The year is 1938.
Benny Goodman plays Carnegie Hall's first ever jazz concert.
Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant star in Bringing Up Baby.
And John W Campbell Jr. writes the stunning sci-fi novella, Who Goes There?
Flash forward to 1982.
Olivia Newton John's Physical is the top of the charts.
And John Carpenter directs The Thing because super gross practical monster
effects have come far enough to really make a worthy adaptation of the novella.
And now the year is 2018.
Two guys that make YouTube videos decided to skip over 1951's The Thing from
Another World as well as 2011's prequel to The Thing which was also called The Thing.
So without further ado, or the point in this timelining, it's time to ask,
what's the difference?
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Right off the bat, Broad Strokes, the book and movie are both about a team of
researchers in Antarctica who are beset by an alien capable of
imitating other lifeforms, of disguising itself as any other creature it wants.
They're both also set in present day.
For the book, that means 1938, and the movie, that means 1982.
So there are a handful of differences in available technologies
sprinkled throughout.
ie, this chess computer who, according to MacReady is-
>> Cheating bitch.
>> But by and large,
the setting of the two are the same.
The characters vary only slightly from page to screen as well.
For example, MacReady, the main character in both mediums,
is described in the book as something from a forgotten myth.
A bronze statue given life.
The station's meteorologist and
second in command MacReady is stoic and purposeful and just bronze, man.
Seriously, Campbell frequently describes him as bronze.
In movie, MacReady is Kurt Russel, which is nothing to sneeze at but
the disheveled long haired, bearded and boozy helicopter pilot MacReady is
nowhere near the classical statue described in the novella.
Other characters, however, resemble their book counterparts more closely.
There's Blair described in the book as a little bald-pated biologist.
And played in the movie by a little bald-pated Wilford Brimley,
who stays largely the same.
Commander Gary, meanwhile, runs the book's research station with a bit more respect
than his movie counterpart.
The book's research team admires Gary, while in the movie, he's belittled by some
of his crew, and even made to look a little blubbery at times.
Some of this can be chalked up to the tenor of a pseudo-military operation in
pre-World War II America versus one in post-Vietnam America.
But it's still an interesting difference.
The movie borrows several more character names from the book,
but not many more characteristics.
For example, there's a Norris and a Dr.
Copper in both mediums, but it's hard to even tell if they have much in common.
This is largely due to the fact that the book has a much larger cast.
There are 37 people at the research station,
as well as over 70 dogs and 5 cows.
As opposed to the movie's dozen men, and single team of sled dogs.
The men in the book, outside of a few main characters,
are given very little to do to distinguish themselves.
Moving on to the story, the movie opens with a spaceship landing on earth.
So, no mystery here.
Just setting something up for Predator to borrow five years later, and
establishing clearly we're dealing with an alien.
But it quickly moves on to this mysterious chase through the snow with these
Norwegians in a helicopter trying to kill a dog for reasons unbeknownst to anybody.
Knownst to the dog, however, is that it's not a dog, it's the thing, and
now it's found its way into the research station.
In the book, the alien is already sitting in the station,
frozen in a big chunk of ice.
The early part of the book is dedicated to MacReady explaining how they came to find
the thing in the first place.
They were out investigating some strange magnetic readings because remember,
they're sciencing down there in the South Pole when they stumbled across
a spaceship, and this alien popsicle not ten paces away.
They also accidentally blow up the spaceship,
but they do feel really bad about it.
I mean they were just trying to clear some ice.
But MacReady totally understood that maybe they've just blew up all kinds of mind
expanding alien technologies that could have literally saved the mankind.
But, the ship blew up.
In the movie, the thing is still the dog when MacReady and
Copper go investigate the Norwegian camp.
When they return from the ruin of Norwegian station with the charred
remains of a mid-transformation thing, the thing that was disguised as a dog,
begins to reveal itself.
And cue the goopy 80s body horror.
It's only after the first attack that MacReady, Copper, and Fuchs head back out
and find the crashed alien ship, and the carved out block of ice,
and they really understand what they're dealing with.
In the book, meanwhile,
there's some debate about what to do with the frozen alien.
They can make out its appearance through the ice.
It's got three red eyes and worm-like blue hair so it's freaking some dudes out.
Plus Norris claims he had nightmares ever since he looked into those three red eyes,
and has the feeling that the thing is actually telepathic.
So while Norris, a physicist, is worried about what alien microbes they might
thaw with the beast, Blair the biologist is antsy to get a look.
