The Thing that could’ve been – learn how John Carpenter saved The Thing

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

John Carpenter has made a lot of classics, but many fans consider 1982's THE THING to be his masterpiece. It was a stunning achievement, not only in special effects, but also in terms of telling a suspenseful story, but what you may not know is that the classic film could have ended up a lot different as well.

Here's a blog which details a lot of the changes that the film went through to become the classic that it is as a result of a scheduling issue which allowed Carpenter some time to see a rough cut of the completed film so he could fix a lot of the flick's problems by getting rid of the stuff that just didn't work, such as Bennings and Fuchs' original death scenes. The blog not only features some interesting stories on the making of the film, but offers up some on-set pics that some of you may have never seen before.

In a nutshell, due to the aforementioned scheduling snafu, Carpenter found himself with 6 weeks of time on his hands between the film’s stage and location production. During this time he assembled a rough cut and, simply put, wasn't happy with what he saw. Carpenter felt that the flick was too easy on the tension, spent too much time between the golden monster moments that we all love, and didn't bring Mac as the hero to the forefront quickly enough. So he started chopping, entire scenes were cut, tons of footage hit the floor, and then he started writing a script around his new rough cut, adding new kills along with new character arcs, the result being the classic film we all know and love.

Click HERE to check out the detailed blog that gives new insight to the making of THE THING. It's a fascinating read, indeed!