For 41 years, people have been discussing and debating the ending of John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing (watch or buy it HERE). People who worked on the movie can’t even seem to agree on what was happening in the final scene. Cinematographer Dean Cundey thought he had given away the answer, but then Carpenter came in and said Cundey had “no clue” what he was talking about. So the mystery remains. And for star Kurt Russell, it’s fun to hear that people are still talking about that ending.
Russell is currently doing the press rounds for the Godzilla series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and the ending of The Thing came up during his interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. Russell said (with thanks to Screen Rant for the transcription), “We talked about that, the ending of that movie, John and I, for a long, long time. We’d trade ideas for the end, write it out, and it was one of those things where John was concerned about it, doing a movie that you would see, for two hours plus, and bring you back to square one. We finally got to a point where, we’d try different things, and I just remember finally saying, ‘How about this one?’ and we’d try it, and I said, ‘John, I think this comes back to square one. I think that’s what it does.’ The only thing I could do was finish it with, ‘Why don’t we just sit here for a while and see what happens.’ It worked. It was the thing that it called for. It’s fun to hear people talk about that one, I must say, that’s a fun one.“
Carpenter directed The Thing from a screenplay by Bill Lancaster, which was based on John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 novella Who Goes There? (You can find out more about the adaptation HERE.) The film has the following synopsis: In remote Antarctica, a group of American research scientists are disturbed at their base camp by a helicopter shooting at a sled dog. When they take in the dog, it brutally attacks both human beings and canines in the camp and they discover that the beast can assume the shape of its victims. A resourceful helicopter pilot and the camp doctor lead the camp crew in a desperate, gory battle against the vicious creature before it picks them all off, one by one.
Russell is joined in the cast by Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, Donald Moffat, Joel Polis, and Thomas G. Waites.
What do you think about the ending of The Thing? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.