Ultimately, Blair gets his way, and the thing is allowed to thaw.
They just lean it against the wall overnight, and, would you look at that.
By morning, the thing is gone.
The thing's first attack plays out the same way in both mediums.
It's in the kennels, and
the entire research station is crowded around MacReady, and a flamethrower.
Barclay, one of the other 36 guys from the book,
fashions a weird little cattle prod out of a few pieces of wood, and
some electrified wires, and boy, does the thing hate that.
But after the first attack, Blair seems to have a pretty accurate grasp on
what the thing is, and how it works.
In the movie though,
Blair spends time dissecting everything, analyzing blood samples, and
in one of those bits of 80s technology sprinkled throughout the film, there's
a pretty hilarious computer model of how the thing's cells attack other cells.
And with just a few more key strokes, how quickly the thing is going
to take over the earth. >> 27,000 hours,
whoa, that's just 1,125 days.
And what a dramatic computer ellipses and
everything, sheesh. >> Either way, both book and movie,
Blair go crazy, convinced that none of them can leave the station without
also risking bringing the thing back to the rest of the world.
He disables communications and transportation, stranding
the crew on the ice, and they respond by locking him away from the rest of the men.
>> In both versions,
they're pretty certain one or more of them are things, and
trust gets thrown right out the window.
So to tell who's who, in the book, they devise a blood test where they mix human
blood with dog blood, and they let that marinate for five to six days.
And then test the crews' blood against that to see if they're really a thing.
Which, well, it didn't really make sense when I was reading it, and
apparently it doesn't make sense within the narrative.
Because the test doesn't work at all. >> Ultimately,
MacReady ends up resorting to the same hot wire test his movie counterpart uses.
Thinking that every part of a thing acts independently,
a thing's blood will try to defend itself.
In the movie, we get this scene, where Palmer's blood reacts, and then, boom!
Red creature effects, I mean look at this, the 80s were awesome.
You got this, the fly.
Re-animator, come on, practical war is just so cool.
But it's just the one guy who's a thing.
The hot wire test proves everyone else is still human.
(Sound) In the book, the whole station,
all 36 guys except of course Blair who's still locked away.
Stand in one room together,
getting their blood tested one at a time, and 14 of them come back positive.
And each time somebody's blood reacts, the rest of the room descends on them,
literally killing them with their bare hands.
And a twisted little detail,
the men begin to grin sadistically as they take out the things.
Even MacReady seems to get a thrill out of killing the things,
like a sense of relief with how violently they've taken the upper hand on here.
>> Sneaking up on the end,
in the movie, they head out to test Blair's blood, only to find him missing.
A few loose floorboards reveal that he'd tunneled underneath the shack he was being
held in, and began building some type of ship with spare parts from the vehicles
he'd been sabotaging around the station. >> But
Blair is found in a similar situation.
Only it wasn't Blair anymore.
The thing had dropped the whole disguise completely, and
was just straight up looking like things look.
(Sound) After dispatching it in a customary way,
they discovered that the thing could also manage to create both atomic power,
and an anti-gravity backpack, while being left alone for only a week.
That's leagues ahead of what thing Blair slapped together in the movie.
We should say the ending of this story is probably the biggest difference.
The final survivors in the movie realize the thing is just trying to
freeze itself again, to wait for more unsuspecting humans to arrive so
it can make another escape. >> Six hours,
it'll be 100 below in here. >> Well,
that's suicide! >> Not for
that thing. >> And
while their book counterparts certainly consider the fact that they may not
make it out alive, movie MacReady,
and co's cold acceptance of that fact drives the entire climax of the film.
With MacReady and Childs left shivering in the cold,
the film ends with an incredible, and now iconic ambiguity.
It's not a question of will our heroes survive this ordeal, but
which one of these guys is the thing. >> Why don't we
just wait here for a little while?
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See what happens.
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>> The book however is a pretty straightforward happy ending.
MacReady figures they caught the thing maybe half an hour before it was ready to
leave so hey, good timing there.
Plus they're satisfied.
The hot needle test was conclusive, and
none of the other 20 some odd men remaining on the base are things.
So chalk this one up for the good guys.
Case closed.
Nothing ambiguous here.
We totally won.
The end. >> That's it for
this episode of What's the Difference?
But let us know in the comments what your favorite super goopy,
practical monster effects are.
And be sure to subscribe to CineFix for more What's the Difference?
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