Hacker Cinema
The Thing
1982 · Film · 109 min
Part of The Thing Collection
Directed by John Carpenter
A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.
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96 comments on Hacker News
So all the news outlets are crowing about the old and the new "Air Force One", but security/aviation wonks all know that "Air Force One" (and "Marine One") is a callsign, not an aircraft designation.
So if the President snuck into a smaller decoy aircraft, what callsign did these planes use? Does "Air Force One" keep up the ruse over the radio as well? If this is the case, and considering how difficult it is to keep secrets secret, then how large of a circle needs to be "read in" about the true situation, in order to protect the right aircraft? What contingencies do they have if one of them is actually attacked... keep up the ruse?
Yes, I admit, we've all seen too many action/adventure films with complex decoy scenarios. It would seem that doing them in real life would just induce headaches.
Also, my father is totally convinced that Qatar loaded-up the new aircraft with bugs and surprises, and they won't in a hundred years sweep them all clean. I feel like maybe Qatar wouldn't be that nakedly stupid. I mean, the Russians were really coy about their gift of The Thing!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
You made me think about the possibility of him being in The Thing - if he was chosen for that film, I wonder who he would have played.
It's a great movie! One of the best attempts at capturing a Lovecraftian vibe, maybe only bested by The Thing or his excellent Event Horizon.
For anyone who isn't aware, the same author who wrote the short story the film The Thing was based on.
Would you put reading horror novels like IT or movies like The Thing in the same category?
>The Thing (the one you know of—though the other had a longer title anyway) was a remake.
I think it's more accurate to say they're both based off the same 1938 novella: "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell. The 1951 movie "The Thing from Another World" is a very loose adaptation because it omits the most important plot point of the shapeshifting alien imitating people. The 1982 movie "The Thing" is a closer adaptation that includes it. This makes it a much better movie even if you ignore the improved special effects, because the drama of the characters not knowing who's really the Thing is a big part of the appeal.
The Wizard of Oz (the one you know of) was a remake.
The Thing (the one you know of—though the other had a longer title anyway) was a remake.
The version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland (so, the one with that meme-able image of him pointing toward the camera) was a remake.
(Franchises? There are some from like the 40s that had a dozen or so entries over the next couple decades)
Many remake examples from almost all periods of filmmaking.
There were tons of remakes of silent films after talkies came about, then another wave of remakes of jankier-effects stagier-acting-style movies from the ‘40s and ‘50s when effects got way better and naturalistic acting took over in the 70s (plus some of these were remaking black & white to color).
I've always been obsessed with the movie The Thing. That slow paranoia where you know something in the room isn't human anymore, but it looks exactly like your friends. and the organism doesn't just kill, it copies, adapts, and improves. And you can't trust anyone.
I've wanted that feeling in a game for years. Not the jump scares or the gore, but the psychological part. sitting in a room full of people and not knowing who's real.
When MoltBot blew up it kind of clicked. People loved trying to figure out if they were talking to a bot or a human. But it was always 1 on 1.
So I just had an idea that what if multiple bots were in chat room with humans, and the bots learn and are pretending to be different people, and they would be getting better at it over time
So I quickly built this with project name We Became Shadows.
You join a chat room with other players. What you don't know is that an AI "Organism" is quietly spawning bots (called Shadows) into the conversation. They have different personalities like some are friendly, some provoke arguments, some just lurk. They read the room, adapt to the mood, and try to blend in.
Your job is to figure out who's fake. Chat, observe, get suspicious, then use /reveal on whoever you think is a Shadow. Get it right and the bot is destroyed. Get it wrong and you die (you respawn after a cooldown, it's not that brutal yet).
And the Shadows can hunt you back. The more you talk, the bigger target you become.
Some things that make the bots harder to spot: - Each one gets a random archetype (agreeable, provocateur, quiet, social, detective) and a backstory - A "Humanizer" layer adds typos, varied message lengths, and natural pacing - They observe the conversation before jumping in, so they don't just start talking about random stuff - The Organism has a collective memory and adapts its strategy over time
It's a rough first version and I'm still tuning the bot behavior and a lot of stuff. But the core loop works and it's genuinely fun to watch people argue about who's real in a room where half the "players" are AI.
That's the point of the movie. Nada got played, and he played himself. It was sound and fury, but it signified something, because it's a movie, not a documentary or fable. Sometimes there's not a sensible ending. Nada didn't get a good guy ending because good guys don't exist the way Nada thought they did.
Nada is not smart. He's a useful idiot. I think that like The Thing, They Live is pretty ideological and subversive, but it's also just a weird campy movie. It's a genre flick, but there's a reason it's a cult classic. Just like Zizek and his guide to cinema, Carpenter knows how to make iconic quotable expressions involving a camera.
> start really strong and then just descend into pointless violence
So it goes.
Artists tell the truth by first telling a lie.
https://i.redd.it/ak5ejwle2li01.jpg
I really wanted to like They Live especially after having watched The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. Similar with The Thing which is also directed by John Carpenter. Both movies start really strong and then just descend into pointless violence. Anyway, I digress ...
I'm a big fan of Cold War-era thriller films
there're also some good spy films at that time, but these are not as cool as thrillers such as The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers
unfortunately or fortunately, there hasn't been such brilliant films since the end of the Cold War(I like The Facult, but it is not that good)
fortunately or unfortunately, I believe that such brilliant films are about to make a comeback
Let’s be real, the overwhelming majority of those 500 are straight up terrible. Netflix alone has produced well over 100 movies, and IMO at best some of them are worth finishing not that I can think of any off the top of my head.
Now I’m sure you’ve looked forward to many movies but off the top of your head list stuff you’ve either seen more than once and or actually recommend to someone that came our in the last 10 years vs…
(78) The Deer Hunter, Superman, National Lampoon's Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (79) Apocalypse Now, Alien, Life of Brian, Mad Max, Escape from Alcatraz (80) The Shining, Star Wars: Episode V, Airplane!, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, The Elephant Man (81) Raiders of the Lost Ark, Das Boot, The Evil Dead, Mad Max 2, Escape from New York, Time Bandits (82) Blade Runner, The Thing, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, Conan the Barbarian, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Tron (83) Scarface, WarGames, Star Wars: Episode VI, Trading Places, The Evil Dead
Obviously not all great movies but that’s ~30 classic movies in just 6 years and I’m sure I’ve missed a few as kids movies are largely missing from that list.
