Rome was not created in a day, and neither was ‘The Thing,’ an epic picture. ‘The Thing,’ directed by John Carpenter, began as a misunderstood work. The film was panned by critics and spectators alike due to a lack of understanding of its complexity. In addition, the film was released against the backdrop of another extraterrestrial species known as ET.
ET was now a cheerful creature that everyone adored, whereas Carpenter’s Lovecraftian monster was pure evil. We can all agree that the general public like happy endings. Carpenter’s picture, on the other hand, has endured the test of time and is now considered a masterpiece. The setting of the film—namely, the surroundings of paranoia, cold, and confusion—is the cause for its popularity. We could talk about the film’s legacy for hours, but that isn’t why you and I are here.
In this video, we’ll talk about the extraterrestrial spacecraft from the original film’s opening credits. So ‘The Thing’ arrived on Earth in a UFO that crashed in Antarctica hundreds of thousands of years ago. The important issue now is: who were the initial passengers aboard this UFO? We’ve got the answers for you! Are you ready to find out more about ‘The Thing’ and be blown away?
The UFO Is Discovered In The Thing Movie
The UFO in question first featured in John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ opening credits. It didn’t always follow a projectile or a pre-determined course into the Earth’s atmosphere, thus it wasn’t quite smooth. The trajectory it took was erratic and haphazard, implying that it never intended to land on Earth and instead hit the blue planet as a result of losing control of the journey.
This was possibly a result of The Thing’s actions, which was onboard with original passengers or the Pilot Aliens of the UFO. After the crash landing, the Thing must have crawled out of the debris and traveled a small distance before collapsing due to the harsh weather conditions and the subzero temperatures.
It ultimately froze or hibernated for over one hundred thousand years. Over the period of time, a hundred thousand years of ice and snow buried the UFO out of anyone’s sight, only to be discovered by the Norwegian crew of the research station named Thule in the year 1982.
The finding of the UFO was, without a doubt, their most amazing find to date, a true millennium-defining find. They also discovered frozen extraterrestrial remains beside the UFO, which they assumed were the remains of the spacecraft’s dead occupants. However, we all know that this is not the case. Something very nefarious and cunning was on the verge of exploding.
Kate Lloyd, the American paleontologist of the Norwegian base, advised against bringing the alien specimen to the facility, but that went unheard. They drilled the ice to penetrate into its body and retrieve a small sample for tests. And the drilling was enough to thaw the ice and release the alien from its natural containment.
It soon burst out of the ice block and attacked a crew member, but this was only the beginning. One by one, the alien would attack, assimilate, and assume the shapes of its victims, leaving the entire crew in a state of claustrophobia and paranoia. In the end, only two survivors would remain, who chased the Thing on a helicopter, which was now imitating the shape of an Alaskan Malamute.
However, the creature reached the American base US Outpost 31, and the two Norwegians eventually got killed before they could achieve anything substantial. The Americans suffered a fate similar to the Norwegians. Interestingly enough, the Thing tried to build a makeshift UFO using the parts of a helicopter and a tractor, but the Americans got wind of it.
Who were the Pilots Of The Thing’s Spaceship?
We’ve established that the Thing’s journey to Earth was not in its own UFO. It very definitely integrated with the UFO’s Pilot Alien crew, but they must have detected The Thing’s existence on the ship, resulting in a heated confrontation and the UFO’s crash-landing.
The 2011 prequel film directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and written by Eric Heisserer was supposed to feature this alien species, but the poor response that they received from a test audience and budgetary constraints led to the creature being dropped from the final cut.
The Pilot Aliens of the UFO were to be brought to life using special effects, which were ultimately replaced with a geometric, glowing hologram that we saw in the final version of the film. However, Amalgamated Dynamics had created a fully-functional animatronic puppet in the pre-production stages, and this design is available on the internet for anyone to view.
In terms of the Pilot Alien’s nature, it belonged to a race of aliens that were dedicated to gathering plant and animal life specimens from many worlds. If you will, consider it an intergalactic zoological voyage and exploration. These collected specimens were then stored in containment pods so that they could be taken to the Pilot Alien’s homeworld for research or other purposes.
Unfortunately for theAlien Pilots, they captured The Thing while it was imitating some other creature. And, once onboard, The Thing must have broken out of containment and unleashed its wrath on the original passengers of the UFO.
The Pilot Aliens stood 12 to 16 feet tall with a biomechanical shell and three vertically positioned eyes on their heads. They inhaled through a tube that stretched from the back of their necks to their chests. The most interesting feature, however, was that the Pilots controlled their ship with the help of tubes that connected the spaceship to themselves. These tubes would find their other end in the-ports on the Pilot’s back.
The Pilot Aliens appear to be comparable to the Engineers or Space Jockeys from the Alien world if we examine closely enough. Engineers, after all, are known to have created a variety of living forms using black liquid or black goo.
Similarly, the Pilots assembled a nursery of specimens from various planets, probably for the purpose of creating newer life forms. It would be interesting to learn more about these guys. ‘The Thing’ prequel had pretty grand plans for its Alien Pilots, like having three different forms of pilots. The first would have been a mummified Pilot, the second an alive Pilot, and the third would have been The Thing imitating a Pilot.
The Original Script
Kate would have boarded the alien spacecraft to find the mummified bones of a Pilot, but she would be assaulted by a Pilot Thing soon after, according to the original screenplay. As previously stated, the Pilot’s biology was required to pilot the spaceship. And, in order to fly away, the Thing took on the form of the Pilot.
When it comes to attacking Kate, an intruder, the Pilot Thing detaches the umbilical cord-like tubes. But Kate would threaten to blow up the ship using her last grenade. At this point, an assimilated Carter would have entered the spacecraft and noticed that if Kate blew up the grenade, everyone would die. So, Carter Thing uses a flame thrower to burn the Pilot Thing, but this was only a plot to gain Kate’s trust.
Why was the Pilot Creature fired from The Thing?
As previously stated, the Alien Pilot was replaced by a holographic tower, and as a result, the Thing merged with Sander, manifesting in a mutant form. The Sander Thing was now made digitally, and it shows, tragically. The special effects models and the depiction of the Pilot Alien were discarded because the Pilot Thing had confused the test audience. People were used to seeing asymmetrical and grisly physiology as far as the Thing was concerned, and moving away from that turned out to be disastrous.