Usually when a movie is successful enough to merit a sequel, the inclination is to do more of what the first one did well. An action flick must be even more packed with it, a supernatural thriller needs bigger twists, and so on.
“Guardians of the Galaxy” was the first flat-out comedy superhero film. Yet rather than just go for more laughs, the filmmakers made a conscious decision to focus on character-building rather than just yuks. I think it was the smart move.
“Vol. 2” doesn’t have the freshness and zing of its predecessor, but it’s a satisfying extension of this corner of the Marvel universe – which, in this case, is a good chunk of the actual universe.
The gang is all back: smirking human hero Star-Lord/Peter Quill (Chris Pratt); green-skinned assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana); muscular brute Drax (Dave Bautista); genetic creation/pilot/racoon/raconteur Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper); and Groot (voice of Vin Diesel), the monosyllabic, tree-like creature who was mostly destroyed in the last movie and has returned as a pint-sized shoot.
The basic plot is that the Guardians are once again being chased by a bunch of galactic forces for various reasons, mostly of their own making. They run into an odd being named Ego (Kurt Russell), a powerful alien who claims to be Peter’s father. Everyone hops back to his DIY planet to hash out familial connections and hidden motives. There we meet Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Ego’s assistant/pet, an empath whose naivete about mortals is a strange parallel with Drax’s tendency to verbalize the things most people would leave unspoken.
Returning characters include Nebula (Karen Gillan), Gamora’s death-seeking, cybernetic sister, and Yondu (Michael Rooker), the colorful space pirate who kidnapped/adopted Peter when he was a boy.
It’s not better, but I would say “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is in many ways bigger than the first movie. Its ambitions, and the depth of its mythology, has expanded considerably.
Video extras are quite expansive, though you’ll have to spring for the Blu-ray edition, as there are none on the DVD.
These include a four-part making-of documentary; intro featurette with director James Gunn; a galactic retro dance party music video; gag reel; four deleted scenes; and a feature-length audio commentary track with Gunn.
There is also some bonus material available digitally, including breakdowns of three key scenes that shows how CGI-heavy movies are built up layer-by-layer. And there’s a sneak peek at the forthcoming Guardians ride at Disneyland.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” picks up pretty much where the 2014 hit left off, with an unlikely band of miscreants anointed as saviors of the cosmos. And it also continues its stride as a full-out comedy take on the superhero genre, though the sequel has a surprising amount of character development and even a few touchy-feely moments.
It’s not quite the non-stop laugh-a-thon of the first one, but the characters feel deeper, richer and more lived in.
For instance, I didn’t much care for Drax, the musclebound marauder played by Dave Bautista in the first movie. But here his penchant for saying exactly what’s inside his head, without filter or regard of others’ feelings, seems less like a set-up for jokes than an intrinsic part of his makeup. It’s almost like he’s on the autism spectrum.
Drax doesn’t really understand the subtler aspects of behavior, but he’s trying.
The movie (written and directed by James Gunn) again centers on Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord, a smirky galactic adventurer played by Chris Pratt. As we know from the last movie, he was abducted from Earth as a child, became part of a crew of space pirates led by the blue-skinned, red-mohawked Yondu (Michael Rooker), and then broke off for his own solo spree of stealing and fun.
Sporting a slightly shellacked look to his hair and skin, Peter has all but given up on searching for his father, who abandoned the family when he was still a boy, reputedly returning to the stars whence he came. Kurt Russell turns up as Ego, a strangely charismatic being who claims to be his dad. Peter’s not entirely convinced, so Ego brings him and the Guardians back to his home planet for a little convincing.
It came at just the right time, as the Guardians had just majorly P.O.’d the Sovereign, a race of gold-skinned beings for whom they’d performed some mercenary work. (Hey, being a savior doesn’t pay much.) Of course, afterward Rocket -- the irascible raccoon-like creature voiced by Bradley Cooper -- decided to steal some of their fancy gizmos for fun, so the goldies were in hot pursuit before Ego came to the rescue.
Zoe Saldana returns as Gamora, a green-skinned assassin who continually resists Peter’s attempts to woo her. I liked that even though his intentions become entirely made clear -- in a rather funny and embarrassing way -- Gamora doesn’t automatically fall into his arms. She’s a tough nut, and harder to crack.
Gamora’s sister, Nebula (Karen Gillan), also shows up, a partially robotic creature with a hell-bent desire to kill her sibling, and then their father.