I just watched the 1951 The Thing movie last week. The humans win at the end.
The 1982 movie... some humans survive. Maybe.
I'm sure you know this, but for those who might not, US sci-fi was just as varied as anywhere else... except in the domain of John W. Campbell, for decades the editor of the biggest-circulation sci-fi magazine in the country, where he very much explicitly selected for that kind of story. Lots of famous authors active in the era have tales of how they edited their work to meet Campbells demands -- I recall one where the author switched the 'human' and 'alien' species because Campbell wouldn't print a story where humanity 'lost.'
Truly a fascinating character, and an author in his own right, responsible for the story that John Carpenter would adapt for his film The Thing. I don't share his taste in science fiction, but he had a massive impact on the genre.
There are some examples of remakes that are great. Frequently, these become the "classics" and people forget about the original. A canonical example is John Carpenter's "The Thing" in 1982, which was a remake of a somewhat crappy 50s movie and is now a sci-fi horror classic. Another good example is "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" from 1978, starring Donald Sutherland. It was a remake of a 1950s movie too, though in that case the 50s movie was actually pretty good, but the 1978 one was scarier.
I can't think of any good remakes from after the year 2000.
For convenience, I asked ChatGPT to create this table, which summarizes how many times each movie has been mentioned in this conversation so far. It got a few counts wrong (as usual), but it still gives a good sense of the frequency. I hope it can be useful to someone:
| Movie | Number of Mentions | |-------------------------------------------|---------------------| | The Matrix | 9 | | Lord of the Rings Trilogy | 8 | | Pulp Fiction | 8 | | Alien | 7 | | Fight Club | 7 | | Ghostbusters | 6 | | Die Hard | 5 | | Back to the Future | 5 | | Inception | 5 | | Star Wars Trilogy (original) | 5 | | Groundhog Day | 5 | | Terminator 1 & 2 | 5 | | Jurassic Park | 4 | | The Thing | 4 | | The Fifth Element | 4 | | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | 4 | | Ghost in the Shell | 4 | | Interstellar | 4 | | Casablanca | 3 | | Office Space | 3 | | Shawshank Redemption | 3 | | The Godfather Trilogy | 3 | | The Blues Brothers | 3 | | Blade Runner | 3 | | Mad Max: Fury Road | 3 | | Unforgiven | 3 | | Total Recall (1990) | 3 | | The Crow | 3 | | The Princess Bride | 3 | | Akira | 3 | | The Big Lebowski | 3 | | Guardians of the Galaxy | 3 | | American Psycho | 3 | | Indiana Jones Trilogy | 3 | | Kiki’s Delivery Service | 2 | | Ratatouille | 2 | | A Clockwork Orange | 2 | | Mission Impossible (various) | 2 | | Casino Royale | 2 | | Skyfall | 2 | | Ferris Bueller's Day Off | 2 | | Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan | 2 | | Apocalypse Now | 2 | | The Shining | 2 | | Groundhog Day | 2 | | Donnie Darko | 2 | | Dune (2021) | 2 | | Gladiator | 2 | | Predator | 2 | | Seven/Se7en | 2 | | The Dark Knight | 2 | | Snatch | 2 | | Prometheus | 2 | | Schindler’s List | 2 | | The Wolf of Wall Street | 2 | | Dr. Strangelove | 2 | | Silence of the Lambs | 2 | | Kill Bill | 2 | | Real Genius | 2 | | Top Secret! | 2 | | Tenet | 2 | | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | 2 | | The Adjustment Bureau | 2 | | The Expanse | 2 | | Pulp Fiction | 2 |
Here's what I term my "flypaper" movies. If I happen to glance at the satellite TV guide and notice one of these coming up, there's a good change I'll be watching it.
Lawrence of Arabia The Maltese Falcon Most Hitchcock films Blade Runner The Man From Snowy River The Martian Monty Python & the Holy Grail The Princess Bride Serenity The Thin Man series The Thing Tombstone Young Frankenstein Monty Python and the Holy Grail Clerks and most Kevin Smith movies Baby Drive and most Edgar Wright movies Fanboys Spinal Tap Kung Fu Hustle Apollo 13
I found that I actually only really like a movie or tv show if it is infinitely (aka a lot; more than 50x without getting bored) rewatchable (for me obviously); not many movies are. Some favorites which fall in that category; Alien, Aliens, The Thing, Das Boot, Cold Lazarus (the Dennis P one), ...
It is very personal as looking through what other people mention ; many of those I couldn't sit through once, but if friends tell me to give it another go, I watch 2-10 times to see if it grows. Rarely it does, but there have been cases. Notably everyone likes Pulp Fiction; I saw it at least 15 times and find it unwatchable.
I don’t usually rewatch movies on my own, so this is mostly a list of movies I thought were special enough to show other people.
Eighth grade
Mother!
The Thing
Rosemary’s Baby
Hereditary
Dead Ringers
Happiness
Synecdoche, New York
The Triplets of Bellville
The Thing and Alien are my two favorite movies. Silence of the Lambs is up there too.
Not movies but I've rewatched X-Files and Twin Peaks repeatedly as well.
Of the ~700 movies I've watched (not bragging, just context - actual movie buffs watch thousands by the time they're my age), those I happily rewatch are:
The Thing (1982)
Silence of the Lambs
Alien
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Young Frankenstein
Rocky Horror
Raising Arizona
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Men in Black
Primer
But even those I've only seen a handful of times each. It takes a lot for me to want to watch/read/play something multiple times, as I'm the kind of person who always thinks, "but I could be trying something new, or getting something done".
John Carpenter made some good movies some great movies, some truly shit movies, and one of the greatest movies ever - one of my top 3 favorite movies of all time (The Thing).
Story and script seem to be the defining factor in making a great movie.
