Petal_Chatoyance t1_iuhfwby wrote on October 31, 2022 at 11:07 AM

The Thing that was Blair knew full well what the noose is and was for.

Allow me to introduce you to the TRULY scariest part of The Thing (one of my very favorite movies).

The Thing replicates a person down to every last cell. That means every neuron in the brain. Think about that carefully. It knows everything the person it absorbed knew. Everything. But it gets worse. Much worse. It's even stated in the film itself: what if you were the Thing and didn't even know it?

The Thing can become anything it ever absorbed in the past - including all memories. That is how it could build a flying saucer under MacReady's cabin, where Blair is being kept. It can also run a personality as part of its camouflage.

That means it is entirely possible that in that moment, in that cabin, Blair didn't know he was the Thing. That could have been - likely was - Blair's mind and memories, Blair's consciousness, being simulated by the Thing. For just long enough to talk to MacReady, Blair was alive again, sort of, unaware that he was already very dead.

And it gets worse still: the Thing is ultimately in control. The living mind of the simulated Blair could be manipulated. The Thing wants back in with all the humans. So, it would know - because it is superintelligent (you need to be to build an impromptu flying saucer from scraps and bits - also, I have read the original story it comes from "Who Goes There" by John W. Campbell) - that the presence of a noose would tug on MacReady and the other's sympathy to manipulate them.

Now, consider all of that. You could be the Thing and not know it. You could be alive one moment, thinking you are safe, but you are already dead, already eaten. The Thing is just using you, letting your mind run for a bit, before packing you back into nonexistence.

That, I think, is far more horrifying than all of the gore and shapeshifting. That is true shapeshifting - not merely mimicking the body, but also the mind.

How do I know this is true?

Interviews with Campbell as well as with Carpenter make this clear. The Thing, the concept from "Who Goes There" was originally written as a scare story vaguely about the spread of Communism. The paranoia is that your neighbor could secretly be a Communist, and they could turn other neighbors Communist, yet still act perfectly normal. This was the time of the big Red Scare, and Americans were made to be terrified of Communism, so stories that played on that fear sold well. What if, then, your neighbor managed to somehow convince YOU to be a Communist? Then what! Oh GOD the horror!

That is the original notion that became a science fiction story about an alien creature.

I'll give you one more fun fact: in the original story, they get to see the Thing frozen in the ice, looking as it did when it was still a copy of the alien that owned the giant saucer in the ice. That being had blue skin, three red eyes, three legs, two arms, and tendrils around the mouth and head. In the end, when they discover the saucer under MacReady's cabin, they also find special lights the creature made that told them what kind of starsystem the Thing preferred: a young starsystem with actinic - bluish - light from a very young star.

Read the original story, if you can. It's cool.

badger81987 t1_iuisu32 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 5:26 PM

Are you familiar with the Expanse? I feel like you'd find the Protomolecule endlessly interesting.

Petal_Chatoyance t1_iujhafx wrote on October 31, 2022 at 8:09 PM

Absolutely love The Expanse. I read all the novels out loud to my spouse. Watched the series too. I am a big fan of Hard SF.

tkmoney t1_iujqxs4 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 9:16 PM

The question of "do you know you're infected with the thing?" is something I always think about when I watch this movie. Another thing to look at with this theory is Norris. I think he is one of the earliest ones to get infected if not the first in the group. We get that little scene towards the beginning of the movie with the infected dog wandering around the camp and then going in someone's room. We only see a silhouette of the person in the room and maybe before HD it was much harder to tell who that is. I think its clearly Norris in that room.

Later in the movie, there is a moment when Norris is asked to take charge of things and Gary hands him his gun but Norris turns it down and doesn't want the responsibility. So if we assume that Norris is infected, why did he turn it down?

It could be that the thing wants to hide and by turning down the gun it only gains more trust from the others.
It could be that Norris who doesn't know he is infected really doesn't want the responsibility but the thing doesn't understand what the gun is? Like the thing is "in the backseat" of his mind but can take over whenever they want.

IDK its fun to think about