And, of course there’s Groot, the tree-like creature who was killed in the last movie, only to be reborn as a tiny shoot. He’s essentially having to restart his life cycle all over again, so he’s in the adorable toddler phase. He’s not terribly useful in this form, and doesn’t seem to have regained his full cognitive abilities, which is a hindrance when trying to remember which button causes instant death for everyone.
Also new are Pom Klementieff as Mantis, an odd empathic creature raised in servitude to Ego, and Sylvester Stallone as an elder pirate who has to kick Yondu out of the pirate club, or something. We get the sense they’ll play bigger roles in the third movie.
And yes, there will be a third movie: it’s announced at the start of the end credits. Speaking of which, “GotG2” sets some sort of record for most bonus scenes. I think it was five, but I may have lost count.
It’s not as fresh or funny as its predecessor, but “Guardians of the Galaxy” is still a lot of fun. They seem to have consciously sacrificed some laughs in order to flesh out this universe and make it seem more authentic and grounded. That may sound funny given all the crazy makeup and CGI to depict a kaleidoscope of fantastical aliens, but there it is.
As we already knew from the movies, you can outrun an
explosion, provided it happens in slo-mo. Now from “The Fate of the Furious,”
the franchise that started out about illegal street racers and somehow morphed
into full James Bond-esque international intrigue and action set pieces, we
learn you can block an explosion simply by parking a car in front of it.
It’s true -- the flames won’t go above, below or around the
vehicle at all! Thanks, Furious!
I know, I know; nitpicking the “Fast and the Furious”
franchise, now in its astonishing eighth iteration, is like criticizing the
dancing bear’s form. People pay to see it because it does what it does, not
because it’s particularly good at it or whether the whole enterprise makes a
lick of sense.
The thing is, people got hooked on these movies because they
combined hot rods, bulging muscles, macho preening, hoochie mamas and lots of
hard-throttle racing. Most of that has gone by the wayside in “Fate.” Oh, there
are a few cool cars, and neither Vin Diesel nor Dwayne Johnson seem to own any
shirts that include sleeves.
But at this point the Furious movies are big, messy,
sprawling orgies of pomposity and ridiculousness. It’s all about Russian
separatists and nuclear codes and elite cyber hackers and no-name American spy
agencies. There are eight gazillion characters, and apparently we’re supposed
to be able to remember some sideshow guys from four movies ago.
When last we left Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his “family”
of driver/robbers, they’d finally found some peace after pulling off one last
big job. We learn they’ve been staying in Havana, which in this depiction is a
true socialist paradise of cruising cars and women with cheeks hanging out of
their skirts.
Dom gets a visit from Cipher, a computer hacker and
criminal mastermind, played with hollow eyes and a taunting smirk by Charlize Theron.
She shows him an image on her phone, and as a result he turns his back on his
crew and becomes her mercenary in some very big heists against the Russian
military. His actions are so bewildering, his friends keep wondering aloud:
“Has Dominic Toretto finally gone rogue?”
Hint: Dominic Toretto has not gone rogue.
You may remember the other players: Michelle Rodriguez is
Letty, Dom’s fiery lady love, now wife; Johnson is Luke Hobbs, a special ops
badass who used to chase Dom & Co. but now allies with them; Tyrese Gibson
is Roman, the wisecracking, cowardly one; Chris “Ludacris” Bridges is Tej, the
brainy tech expert; Nathalie Emmanuel is Ramsey, a hacktivist who created some
spying software called God’s Eye in the last movie and now fends off lame
sexual innuendo from Roman and Tej.
Jason Statham returns as Shaw, a bad guy for at least one
other movie, maybe two. (I really can’t remember.) Now he and Hobbs are in jail
together for about a minute and a half, then they’re forced to team up against
Cipher. They keep threatening to have a fistfullicious throwdown when their temporary alliance
is ended; it gives us something to look forward to.
Kurt Russell shows up as the helpful spy guy pulling some
strings, and Scott Eastwood is his dorky young apprentice who eventually wises
up. I get the sense Eastwood is being groomed to assume the role of Bland
Straitlaced White Guy vacated by Paul Walker.
The movie, directed by F. Gary Gray from a script by Chris
Morgan, is big, loud and dumb, but perhaps not big and loud enough for its own good.
There’s an astonishing amount of jabbering and people tapping away furious on
computer keyboards. This is one of those movies where virtually every object in
the world can be controlled by computers, including an army of self-driving
cars and even a nuclear submarine.