>Arguably, the original trilogy was simply dungeons and dragons in space. Wizards, rogues, and knights in space.
It was basically Flash Gordon plus WW2 movies plus samurai movies plus fairy tales and Arthurian fantasy in space.
I think one of the reasons why The Force Awakens is not good is that it tries to copy previous Star Wars movies, but Star Wars has always been best when it copies stuff from other genres and mixes them together into a new thing, not when it tries to copy from its own previous films.
>it's pretty much the only widely known sci-fi films from the last 70s early 80s
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, Blade Runner, and The Terminator are all widely known late 70s / early 80s sci-fi films.
Probably not as well known but still pretty widely known are Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Thing, and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
I just did a quick search on Walmart.com for DVDs <= $6 and found plenty of mediocrity but also:
- Shawshank Redemption - Despicable Me 1 & 2 (for $5 total) - Scream 1-3 (again $5 total) - Beverly Hills Cop 1-3 (same) - Tombstone - Unforgiven - ET - A Star is Born (2018) - Sleepless in Seattle - The Thing (1982) - Seabiscuit - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Titanic
I would say any of these movies is better than 95% of the movies available for streaming on Netflix (conservatively).
Brilliant fan fiction that takes a few liberties, but it would be interesting to have The Thing's perspective if The Thing was made into a series. I think in the movies was just supposed to be cosmic horror who's only real goal was to survive by spreading. Communicating with it would be pointless, unlike in Watt's story, where you have a fundamental philosophical difference based on The Thing's understanding of biology, but you could at least have a meaningful conversation with it.
Happily. I have more access to content now than I have ever had before; we live in a golden age of access to video content. I can't imagine a rational argument for going back to the era of physical media.
The weirder thing to me is "owning" a particular movie. There are so many movies, why would I want to lock myself into a particular library of them? I read an article about John Carpenter's Lovecraft influences the other day, and that night watched The Thing for the first time. Didn't have to burn a moment's thought about whether it was likely to be worth the investment and a slot on my shelves.
If I feel like watching The Thing again next year (probably with friends and some kind of drinking game attached), I'll just pay to "rent" it again. I have paid to watch episodes of The Office that I already own simply to avoid the hassle of clicking over to the other app on my Apple TV, and while I might be one of the few people to think that's funny enough to brag about, I'm confident I'm not the only person ever to have done that.
Meanwhile: we're talking about... a laptop?
Come on. Apple should not be selling a laptop with an optical drive in 2024.
I'd argue that if the director decided that the characters should not understand what's being said, then its better if the audience doesn't know either.
For a particular example, it is my understanding that the movie "The Thing" is thoroughly spoiled right at the beginning if you speak Norwegian.
That animation is just so hilarious.
The craziest scene from the 1980s movie _The Thing_, recast in bird claymation. What kind of wild mind comes up with something like that...
and The Thing. I always think it's an early 90s film, turns out it's early 80s
> I’d love to read more about how Campbell specialized in irritating Asimov
Campbell (John, not Joseph; you got the wrong Campbell) specialized in irritating lots of people.
First, he was one of Scientology's early advocated (Dianetics, actually), and all kinds of pseudoscientific ideas. Even other scifi authors thought this weird.
His pseudoscientific ideas obviously clashed with Asimov's atheist and rational mindset about the world.
Campbell also bought into bizarre scifi/racist/supremacist theories which were not well received by his fellow authors. He was very pushy and meddlesome as an editor -- that alone wasn't unusual in scifi & pulp magazines of the time -- but he was also obsessed about specific and weird directions that he insisted most stories he published must follow.
For example, Philip K. Dick didn't really like Campbell's insistence that most scifi stories must feature telepaths, and also that telepaths must be benevolent and superior and take over humanity. PKD thought this reminded him too much of Nazi "master race" theories, and didn't like Campbell as a result.
The one good thing in Campbell's record: he wrote "Who Goes There", the original story then turned into the "Thing" movies. The story is quite good, too!
I've always wanted to know if they watch (the excellent horror/gore/science movie set in Antarctica) The Thing there regularly or is it banned..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(1982_film)
I recommend also watching the movie "The thing" (1982).
Easily top 2 sci-fi for me. I'm not sure if it's my age (born in 84) but I prefer almost all the late 70s and 80s, early 90s sci-fi movies over newer stuff.
Predator, Thing, Total Recall, Alien, Aliens, Terminator, Original Star Wars, all in my top sci-fi films.
A couple of my ex-colleagues worked on the Troll station. The Norwegian Polar Institute usually publish the vacancies a year ahead, as there is a lot of prep to get to right people.
Anyway, both of 'em worked as IT/communication engineers some 10 years apart, but told me that the first movie they watched together (with rest of the crew) was John Carpenter's The Thing.
For folks who don't want to click, the argument is Indiana Jones didn't have an impact on the outcome of the story; the Nazis still would have found the arc and died in the end.
It's an amusing idea, but I've always thought it was weird to call it a problem with the movie, as it would apply to the protagonist in a bunch of movies (spoilers abound in this extremely random assortment of movies off the top of my head):
* If Kurt Russel's character hadn't been in The Thing, everything that happened still would have happened
* If Harry and Sally hadn't been in When Harry Met Sally, New York would still be Yorking
* If Florence Pugh's character hadn't gone to Sweden in Midsommar, the tourists still would have died
* If Richard Dreyfuss's character hadn't been in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the aliens still would have made contact, dropped off their old passengers, and picked up new passengers
* If Scott Pilgrim hadn't been in Scott Pilgrim, everyone would probably still just be hanging out more or less the same
* If Matt Damon's character hadn't been in The Martian, they would have all still ended up back on Earth
* If Rocky Balboa hadn't been in Rocky, probably two other people would have boxed and one of them would have won
To each their own, but for my money good stories are about character journeys, not about... I dunno, like, an accounting of what changed during the movie.
Yeah, I agree. Limiting to one is tricky, when years like 1982 are famous for having multiple amazing films (in this example all released in the summer)
You're right that "Greatest Hit of that year" is going to wildly swing in quality, and you could miss other films that are arguably the better film.
