The Thing 2011 was sort of pushed into a corner from story perspective.
What I mean is by creating a "prequel", the story had to have someone who cut their wrists in the radio room, there needed to be space ship found, there needed to be the ice block "coffin" that was burst out. There needed to be the two person monster burned outside. There needed to be an axe in the wall and some backstory to having grenades. And at least two people needed to survive to chase the dog.
The opening scenes also needed to introduce and justify the Kate character. I have nothing against Winstead, but she's not a great actress and she had no connection to the people there at that site. Part of the beauty of the 1982 version is that the entire base already knew each other, were trapped together and were sick of each other and isolated. They were already "weakened" to their own self destructive pathologies and interpersonal conflicts just as regular humans.
The 2011 version, all the deaths did not seem purposeful. For example, when Clark got shot in the head in the original, it highlighted that you might kill a human and not a "monster" by mistake. It heightened the uncertainty. Whereas, in the prequel, there seemed to be carnage for the sake of carnage, to justify the SFX used and to try to whittle down the cast to Winstead and clearly Edgerton at the end ( they were the "headliners" of this cast) I also appreciate that the original had people make mistakes and use poor judgement, but it was not out of line to the context of the situation ( they were exhausted, isolated, frustrated and terrified with no hope of outside rescue) Whereas Winstead was always right and always effective. ( In the original, IMHO, it was critical for MacReady to shoot Clark in the head. To create suspicion around MacReady being infected, but also to ask the question on how clever were the monsters behaving to pick off the Outpost crew one by one. In the prequel, it's Mr Ecko who blows the guy away with the flamethrower and there is absolutely no stakes at all involved)
Maybe it would have been easier to do a story without all the requirements built within it to make the prequel fit the canon created in the 1982 version. Also, at no point in the 2011 version do you suspect that Winstead/Kate is infected. I don't see how you can create effective tension when she's Mary Sue'd up and slathered in plot armor. Just some thoughts.
Agreed, they did such a poor job of advertising it as a prequel as well that many still think it's a remake to this day, it should've been called The Thing: Thule Station or something else to set it apart from the first one. You also make a very good point with the sense familiarity being lost with the Norwegian outpost having people from kind of all over including new arrivals with Kate, it really takes away from the main theme of distrust and how easy it spreads. It's way more harrowing watching these men who have known each other for so long completely lose their minds and start hating and conspiring against each other than it is to see Norwegians and Americans taking sides.
What I really disliked about the deaths is that they don't happen because The Thing is caught or someone makes a mistake leading to their demise, instead people die because people are just stupid and choose to die or the thing decides to transform itself at times where it literally makes no sense to reveal itself. Like when Kate is drawn into a room alone by the infected Juliette at that point she should've pulled a Blair, shoved her hand in Kate's face and assimilate her instantly, instead it chooses to transform itself for about a minute giving Kate plenty of time to escape then rampages along the hallways of the outpost taking out a guy who just happened to be walking by. When Edvard transforms towards the end Adam and Derek die because instead of running away they just stand in the room yelling at Carter to burn the thing while it swings a large tentacle everywhere. Sanders dies unceremoniously off screen after being the main human villain for the whole movie (and the actor really was wasted after watching the Banshee clips you sent before) and Colin, the guy who slits his neck also does it off screen for seemingly no reason since by the point he did it, the thing, Kate and Carter were away from the base in the spaceship.
Agreed on Kate as well she had way too much plot armor especially at the end when she is getting attacked by the Sanders thing who has multiple windows to infect her, hell it really has ALL the power to infect her since it could just drop a limb to go attack her really instead of playing a big dumb monster and then at the end the now infected Carter not only has her all alone, it also has a flamethrower so it could've just torched Kate or assimilated her with no fuss but instead it chooses to keep the charade up for seemingly no reason, giving itself away as an imitation in the process. Then she gets on the snowcat and is never seen again, probably sequel bait I'm guessing but it feels so much weaker compared to what Carpenter did.
Carpenter's Thing has so many intentional and unintentional layers that make it so rich, there's such a good theory about Macready being the thing and attempting to infect everyone else on a celular level because of a small detail with his J&B bottle near the start of the movie and the other very questionable things that happen like Fuchs dying right after telling Mac they should all eat and drink from cans and personal bottles, his torn clothes, him making it back in the storm... To a lot of people he is human but you can't deny there is a case to be made he could be infected too meanwhile with Kate there is no doubt she is human as the prequel isn't nearly as clever with it's details and nuances in the writing it's a pretty straight forward and generic monster flick where the hero makes it.
In another time or another universe it would've been interesting to see a prequel with an all Norwegian cast more in tone with Carpenter's film, of course that would never happen because those kind of movies don't sell well to general audience and to be honest it's more interesting to theorize what happened at the outpost than seeing it in the 2011 prequel, the power of imagination is stronger than a CGI tentacle monster roaring and running around imo.
There is a new Thing adaptation in the works from Blumhouse based off the extend version of the original novella but details on it are still murky, apparently Carpenter is attached in some capacity but he hasn't really said anything. It will be interesting to see what happens with that and if it can successfully portray those themes of paranoia, distrust, betrayal, isolation as well as Carpenter did and better than the prequel.
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