(Quibble: If you leave the hatch of a sub open, as the
characters clearly do, it tends to flood when it submerges. OK, I’ll stop.)
There was one clever and funny bit where Shaw fights a bunch
of people on a plane while carrying a very important object, about which I’ll
say no more. It’s basically the movie’s MacGuffin, but cuter.
“The Fate of the Furious” is a transcendentally silly movie,
rock-headed and testosterone-fueled, but one not without its charms. The car stunts are fun, the bad guys are
hiss-able, and even the hyper-masculine peacocking gets so silly the guys start
laughing at each other in between boasts and threats.
I wish the thing was 40 minutes shorter. Come to think of
it, I wish they’d stopped making these two or three movies ago. But I hear two
more are coming, whether we like it or not. Just pay your money and clap for
the bear.
There are a lot of ways you could have attacked the story of Deepwater Horizon: emblem of corporate corruption, biggest oil disaster in world history, one selfless hero saving the day, etc. Director Peter Berg and screenwriters Matthew Sand and Matthew Michael Carnahan took the most obvious, but probably also the most dramatically effective route, turning “Deepwater Horizon” into a big-budget disaster flick.
The 2010 explosion of the Transocean oil rig spewed 210 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in massive environmental catastrophe whose effects are still being felt today. Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell play the leaders who struggle to stop the crisis and save lives.
An effective crew of supporting actors make up the chorus of other victims, notably Ethan Suplee, Gina Rodriguez and Dylan O’Brien. John Malkovich and James DuMont provide the villains, sniveling corporate honchos hanging around behind the workers, demanding that safety measures by shortcut to maximize profits.
The film, which is based on a detailed reconstruction of events by the New York Times, is viscerally gripping -- once the action gets going.
Until then, it’s a barely comprehensible mishmash of industry jargon and manly chest-puffing. The sound mix on the version I saw was poor, so it’s often hard to comprehend the dialogue. (Malkovich’s Louisiana accent, slathered on heavy like sugar on beignets, doesn’t help.)
Once the blowout of the drill occurs, seeping gas that turns the entire rig into an inferno, the film finds its footing and its verve. The rest of the way is a moment-by-moment banquet of terror and bravery, as men (and a woman or two) struggle to keep the rig from floating off course, snapping the line sunk deep into the ocean floor.
Wahlberg’s Mike Williams is chief electric technician, which makes him the top safety advocate onboard. Russell plays Jimmy “Mr. Jimmy” Harrell, the revered rig chief who commands the respect of his blue-collar crew. They’re both old-school film hero types, taciturn and direct, who believe in doing a job right rather than half-assing it and leaving a mess for the next guy.
But the construction of this project is already 43 days past schedule -- “the well from hell,” the crew dubs it -- which means millions in lost profits to the BP executives, who have come to pay a “friendly” visit. Ostensibly they’re there to laud Harrell and his team for their exemplary safety record. (No Hollywood hoke here.) But their real purpose is to push things along and cut corners.
“Hope ain’t a tactic,” Mike warns, to deaf ears.
The conflict quickly leads to disaster, as a geyser of mud, oil and gas storms up the line, resulting in back-breaking explosions that killed 11 crew. Kate Hudson plays Wahlberg’s wife, doing the usual disaster-movie-wife thing, making frantic calls and providing an emotional presence amid the storm.
Berg fills his screen with impressive blooms of fire, and accompanied with the near-constant impact of shrapnel raining down like bullets, it makes for a truly harrowing hellscape of death and destruction.
“Deepwater Horizon” accomplishes several things well, including rendering how the accident unfolded understandable for a general audience. Investigations have concluded it was a scenario in which virtually everything that could go wrong, did.
The film also vividly chronicles the peril the crew members faced, including the often competing impulses to do their jobs or save their own necks. A lot of people have a negative view of the oil industry, often well-deserved, but the movie uncovers not a small measure of nobility underneath the grimy surface.
A goofy doof of a movie -- part martial arts flick, part fantasy, a little bit Western, a lot '80s -- "Big Trouble in Little China" damaged a lot of careers in the short run, but made a lot of long-term fans. Now a remake starring Dwayne "Don't Call Me The Rock... OK, You Can Call Me The Rock" Johnson is in the works.
I remember my friends just raving about the movie when we were in high school, but somehow I never got around to seeing it. I'm a mite disappointed now that I have. While amusing at times, it looks like a cheap and schlocky flick that can't quite decide if it's in on the joke or not.