Take that 1982 example again, the writer chose E.T. .. an amazing film by all accounts, but ignored Bladerunner, Empire Strikes Back, The Thing, Tron, Conan the Barbarian, Wrath of Kahn etc etc...
Sure not all these films are equal, but the metric of highest grossing film might work fine in the older years.. but I'm going to say that lately, that metric doesn't work anymore. And it doesn't work because honestly, was Spiderman the best film from last year?
I asked ChatGPT. It gave me bunch. I got some I've never heard of. I think I'll look into them.
<ChatGPT>
list 50 interesting movies that explore AI.
The Matrix
Ex Machina
Blade Runner
The Terminator
I, Robot
The War of the Worlds
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Transcendence
The Fifth Element
2001: A Space Odyssey
WarGames
Westworld
The Machine
Her
The Iron Giant
Automata
The Truman Show
The Prestige
The Martian
The Fly
The Bicentennial Man
Surrogates
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Limitless
Robocop
Electric Dreams
The Island
The Time Machine
The Circle
The Arrival
The Host
The Stepford Wives
The Brain that Wouldn't Die
Frankenstein
The Invisible Man
Metropolis
The Thing
Jurassic Park
Independence Day
Gravity
Artificial Intelligence: AI
Avatar
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
Inception
Interstellar
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Butterfly Effect
The Future.
</ChatGPT>
Nature's basically a real-life horror film for anything not at the tippy-top of the chain in an area, every hour of every day. Which means most things that aren't humans. But, farming doesn't really help with that, especially industrial farming.
You're either constantly at risk from hordes of relentless and effective slasher-murder-cannibals (to put it in human-focused horror movie terms—they're not really cannibals when it's one species eating another, of course) and will very probably be killed and eaten by one before you can die of other "natural causes", and every moment you're not on high alert is a moment you're more likely than normal to abruptly be murdered, or you're in one of those movies where aliens or vampires or something are farming you for whatever reason, typically in such horrible conditions that you really might prefer to take your chances with the super-murderers out in the wild.
It's all very pretty to look at when you're at the top but IMO Lovecraft's works, or films like The Thing, really capture the underlying reality of what life is, fundamentally. Incomprehensible, brutally savage, and horrifying, mostly. One of those things you kinda have to try not to think about too much (which is one of the ways it's all a bit Lovecraftian—not healthy to contemplate actual-reality, rather than our illusions about it, in this case).
>don't forget 3d CGI
Yes, good point but let’s look at what a a boring mess CGI movies have become. Movie productions used to employ a lot of artists and looking back you actually can tell. For example the 1982 movie ‘The Thing’. All those effects in the movie are realistic, are not CGI and have become now a lost art.
Except in that movie "The Thing".
Here is a movie for anyone tired of it always being Americans who fight off the space aliens. Made by Inuits on location in Canada's far north, it takes inspiration from The Thing rather than Independence Day. It's not a great movie, but it's earnest and has great scenery, and hey, it's Inuits vs. Aliens!
I can't say which films were the most influential, but here's a list of ones which were at least as influential IMHO and also sort of stand on their own: Star Wars Trilogy (epic sci-fi), 2001: A Space Odyssey (hard sci-fi), The Thing (body horror sci-fi), Alien (body horror/dystopian sci-fi), Mad Max (post apocalyptic sci-fi), E.T. (family sci-fi? lol), The Terminator (post apocalyptic), Howard the Duck (still reading?), Predator (dunno?)
I could list a lot of others but I'll stop there.
>> now that I have kids I'll soon be on the other side trying to convince them that the old stuff I like is cool and special
Nope. Kids today have access to everything under the sun. The classics still resonate with them. My kid loves Queen and Zepplin. Enjoyed the hell out of "They Live", the Matrix and many other classic movies. Not so much John Carpenters "the Thing" which even I found a bit slow these days.
A lot of this was discovered without my introduction too. Music in particular.
Share the movies without explanation. Classics are universal.
> Did mixed races no exist at the time of the stories writing?
Not really, Asimov was born in 100% white Russia and then moved to USA during the 1920s where segregation was still a thing.
> Did the robot characters who looked human but were from a completely different world view connecting not exist?
Of course there were different worlds with different cultures, rites, traditions, religions and even food (or martial arts), but their look is not taken into great account. Asimov was a biochemist after all, not an anthropologist.
I agree that actualization of a work of fiction it is not bending objective facts, my impression though is that content platforms are more following than leading, they are giving the public what the public will consume, which is dull, it is like giving kids candies or cake because we already know they'll eat them.
There is no real surprise, no Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead or Carpenter's The Thing/Assault on Precint 13/They live, no Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, everything is so canonical and completely unimaginative. There is no space left for provocative, out of the box, even offensive, creation (unless it is sexually defining for minorities, like a dildo, homosexual intercourse, etc. something that wouldn't even shock my 82 years old dad)
In a way they are segmenting the market based on the idea they wanna project of themselves:
- Netflix: social activists involved in identity politics, teenagers (with superpower or supernatural powers), binge watchers, kids and some old show to entertain their parents too (all of Star Trek for example, the only reason I still use Netflix)
- Prime Video: crime aficionados, intelligent comedy (it better be British), superheroes with a twist, people like me who already pay for amazon prime and are not young anymore
- Apple TV: fancy, grandiose, epic stories, that unfortunately lack in writing and results are mixed. For people who love a great cast in a show.
- HBO: actual quality content, for people who love to pay for quality content.
>How many reviews of movies have you seen from a senior, experienced reviewer got a film really totally wrong?
Tons. Even legendary critics like Ebert got movies wrong. He gave thumbs down to Full Metal Jacket, Blue Velvet, The Thing, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Usual Suspects, Ace Ventura, Tommy Boy, and many more.
Mark Fisher :
"Capitalism is very much like the Thing in John Carpenter’s film of the same name: a monstrous, infinitely plastic entity, capable of metabolizing and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact. Capital, Deleuze and Guattari say, is a 'motley painting of everything that ever was'."
After reading a little bit of his work, I couldn't really make my mind up about Fisher. Some passages feel pretty clear headed a satisfying to read.
