts before falling with the rain. And then cells mutated with the plants they encountered, creating pods, and... well you know the rest.

The thing doesn't mutate it assimilates the DNA and is able to mimic it.

Mutation can be a form of mimicry... End of the day invasion of the Body Snatchers they were all mimics, copies... just like a large scale Thing invasion

Actually @snorkelbottom both The Thing and Body Snatchers are derived from a short story "Who goes There?" I don't remember the author at this time though. I think another movie stemmed from that story as well, but don't remember that one either.

yeah, both are great ..the writer was John W. Campbell jr.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Goes_There%3F the thing--dna is assimilated and alien can form between- creatures , hybrids.. body snatchers--humans get completely cloned., but if copy isnt complete, it dies.

@Cinefan the other movie you are thinking of is actually alien lol, it was not actually inspired by it, but people always equate it to the original book who goes there.

@invader You know I thought it was Alien, but I wasn't positive. Lol

John W. Campbell was also involved with L.Ron Hubbard when he first came up with Dianetics....... Didn't stay with it long though.

I was kinda bummed out after watching the thing prequel because it never answered the major questions that I had after seeing the original movie and those were: was 'The Thing' the pilot of the saucer or was it an invader that caused the crash and how intelligent was it? -I mean if they just tried to communicate (instead of wanting to burn very cell of it) would it respond?- It kinda seemed like ET and just wanted to go home, but the paranoia of the humans made it defend its self. If I were the writer I would have made that the underpinning story-line that 'we' were the real monsters, wanting to kill something just because it was alien to us.

Yeah I agree with you PRO II I had some major issues with the look of the dog too. There was a heap of practical effects covered over with CGI in the released version. They looked far better too. And with what you said about the original, I saw a story written from the Thing's perspective during the original movie. It's at Outpost 31, a dedicated The Thing website. Have a look if you're a fan ;-)

I was telling my dad who's a fan of The Thing that in the prequel what they need to do is expand on Thing myth. Teach us something new about the creature that we don't already know, don't just rehash everything, I want to learn something new.

I never thought of the Alien xenos as being mutants if we are talking about a gene or genes that are changed from some original. But maybe I am thinking too Darwinian. If anything the chestburster is lacking some kind of DNA code that it borrows from the host. No mutation necessary. I mean, what is being mutated? The host's DNA or the alien's? Using that basis, every human baby born is a mutant.

That's exactly what I want to walk away from Prometheus feeling like @Cinefan. You nailed it on the head ;-) cause you're right, I was hoping I'd learn more about The Thing, it looked and sounded like you would, then it was released and was....... Meh.

I just finished rewatching "The Thing from Another Planet," and feel that it had a few direct influences on Alien. In TTfAP, the thing starts killing people on a military base and the soldiers radio for orders. The orders come back not to harm the alien under any circumstances. These orders are then followed up and clarified later that the thing must not be harmed. Also, TTfAP made the thing radioactive. The soldiers used a geiger counter to track it's proximity to them. I think this became the motion detector.

PRO II....I have my issues with 'The Thing' prequel as well....but I don't know where you get E.T. like thing idea...in both versions it's killing people to imitate and over run...there's nothing evil about trying to defend yourself at that point...it's about survival and the thing makes no bones about it..in essensance saying, 'your're all fair game'. Heck, in Carpenter's 'The Thing', it kills someone right off the bat when the dog enters that room and you see the guy's shadow....I'm sorry, but there's no communicating with that thing..