Butler's Cinema Scene

Mary Elizabeth Winstead battles "The Thing"

“THE THING” My rating: C (Opening wide Oct. 14)

103 minutes | MPAA rating: R

We’ve already seen two very good versions of “The Thing” (based on the classic sci-fi/horror story “Who Goes There?”), so anyone making yet a third “Thing” had better bring some new ideas to the table.

In the case of the film opening today, first-time feature director Matthijs van Heijningen and writer Bill Lancaster attempt to stir things up by making our protagonist a woman.

That’s it?  That’s the big twist?

It’s been 30 years since Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley picked up a flame thrower in “Aliens,” so making your hero a woman isn’t exactly cutting-edge thinking.

Beyond that, this “Thing” is almost identical in tone and ideas to John Carpenter’s 1982 version, with scientists at an Antarctic research station battling an alien creature that can absorb and assume the form of humans and animals.

Yeah, the f/x are state-of-the-art computer slick, and the film does generate an effective atmosphere of growing paranoia and terror.

But there’s virtually no character development here. Even 0ur smart lady scientist serves as little more than alien fodder.

The film begins with a nicely staged and paced prologue set in 1982 depicting the discovery of a gigantic alien craft beneath the polar ice. Then it jumps to 2011…we’re supposed to assume that the events depicted in the Carpenter film unfolded in between. (The prologue leaves three scientists in extremely dire straights…their situation is never resolved.)

In the present, young paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is recruited by a Noweigian scientist/industrial (Ulrich Thomsen) to help examine a major find at the South Pole. She directs efforts to exhume an alien creature from the ice. And, well, you know what happens next.

Her ally in this is helicopter pilot Carter (Joel Edgerton, recently seen in “Warrior”) but, really, all the guys here are Scandinavian and hairy and it’s really hard to tell one from the other.

Technically the film is impressive enough, nicely establishing a savage, frigid environment.

And hard-core sci-fi types will notice the occasional nod to the original 1951 “The Thing from Another World,” particularly in the lead scientist’s intellectual hubris (not to mention the fur cap he wears).

But that’s not enough to make this “Thing” a keeper.

| Robert W. Butler