“There are certainly conspiracies in capitalism, but the problem is that they are themselves only possible because of deeper level structures that allow them to function. Does anyone really think, for instance, that things would improve if we replaced the whole managerial and banking class with a whole new set of ('better') people? Surely, on the contrary, it is evident that the vices are engendered by the structure, and that while the structure remains, the vices will reproduce themselves.”
But then at other times, he seems fall into the same traps that makes me hate a lot of postmodern(or whatever this is) writing.
-Constant references to other writers, only to use their polysyllabic neologisms 2-3 times without any explanation. I wouldn't mind this so much but this book usually sold as a good starting point.
-Defining things with grandiose, nearly contradictory analogies.
-A deep pessimism, sometimes I feel I'm reading some kind of anti-Pangloss.
"This makes capitalism very much like the Thing in John Carpenter's film of the same name: a monstrous, infinitely plastic entity, capable of metabolizing and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact. Capital, Deleuze and Guattari says, is a 'motley painting of everything that ever was'; a strange hybrid of the ultra-modern and the archaic. In the years since Deleuze and Guattari wrote the two volumes of their Capitalism And Schizophrenia, it has seemed as if the deterritorializing impulses of capitalism have been confined to finance, leaving culture presided over by the forces of reterritorialization."
It makes me frustrated, because I feel like Fisher really does have a lot of interesting things to say. But the only time I can bring myself to hate the state of world this much is if I spend too much time on twitter or in mandatory HR trainings.
> Black panther is the #3 highest-rated superhero movie on rotten tomatoes. Sounds like it’s even higher in its genre than The Thing (#138 in horror) and Alien (#5).
Not surprising, given that there aren't many triple-A movies with Black lead actors around in the first place, much less movies that are predominantly Black starred - it was labelled as "revolutionary" [1] for a reason and so generated a lot of (well-deserved) hype. That it turned out to be a damn good movie too only helped the matter along.
[1]: https://time.com/black-panther/
That example of practical effects looked quite stiff and fake like you said. But practical effects also continued to improve over the years even though CGI came to dominate the film industry.
Alien was released in 1979, but a few years later saw the release of An American Werewolf in London (1981) which featured a memorable werewolf transformation (all practictal effects). Then in 1982 saw the release of The Thing which took practical effects a notch higher.
Also, today filmmakers sometimes use a hybrid approach: combining practical and digital effects.
I do wonder how much further practical effects would have developed if CGI haven't overtook the film industry.
I think so much of what made The Thing great is what they couldn't show because of their limitations, not because of their great special effects. It's a thing that the great digital effect artists have realized and integrated into their movies.
When you look at movies like The Arrival, which is not considered a great special effects film because they're understated and get out of the way of the story, the effects artists plop a digital ship into the middle of a field and leave it there. Understated digital effects, in conjunction with practical effects, are often the most effective and least appreciated.
Villeneuve has a tendency to direct movies that do this well (and I apologize for being a bit of a fan boy), and I hope that more movies take this direction.
I enjoyed the Marvel films, but at times they looked a bit like digital vomit on screen and became hard to follow. I couldn't even finish Aquaman, TBH, as it was just over the top with the amount of digital noise. Though, Justice League attempted to do better than this, the Darkside fight was a bit nauseating =(
Again, though, I think the Villeneuve films will stand the test of time, where as the blockbuster comic films will go the way of films like Predator. I enjoyed it at the time, but it doesn't really hold up.
Black panther is the #3 highest-rated superhero movie on rotten tomatoes. Sounds like it’s even higher in its genre than The Thing (#138 in horror) and Alien (#5). Black Panther is not a bad movie in other aspects - but the parts that use (and overuse) CGI look as fake as any other Marvel Production. So how good the movie is isn’t necessarily a free pass for CGI abuse.
Agreed, but to be fair, the comparison is also with high profile "modern" movies.
"The Thing" to most people today is not "one of the greatest movies" but a horror classic and -- visual quality wise -- on par with "Phantom Menace" or "Jurassic Park", if not worse.
I think the criticism is valid: that the physicality of classic SFX is still mostly unmatched by CGI, and the eye and mind notice this.
> Classic movies from the 80s like Alien, The Thing, My Neighbor Totoro, etc. look so much better to me than the latest blockbuster Marvel movie.
You chose three films that are widely considered to be among the greatest films of all time in their genre.
I truly hope there is a shift back to practical FX and 2d animation.
Classic movies from the 80s like Alien, The Thing, My Neighbor Totoro, etc. look so much better to me than the latest blockbuster Marvel movie.
There is something about actors acting in the same set you see, with the actual monsters you see, and the fog and lighting and everything else being real. And shooting on film just looks better to me.
Hand drawn 2d animation looks so much better too. I much prefer its soft and imperfect look to the HD perfection of modern computerized animation. 3d animation while great in some movies, I feel is an overused default animation style today.
I feel like we reached the perfect balance between visual art, technology and original stories back in the 80s, and have been steadily implementing cost/time saving optimizations ever since.
TFA:
Polar researchers in remote Antarctica have fallen victim to coronavirus, despite taking strict health precautions, being fully vaccinated and miles from civilization.
Two thirds of the 25 staff based in Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Polar Station have caught Covid, the Le Soir newspaper reported, proving there is no escape from the global pandemic.
The Omicron outbreak happened despite all staff passing multiple PCR tests, quarantining and living in one of the most remote places in the world.
The situation has echoes of the plot of John Carpenter's 1982 horror classic The Thing, which was advertised with the slogan “man is the warmest place to hide”.
An alien life form infects workers on an Antarctic station in the cult Sci fi chiller, which starred Kurt Russell. Unlike the film, none of the infected Belgians have exhibited any severe symptoms - let alone been transformed into bloodthirsty beasts that can only be killed by incineration.
All 25 researchers were fully vaccinated and one had a booster shot. Before leaving for the station, they underwent a PCR test in Belgium two hours before flying to South Africa. In South Africa, they quarantined for ten days and took another PCR test. A further test was needed when leaving Cape Town for Antarctica and a final one five days after that.
