The Thing’s John Carpenter sends a message to those who gave the movie a bad review back when it was released. Released in 1982, The Thing tackles a story of a research team sent to Antarctica who finds themselves hunted by a shape-shifting alien that takes on the appearance of its victims. The Thing is lauded as a cult classic in the horror genre today, and is one of Carpenter’s best-known works outside of Halloween.
Speaking with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Carpenter reveals his message for those who criticized The Thing back in 1982. Colbert asked the iconic director what he would like to say to those who criticized his now-classic film.
Carpenter jokingly responded that he would “just want to spend 5 minutes with each one in a room, a locked room.” Check out the full quote from Carpenter below:
“I just want to spend 5 minutes with each one [critic] in a room, a locked room. Just the two of us. 5 minutes is all I ask, then I’ll be happy.”
How The Thing’s Reception Evolved Over Time
The Thing was not always as well-received as it is now. Upon its 1982 release, The Thing was panned by many critics, who nicked the film for its supposedly shallow characterization and over-reliance on gory, gross-out sequences. In his interview with Carpenter, Colbert also posed that perhaps the release of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra Terrestrial that same year also did The Thing a disservice. Whereas The Thing has a barebones, evil alien, perhaps audiences of the time, says Colbert, preferred “aliens that have a heart light, and they touch you and they heal and phone home.”
Luckily for Carpenter, The Thing aged well over the course of time, and is now thought to be a masterpiece. As time went on and audiences became more amenable to gore, people were more able to recognize the psychological horror brilliance behind The Thing. The Thing’s characters were not only in a battle against the unrelenting elements of the Antarctic landscape, but the battle of wits against each other as they struggled to parse who was the real person and who had been consumed by the alien.
In the four decades since its release, The Thing has gone on to inspire copious other directors and their works. Notably, The Thing was loosely spun off into an infamous episode of The X-Files: season 1, episode 8, “Ice.” The Thing’s reception has had a turbulent journey, but nonetheless, critics and audiences have come to embrace it, so much so that The Thing 2 has been rumored. Hopefully, Carpenter won’t have to lock anyone in a room for the reception of any future The Thing movies.