It's best to take it as a silly send-up of different genres, a fun adventure undertaken for its own sake. The scary stuff is never very scary, unlike, say, the Indiana Jones movies, which preserved the horror elements of its throwback inspiration. I make that connection because this film, like others from the era such as "King Solomon's Mines" and "High Road to China," were clearly thematic imitators.
This tone is set by Kurt Russell, who's playing a prototypical 1980s cinematic action hero -- muscle-y and smirking -- yet is continually sabotaged by comedic imperatives.
For instance, he waltzes into the inner sanctum of the villain near the end to deliver a typical defiant "go to hell" speech -- except his face is covered in bright pink lipstick, having finally gotten that kiss from The Girl. Or, at the start of the massive final brawl between the good and evil gangs, he shoots a chunk out of the ceiling and gets conked on the head, and goes sleepy-time.
Indeed, the film's enduring achievement is featuring a bunch of actors of Asian descent with a generic white guy figurehead as protagonist.
Originally conceived as a Western by fledgling screenwriters Gary
Goldman and David Z. Weinstein, the story was completely redone by W.D.
Richter at the behest of the studio and director John Carpenter, who wanted a modern setting (and a lower budget). There was quite a tussle over credits, with the rookies ultimately getting the screenwriting nod, while Richter got an "adapted by" credit and Carpenter, who made his own alterations, received nothing.
Carpenter was just coming off one of the finest directing runs of popular entertainment movies in Hollywood history -- "Halloween," "Elvis," "Escape from New York," "The Thing," "Christine" -- and the commercial failure of "Big Trouble" laid his career low. He's sort of bobbled on the edges ever since, an admired icon associated with the indie/horror field, but couldn't get his mainstream projects greenlit.
The plot is essentially one long chase, and takes place in very close to real time.
Russell plays Jack Burton, driver of a tractor-trailer hauling pigs which he dubs the "Pork Chop Express." He likes to ride around and yammer away on the CB radio to anyone who'll listen, stories about his life and pronunciations of his creed. He's a wanderer with friends in every port of call.
Among them is Wang Chi (Dennis Dun), a young Chinese immigrant who runs a restaurant in San Francisco's Little China. He's excited because his betrothed, Miao Yin (Suzee Pai), is arriving from his homeland for their wedding. She's got green eyes, which are highly prized by the Chinese (at least in the movie's telling). This is the only attribute the screenplay bothers to give her, barely speaking or emoting throughout the film.
Here jade peepers raise the attention of David Lo Pan (James Hong), an ancient and evil sorcerer who's been relegated to a ghost-like existence due to an old curse. He needs to marry, then murder a green-eyed woman to lift it. It's never made clear why he wants to become mortal again, since he's essentially invulnerable to attack.
Of course, I've never been withheld from a woman's gentle touch for 2,000 years. (Even if it sometimes felt like it.)
Leading the forces of good is Egg Shen (Victor Wong), a crotchety and benevolent magician. His favorite trick is throwing little balls of light that blow up his enemies. Kim Cattrall plays Gracie Law, a white attorney who often defends Chinese clients, and gets sucked up in to the action and, inevitably, tossed into Jack's arms. Turns out she has green eyes, too, so Lo Pan decides to go for a twofer.
Neither actress actually had green eyes, so they had to wear uncomfortable 1980s colored contact lenses during production. Also, if the bride doesn't need to be Chinese, I'm not sure why it took Lo Pan two millennia to find a woman.
There's also a reporter (Kate Burton) and best friend (Donald Li) who really serve no purpose in the story, and are conveniently forgotten about for long stretches of the film.
Lining up on the bad side are Lo Pan's three main henchman, all gifted with super powers tied to the elements. Thunder (Carter Wong) is all muscle and snarling attitude; Rain (Peter Kwong) is the resident swordsman and pretty boy; Lightning (James Pax) can project energy and even levitate. All three of them wear oddball straw hats that literally cover them down to the neck; one wonders how they fight effectively without having to tilt their heads.
Lo Pan also has a beholder-like creature, a circular blob with eyes and little tentacles, that acts as his scout. It's a cheap-looking and silly effect, even for 1986.
In general you can say that about the entire film. Other than one big set-piece for Lo Pan's sanctum santorum, which has some impressive statues, the whole movie looks like it was shot on a back lot. Most of the characters don't even change clothes. One battle has Wang dueling in the air with Rain, and it's an embarrassing collection of obvious wire shots and tilted cameras.