One person tested positive seven days after arriving at the station on December 14. The person was isolated but tests revealed two others had caught the virus. The three were evacuated on December 23 but the virus has continued to spread.
It is thought to be the Omicron variant because that is responsible for 99 per cent of infections in South Africa. There are two emergency doctors at the station, which will not allow any new arrivals until the virus dissipates.
Belgium’s Polar Secretariat has decided the research season will be shortened and that staff shall stay there until at least until January 12, when new expeditions will arrive.
Movies: - 12 angry men - Whiplash - Prestige - American Beauty - The Thing - V for Vendetta - The Grand Budapest Hotel - Gone Girl - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - Parasite - ... Tarantino or Scorsese movies
Anime: - Howl's Moving Castle - Spirited Away
Not a movie but both great series: - Love, Death & Robots - Black Mirror
What amazes me is that on HN I hear more about The Thing than about the eponymous invention of its engineer: the Theremin[1].
The first electronic music instrument with mass appeal, it had a magical aspect to it that no instrument has matched since: you play the Theremin without touching it. It senses your body through two antennas, which control pitch and volume.
While the Thing is a neat invention, by its nature, its impact on technology was small.
The Theremin's impact was worldwide. It is what brought electronic music instruments into the mainstream in the 1920s. The iconic synthesizer engineer Bob Moog started his career building Theremins (Moog Music is still the leading world maker of Theremins).
Notoriously difficult to play, the Theremin has been mastered by the very few. You might remember its sound as the chilling, high-pitched howl prominent in the sci-fi and horror movies of the 1950s, or for that whistling melody in Beach Boys' Good Vibrations. The instrument's potential has been unexplored since then, due to how difficult it is to play, and our ability to get that tone from synthesizers.
If you want to try out a Theremin today, you should try the digital reincarnation of the instrument: the Theremini[2], made by Moog Music (keeping true to their roots!), which addresses the UX issues with variable quantization (like having frets, think guitar vs. violin).
And if you want to know how it can sound like in, listen to Pamela Krustin's playful performance[3] - it's nothing like what people did with it back in the day.
Going back to The Thing, the saddest part of it was the cost. To make The Thing, the USSR forced Leon Theremin to abandon his lustrous career (...and wife) in the United States, and return to work behind the Iron Curtain, in secret. Nobody knew what has happened to him for decades.
Leon's living until the 1990s was the only thing that prevented him dying in obscurity; the West has found out about him, and he got to re-unite with his old pals in NYC.
But one is only left to imagine what we could've had if Leon could stay in the US and work alongside Don Buchla, Bog Moog, Dave Smith, Tom Oberheim, and other pioneers that carried the torch of electronic sound production after Leon was whisked away.
Instead, all we have is a cool spy story, and a small Wikipedia entry.
Tack it onto the costs of The Cold War.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin
[2]https://www.moogmusic.com/products/etherwave-theremins/theremini
[3]https://www.ted.com/talks/pamelia_kurstin_the_untouchable_music_of_the_theremin?language=en
1938 -- Who Goes There? is a science fiction novella by John W. Campbell Jr. In the story, scientists discover 20 Million year old space craft in Antarctica. They accidentally thaw the alien pilot who can kill and take on the personality of its victims. People are dying; no one trusts anyone, etc.
1951 -- The Thing From Another World, directed by Christian Nyby, is a sci-fi film in which scientists go to North Pole to investigate a UFO, find crashed craft and frozen alien. They take alien back to base and unintentionally let it thaw. (see above)
1982 -- The Thing a film directed by John Carpenter. Same basic story as above (but as in the original, the plot takes place in Antartica).
2011 -- The Thing a film directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. Same basic story again, but it is the prequel to the 1982 version.
That's the later 2011 prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter film.
In the 1982 film, it's a dog-clone-thing that brings the chaos from the Norwegian base to the US one.
The Thing is probably my favorite movie and the practical creature effects are still largely considered the gold standard of the craft. But in 2K the artificiality is getting a lot more noticeable and while I will certainly be getting it in 4K I'm starting to realize that maybe 720p is the best way to view it for the sake of full immersion. YMMV.
Well. What is the politics of Thing again? Paranoia can be worse than the virus? That's not what is in the movie. Most people if not all are killed by the Thing.
Also that's not political, that's common sense.
Terminator came to Cameron in a dream, and the rationalization was it is caused by possible nuclear crisis?
> Movies like The Thing, Terminator, Alien, Aliens, etc. Don't really have a political message other than some vague politics as window dressing.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a34518538/john-carpenter-2020-interview-coronavirus-trump-they-live-the-thing/
https://gen.medium.com/the-scariest-thing-about-alien-is-how-real-it-s-become-fa2182d2207e
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jerrybowyer/2012/06/13/the-politics-of-ridley-scotts-blockbuster-film-prometheus/?sh=60c077293e6a
https://www.bfi.org.uk/interviews/terminator-james-cameron
> Give me the politics of Tetris, Pong, Super Mario, Donkey Kong
You got me. Let me rephrase it as any culture with a message.
That depends on how pedant you want to be about things being political. Movies like The Thing, Terminator, Alien, Aliens, etc. Don't really have a political message other than some vague politics as window dressing.
Also since you said culture, and not FILMS.
Give me the politics of Tetris, Pong, Super Mario, Donkey Kong.
He performs my favorite "crazed destruction" scene in that movie.
"Nobody gets in or out of here! NOBODY! You guys think I'm crazy?! Well, that's fine! Most of you don't know what's going on around here, but I'm damn well sure some of you do! You think that thing wanted to be an animal?! No dog's gonna make it a thousand miles to the coast! You don't understand! That thing wanted to be US! A cell gets out, and it'll imitate everything on the face of the Earth! AND NOTHING CAN STOP IT!"
Nice list. There is lots of new stuff here for me.
The obvious miss is John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" (1938), which is the inspiration for the movie The Thing.
