Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal
Released the same day as fellow sci-fi classic Blade Runner on June 25, 1982, The Thing may be the coldest movie to ever hit the summer box office. Not only is it set in Antarctica during the winter but the opening shots after the title card depict parka-clad Norwegians chasing an Alaskan Malamute across snowy vistas. But chillier interactions are taking place inside a US research station, where pilot R.J. MacReady (played by Kurt Russell) dips his hand in a bucket to grab ice for his glass of J&B. He’s about to beat the Chess Wizard computer with a move he’s so sure will ice the game, he even taunts the program, smirking, “Poor baby, you’re startin’ to lose it, aren’t ya?” When it responds with a checkmate move, he wastes no time pouring his chilled scotch over the motherboard and calling the Chess Wizard a “cheating bitch”. Ice cold.
Based on both the novella Who Goes There? and its adapted 1951 film The Thing From Another World, The Thing finds MacReady and his team up against something far scarier than a chess-competing computer. The Norwegian scientists trying to shoot the escaped dog end up crashing their helicopter and as a result, Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) accompanies MacReady to their base to figure out what went wrong. Clark (Richard Masur), the American crew member in charge of their sled dogs, kennels the rogue Malamute and the crew is horrified when they find that the canine-appearing creature is not man’s best friend. An inspection of its flamethrower-charred remains leads biologist Blair (Wilford Brimley) to determine it’s an alien lifeform that can perfectly imitate other organisms. Paranoia grows as the team surmises that the extraterrestrial could have already assimilated into their group undetected.
When the villain of your story is a space monster that can replicate the appearance of any of the men trapped in an isolated outpost, director and horror maestro John Carpenter understands there needs to be one character on whom we can always rely. Kurt Russell wasn’t Carpenter’s first choice for the lead; in fact, several actors, including Nick Nolte and Jeff Bridges, were considered before Carpenter finally settled on Russell the day before filming. The pair had worked together twice before The Thing and Russell turned out to be the perfect choice for R.J. MacReady. A war vet who flew choppers in Vietnam, he becomes the team’s de facto leader who, despite getting upset losing to a computer in the opening, gradually embodies the “cooler heads prevail” ethos. To Russell’s chagrin, Carpenter insisted that MacReady wear a sombrero but it was Russell’s idea for MacReady to sport what’s become a legendary cinematic beard.
Look, there’s just no other way to say this: Kurt Russell’s hair in The Thing is nothing short of miraculous. Does it actually make sense that a helicopter pilot in an arctic research facility would be this well-groomed? No, not really. As someone who can’t grow a beard, am I jealous that Russell can grow one this luminous? Yes, yes I am. According to the DVD commentary track, it took the star almost a year to grow it out along with his slightly longer than usual hair. Whether it’s intentional or not, there are a couple wardrobe decisions (in addition to the aforementioned sombrero) that attempt to make MacReady not look like the coolest guy possible. While incinerating one of the “Thing” clones outside the base, MacReady wears clear lab goggles stretched over a hoodie working mightily to stifle his coiffed mane. But it doesn’t last long, as the frost gradually makes its way to the luscious hair on his face and atop his head.
Besides the impeccable hairstyling, one of the primary joys in watching Russell’s performance in The Thing is watching MacReady ascend from just one of the guys to the man in charge. He makes some risky moves along the way to prove his humanity but after he successfully talks station command Garry (Donald Moffat) and radio operator Windows (Thomas Waites) down from a standoff, MacReady becomes the most reliable of the bunch. Shortly after a speech where he establishes how he means to handle things moving forward, he records a message into a tape machine, in case nobody makes it out alive. “Nobody trusts anybody now,” he concedes, “And we’re all very tired.” In that crucial scene, one of the few where a character is alone with their thoughts, Russell has a resignation in his eyes that makes his heroics in the third act all the more impressive.
In addition to his work on-screen, Russell had a major contribution behind the scenes too, working with to Carpenter shore up an ending they both felt would work best serve the story. When the two reportedly weren’t satisfied with the original conclusion, which definitively proved that MacReady is still human after all, Russell reportedly wrote the last scene that appears in the film. It’s understandable why producers would want a horror movie marked by distrust and insecurity to leave audiences with a measure of relief as opposed to more uncertainty. But at the same time, closing on a conversation that percolates with fear of the unknown is the perfect send-off. Like Blade Runner, which was originally released with a studio-mandated “happy ending” that was omitted from future cuts, The Thing works better with a more ambiguous final note.