Compared to the elegant swordplay of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," it's positively archaic.
The budget for "Big Trouble" was $20 million, hardly chump change at the time -- about $44 million in today's dollars, but this was before the era of gonzo-sized budgets even for special effects spectacles. Consider that the magnificent "Aliens," which came out the same year, cost $2 million less.
An overpriced mess, this film doesn't even deserve the cult status it has today.
“The Hateful Eight” struck many observers as a sharp departure for writer/director Quentin Tarantino, who tends to love freewheeling stories with lots of locations, walk-on bit characters and sudden twists of the plot. “Eight” was essentially a bunch of strangers stuck in a single room for three hours, the tension slowly ratcheting up.
(The blood, however, pools much more quickly.)
But in a lot of ways it’s a return to the form of “Reservoir Dogs,” Tarantino’s first feature film, which relied heavily on enclosed spaces in which violent characters try to make sense of shifting loyalties.
It’s not quite in the top tier of Tarantino films, like “Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction.” But it firmly belongs in that second rank, along with “Django Unchained,” boasting plenty of entertaining face-offs and spouted soliloquies. For a three-hours picture, it goes by pretty quick.
The set-up is simple. Eight (for now) people are trapped by a terrible blizzard in a remote Wyoming cabin sometime in the years after the Civil War. They struggle to figure out who is not who they say, who’s loyal to who, and who deserves to be gunned down.
Answer to that last question: all of them, for one reason or another.
They include an infamous bounty hunter who always brings his quarry in alive (Kurt Russell); his current “client,” a foul-mouthed lady gangster (Jennifer Jason Leigh); a proud and decrepit ex-Confederate general (Bruce Dern) searching for his lost son; a black Union officer who’s also turned to the bounty hunting game (Samuel L. Jackson); a former rebel raider who claims to be the new sheriff at the closest town (Walton Goggins); a prissy British hangman (Tim Roth); a near-silent cow puncher (Michael Madsen); and Bob (Demián Bichir), a mysterious Mexican almost completely hidden by his coat, hat and beard.
Various alliances form, natural and otherwise, then break apart. The bounty hunters have an easy affinity for each other, and those on the side of the Confederacy soon square off against the Union loyalists.
Each character gets at least one moment where they step to the fore of the rhetorical stage, but there’s no single protagonist. Perhaps closest is Jackson’s Major Marquis Warren, who gives a long speech that’s notable for both its righteous anger at the injustice of slavery and the absolutely filthy way he goes about gaining some small measure of revenge for it.
“The Hateful Eight” is a long, blood-soaked but engaging dance through Western tropes.
Oh, and don’t forget to keep an ear out for Ennio Morricone’s Oscar-winning musical score.
Bonus features are nothing to brag about. Tarantino is among a number of high-profile filmmakers who are disdainful of participating in promotional material. (Despite the mountains of press they do when their movie is coming out.)
There are exactly two featurettes: “Beyond the Eight: A Behind-the-Scenes Look” and “Sam Jackson’s Guide to Glorious 70mm.”
"Furious 7" features a lot of great stunts and a great deal of silliness. This franchise started out 14 years ago about a bunch of punk twentysomething street racers, and by now it's morphed into a James Bond clan in which everybody does martial arts, spy infiltrations and super stunts in addition to being expert wheel men (and women).
You pretty much know what you're getting with any of the "Furious" flicks: aerobatic car stunts, smashmouth fights, explosions galore, booties shaken, muscles engorged, exotic locales and lots of quips. The first 20 minutes or so features very little action, with main star Vin Diesel repeatedly threatening the camera, vaguely: "They're gonna pay for their mistakes... big time."
That's not actually what he says, but it could be. One of the main failings of these movies is that the dialogue often sounds like it was written by a pair of 15-year-olds who were locked in a vault with a bunch of video games and no contact with other humans.
(Chris Morgan, who penned the first, fifth and sixth movies, is officially given credit.)
Justin Lin, who directed the last four films in the series, is replaced by horror filmmaker James Wan. He adds a few new flourishes of his own, such as rotating the camera to follow the trajectory of an actor spinning through the air during a fight or crash, and then flogs them like a deceased equine.
Still, it's hard to deny that many of the chase scenes in the latter half are truly thrilling. The best are a multi-car road duel on a twisty mountain road, and a super-valuable sports car being jumped from one high-rise skyscraper to another... and another.