One of my favorite Morricone creations is main theme for one of the greatest horror films of all time, John Carpenter's 1982 remake of The Thing.[1]
I can't find it now, but in an interview Carpenter said something like that when he first worked with Morricone on this film, the latter came up with a very flowery, melodic theme, and Carpenter went to visit him but had trouble getting his ideas across to Morricone because of the language barrier, so he just said (through a translator): "Less notes"[2], and this is what Morricone came up with.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfcc9U35hPY
[2] - Which reminds me of the "too many notes" scene from Amadeus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6_eqxh-Qok), but unlike Mozart, who took offense, Morricone seems to have taken the suggestion in stride and come up with a classic.
Speaking of perfect quarantine movies, might I recommend John Carpenter's "The Thing"?
Some more movies in no particular order if you want to explore more of psychological horror:
Pandorum
The Lighthouse
eXistenZ
Videodrome
Hellraiser (I’m a fan of the series, some are better than others)
Blue Velvet
Mulholland Drive
The Thing
American Psycho
The Fly
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1978 version with Leonard Nimoy)
> The Thing -- you'd think something, anything will be explained by the end of the movie
Because its explained in its entirety at the beginning: "Se til helvete og komme dere vekk. Det er ikke en bikkje, det er en slags ting. Det imiterer en bikkje, det er ikke virkelig. Kom dere vekk, idioter!" ~= "Get the hell away. It's not a dog, it's some kind of thing. It imitates a dog, it's not real. Get away, idiots!"
One of my favorite movies is The Guest, mainly because it subverts the idea of explaining to the viewer why the situation is the way it is. All of the main character's life events have led him to the point he is at in the beginning of the movie, and there are already concurrent plot threads running by the beginning, but we're never told or given an explanation as to why the situation is in the state it's in, just that this is what is happening, how is our main character going to get out of it, etc.
Another movie with a noteworthy use of subversion is The Thing -- you'd think something, anything will be explained by the end of the movie. Nope, nothing, more astoundingly, the end of the movie sets itself up as if it's preparing for a twist -- you don't even get to see the twist. You just know there is one, and the movie ends.
I expected the movie:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(1982_film)
I'm getting excited for my annual holiday viewing of "THE THING."
If you have an opportunity to see the special edition or some other copy with the documentary "Terror Takes Shape" about the background of the movie and special effects it is absolutely worth the hour.
Also if you are available June 25, 2022, there is a fan meetup at the location of the filming in Stewart, British Columbia.
https://www.outpost31.com/2022
Minor nit, but I don't think they reveal that the creature in The Thing was cut out of the ice and revived until the much later 2011 prequel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(2011_film)
Edit: Looks like I'm wrong. Apparently the ice block is in the John Carpenter film, but things aren't spelled out in great detail. I need to watch both of these again...
I agree with all of these but have to add some, because you are missing a lot of the classics.
- Alien (talk about classic Sci-Fi Horror)
- Westworld (watch the movie before the show. Trust me)
- 2001 A Space Odyssey
- The Thing (I've only seen the old one)
- Moon
- Children of Men
- 12 Monkeys
- Gattaca
- Blade Runner
- Dark City
- Akira (anime)
- Primer (my favourite time travel film)
- Interstellar
- Black Mirror
- Psycho-Pass (anime)
And of course everyone needs to watch - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
The Thing (1982), Slither, Dark Skies, Intacto (spanish), Another Earth, Coherence
Primer is on here a bunch, but really worth watching if you like time travel conundrums.
Just by looking at the title it brought to my mind "The Thing". ;)
See also this trailer, which I like a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwNoqgg474s (not the original movie, not the remake - but a StarCraft 2 mod allowing to play a mafia/werewolf-style game).
The X-Files movie was probably referencing "The Thing From Another World[0]," a 1951 movie based on the novella "Who Goes There?[1]" by John W. Campbell, which was remade[2] by John Carpenter in 1982.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_from_Another_World
[1]http://nzr.mvnu.edu/faculty/trearick/english/rearick/readings/manuscri/Who%20Goes%20There/Who%20Goes%20There%20Index.htm
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_%281982_film%29
Unpopular opinion coming through: If you're not easily scared, films made only from scary-stuff-that-isn't-scary are really boring.
I'll give you an example: Alien. Literally all that film is is "they go down to this planet, a spider fucks a guy's face, and then a monster kills everyone." If you're not scared by that stuff, you get nothing out of that film, because there is nothing else that happens. The second one is better, something happens between the characters.
And yeah, I feel this way about The Thing.
The "collector's edition" (DVD, not sure about BluRay) includes a really wonderful 83-minute documentary, "The Thing: Terror Takes Shape", about the making of the film, along with several other great extras, including a clip of the original ending. Highly recommended. Seems the whole film is on YouTube [1].
Also highly recommended is the site by one of the producers, Stuart Cohen [2]. It's a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes info, photos, rambling gossip and old-fashioned war stories from the set.
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=B48Yp00LitE
[2] http://theoriginalfan.blogspot.com
The Thing is one of my fave movies, have watched it at least 30 times but never noticed that till I watched it again last week.
The more monstrous transformations of the thing look horrifying even in well-lit, motionless, on-the-set photos while surrounded by a film crew. That's the result of fantastic creature design. "The Thing" would have been effective whether done in CG or not, but I have to agree that acting out appropriate fear must have been a little bit easier for the cast of "The Thing" thanks to the monster being so vividly realized on the set.
I honestly can't think of a single thing they could do to improve this.
This isn't your typical "smart" people doing stupid things. This is a bunch of smart and capable people completely overmatched by something far beyond their understanding.
It's darn near a perfect movie.
You might be interested to know that "The Thing" was filmed in my hometown[1]. I remember visiting the sets as a kid, seeing the freaky dog models, etc. The local museum still has some of the film props.
And yes, my town gets a lot of snow, typically around five-six metres. The "Antarctic base" in the movie was just a short drive away up a road that led to an old mine site[2]. We used to get rides up there and hike around when we were kids.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart,_British_Columbia
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granduc_Mine
I'm right there with you - I clicked thinking of hearing behind-the-scenes stories about how The Thing was over budget, behind schedule, having technical problems, etc. But instead the article was just a kinda rambling collection of thoughts about the movie (which it is a great movie).
> Running dog-Thing has earned its customized bass lurk, composed by Ennio Morricone, which, in fairness to your ears and mine, could be an expensive John Carpenter imitation.
> Carpenter’s Thing, for its part, discouraged the future of dog whispering, if not mankind in general. Running dog-Thing was played by Jed, a half wolf that neither growled nor barked. Richard Masur, who played the station dog handler, remembers how Jed would just give you “that look” when he grew uncomfortable on the set. That Thing look. So watch Jed closely. Watch Jed pad down empty hallways. Jed nosing the door open, looking out of windows. Jed listening to Stevie Wonder.
> In the film, Wilford Brimley’s Dr. Blair supposes this while performing an autopsy on Norwegian Two-faced Thing, his eraser head traveling directly from an astro-parasitic entity to his own bottom lip. A clear violation of Thing health code.
> Rob Bottin, who played the ghost of a vengeful seagoing leper in The Fog, was in charge of special effects for The Thing. ... Bottin would do such a thorough job—literally ending up inside the Thing, for the finale—that he’d check himself into a hospital after the shoot completed.
> Meanwhile, I’m left wondering if the Thing can retain the dream memories of those it absorbs, turning to Freaks and Geeks for answers. For it was the great leveler Millie Kentner who once cried, “Life is not that dog’s dream!”
I was able to follow the author's meaning in parts but it's certainly challenging.
The most dramatic setting in which "The Thing" is traditionally watched:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/04.13/01-winterover.html
"Shortly after the last plane leaves, the winter-overs gather in the main dining room, the Galley, for a showing of the science fiction movie "The Thing," about an alien that attacks researchers in an isolated Antarctic base. "
The winter personnel are physically isolated from the rest of the world between mid-February and late October.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%E2%80%93Scott_South_Pole_Station
The monsters themselves are fantastic. CG in movies still have a long way to go to catch up to how real the monsters felt in The Thing.
And yet the monster scenes don't overshadow the human drama, the continuous buildup, the claustrophobia you feel from there being no escape.
The Thing is such a great movie, and definitely my favourite horror movie.
I can not stress enough to the Hacker News community that if you have not seen this movie, go see this movie. John Carpenter did a really great job with this movie and story. Every scene in this movie plays to the story, there is literally no filler in this movie. Unlike movies today, which are epic 2 hour snoozefests that are chock full of pointless scene after pointless scene which adds nothing to the film or the story line. The Thing starts right off with the story and smoothly transition through it to the very end. Also, The Thing monster in this story is scary as hell too.
They Live is a Carpenter movie in which aliens in invisible pizza masks - you can see them if you have special magic shades - live among us and control us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp_K8prLfso
And of course there's The Thing, which does an excellent job of explaining why you should you never allow important data to be mutable.
> Some time later, The Carpenter ran into Bob Plissken at a local technology meet-up. “John! What happened at Thing?” Bob wanted to know, “I asked them what they thought of you, and all they would say was, Writes unreadable code. I thought it was a lock! I thought you’d finally make your escape from New York.” > The Carpenter smiled. “I forgot about them, it’s been a while. So, do They Live?”"
The character's name is "John, The Carpenter".
bob plissken - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Plissken the thing - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/ escape from new york - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/ they live - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/
FWIW, I don't get the connection to javascript interviews either.
Probably the best practical SFX I've ever seen would have to be John Carpenter's The Thing. The way the monsters worked--goddamn, shivers up my spine. Also, one of the tightest and suspenseful movies there is, even after the first viewing.
I believe this is the article which you refer to (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/).
Quote:
> But because the technology kept getting better, Broussard was on a treadmill. He’d see a new game with a flashy graphics technique and demand the effect be incorporated into Duke Nukem Forever. “One day George started pushing for snow levels,” recalls a developer who worked on Duke Nukem Forever for several years starting in 2000. Why? “He had seen The Thing” — a new game based on the horror movie of the same name, set in the snowbound Antarctic — “and he wanted it.” The staff developed a running joke: If a new title comes out, don’t let George see it. When the influential shoot-’em-up Half-Life debuted in 1998, it opened with a famously interactive narrative sequence in which the player begins his workday in a laboratory, overhearing a coworker’s conversation that slowly sets a mood of dread. The day after Broussard played it, an employee told me, the cofounder walked into the office saying, “Oh my God, we have to have that in Duke Nukem Forever.”
Edit: argh, at-fates-hands beat me to it.
I think it's a reference to the opening scene of the movie 'The Thing' starring Kurt Russell. (Spoiler: It's about an alien lifeform which start infecting researchers at a polar research station)
Hope they won't find any Thing they're not looking for.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/ and 2011 prequel http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0905372/)
Another lesson to be learned is: shipping is a feature.
“George’s genius was realizing where games were going and taking it to the next level,” says Paul Schuytema, who worked for Broussard and Miller heading up the development of Prey, another 3D Realms title. “That was his sword and his Achilles’ heel. He’d rather throw himself on his sword and kill himself than have the game be bad.
Broussard simply couldn’t tolerate the idea of Duke Nukem Forever coming out with anything other than the latest and greatest technology and awe-inspiring gameplay. He didn’t just want it to be good. It had to surpass every other game that had ever existed, the same way the original Duke Nukem 3D had.
But because the technology kept getting better, Broussard was on a treadmill. He’d see a new game with a flashy graphics technique and demand the effect be incorporated into Duke Nukem Forever. “One day George started pushing for snow levels,” recalls a developer who worked on Duke Nukem Forever for several years starting in 2000. Why? “He had seen The Thing” — a new game based on the horror movie of the same name, set in the snowbound Antarctic — “and he wanted it.” The staff developed a running joke: If a new title comes out, don’t let George see it. When the influential shoot-’em-up Half-Life debuted in 1998, it opened with a famously interactive narrative sequence in which the player begins his workday in a laboratory, overhearing a coworker’s conversation that slowly sets a mood of dread. The day after Broussard played it, an employee told me, the cofounder walked into the office saying, “Oh my God, we have to have that in Duke Nukem Forever.”
There is a reason nobody wants it: "Byrd Station provided a template for the doomed Antarctic base in the horror movie John Carpenter's The Thing."