Dwayne Johnson, as supercop Hobbs, is actually sidelined for most of the movie after sustaining serious injuries during an early tussle, which is notable for a couple of reasons. First, we don't get to enjoy Johnson and Diesel engaging in another pointless battle of behemoths. Second, this is virtually the only time a character gets more than a scratch during the entire flick, despite an unrelenting barrage of bullets, shrapnel, kicks, punches and sudden g-force trauma.
The plot is an incomprehensible muddle of MacGuffins, red herrings, come-and-go villains and set pieces. Our travels take us from Los Angeles to London, Abu Dhabi, the Caucuses, the Dominican Republic and more.
Ostensibly it's about catching Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the brother of the bad guy from the last movie. He's a British black ops chap who wants revenge, so he starts tracking down the "family" members of Dom Toretto (Diesel), leader of the crew. Dom doesn't believe in playing defense, so soon they're chasing the guy chasing them.
Somehow this morphs into the search for an international hacker named Ramsey, who has created a program called the God's Eye, which uses cell phones, security cameras and virtually every electronic device to track anyone, anywhere.
(You may recall this is the same thing Batman used during the finale of "The Dark Knight"; it was goofy then, and it's still goofy now.)
Other familiar characters include Paul Walker as cop-turned-wingman Brian; Michelle Rodriguez as Dom's squeeze Letty, still struggling with amnesia after returning from the dead; Roman (Tyrese Gibson), ladies' man and comic relief; and Tej (Ludacris), computer expert and Roman tamer.
(Walker's death mid-production is handled by using CGI to paste his face on other actors' bodies; if you're not looking for it, you probably won't even notice. He also receives a send-off at the end that's genuinely touching.)
Joining the fray are Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), head of a vague American government arm that wants God's Eye, and Mose Jakande (Djimon Hounsou), an African crime lord who desires it, too. Things build up to a spectacular showdown in L.A. with all parties taking part in a very destructive fracas.
"Furious 7" is not the sort of movie you're supposed to spend more than a few seconds thinking about, because if you do it all falls apart like sand. (For instance, how does the God's Eye track Shaw when he drives through a barren desert? Are the geckos rocking Samsungs?)
You're invited to just sit back, drink in the crazy action scenes and sneering attitude, and cheer. There are plenty of moments worth a huzzah, but many others that earn their derision.
It would be fair to say that John Carpenter's 1982 remake of the sci-fi/horror classic "The Thing from Another World" was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. Shortened to simply, "The Thing," Carpenter's film was a study in moody atmospherics and eye-popping gross-out special effects.
Unlike the 1951 original, there are no female characters, just a motley bunch manning an Antarctic science station. There's not even much characterization, other than a few broad strokes for each guy: There's Windows, the nervous one, and Doc Copper, and Blair the scientist, and Clark, who likes dogs, and so on. And yet each man is distinct and easily recognizable from one another. It sort of reminds me of the space Marines from "Aliens," where within 20 minutes you knew every soldier's name and identity.
The protagonist is MacReady, the helicopter pilot played by Kurt Russell. He's moody, and a loner, and a heavy drinker. But like a lot of Russell's action characters, he has that uncanny ability to stay icily calm in a crisis. So naturally the other men look to him for leadership, even though Garry is ostensibly in charge.
MacReady's main foil is Childs (Keith David), who's a hothead and the most logical choice to challenge MacReady's status as alpha dog.
Speaking of dogs, the movie begins with the image of a beautiful husky being chased across the snows by a helicopter, with a man aboard firing a hunting rifle at it. This launches us into the plot of the station being attacked by a creature from outer space. It had crash-landed here eons ago, was found and thawed out by some Norwegians who fell victim to it.
The creature is very different from the one in the original movie, which was some kind of plant-based blood-sucking vampire thing. Here the creature is more like a virus that attacks living things, assimilating them and copying them perfectly. In effect it is a changeling, although it absorbs whatever it copies, rather than destroying the body.
The special effects, which were simply amazing back in 1982, still hold up very well nearly 30 years later. The scenes I remember most are when the doctor is trying to shock one of the team members back to life, and the defibrillator pads crash right through his chest, revealing him as infected. Then sharp teeth from either side of the chest cavity snap down on the doctor's arms, severing them.
MacReady burns the body with a flamethrower, but the creature's head -- still wearing the outer guise of a the red-headed guy it had infected -- separates itself from the flaming corpse, crawling onto the floor and sprouting spider-like legs and eye stalks.
I still get a thrill watching this stuff. "The Thing" has lost none of its bite.
