The process of deg The Thing's titular alien monster was so difficult that one early plan would have killed the film completely. John Carpenter grew up a fan of '50s sci-fi movies like Forbidden Planet and the Quatermass films and was particularly enamored with 1951's The Thing From Another World. This adapted the short story Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, about an Antarctic research base invaded by an alien creature that can imitate any living creature perfectly. The original film dropped that concept and instead made the monster (played by Gunsmoke's James Arness) a hulking, vegetable-based creature that resembled Frankenstein's Monster.
Director John Carpenter was such an irer of The Thing From Another World that he was reluctant to remake it - until he realized he could go back to the short story's shapeshifting depiction of the monster. The genius piece of concept design that informed Carpenter's The Thing is that the alien could look like anything it had ever imitated, resulting in some inventively grotesque body horror sequences. The remake was famously a flop upon release with many critics finding it repulsively violent, but it's now considered a horror masterpiece.
The Thing Almost Resembled The Original Movie's Creature
One element of The Thing that has aged impeccably is the creature effects. Makeup effects artist Rob Bottin worked so hard for over a year on The Thing that when it wrapped he was taken to the hospital due to exhaustion, but his hard work is there on the screen. Bottin was instrumental in deg The Thing's creature and its various mutations, but deciding what the Thing would look like before this was nightmarish. In an interview with The John Carpenter Website, the director recalled that "Finally, in desperation someone suggested we make it look like the original Hawks film, James Arness in a bald cap and long fingernails."
When Carpenter signed on for The Thing, one element of the alien design he wanted to steer away from was having an actor in a suit. He wanted to convincingly bring a creature to life that couldn't possibly have been played by a human being, which is what going back to the Arness' design would have done. Even for its day, The Thing From Another World's Alien wasn't very compelling in of design, to the point that it has no close-ups at all in the final movie. This is exactly the kind of design Carpenter wanted to avoid, so thankfully the idea of not giving the monster any "true" form was hit upon.
The Thing's True Form Was Never Revealed (For Good Reason)
Part of the appeal of The Thing is that it can be literally anything, and isn't limited to one look. Had Carpenter's film tried to introduce what it truly looked like, that would have robbed it of the mystery. No design would have been truly satisfying, though a scrapped miniseries sequel from the early 2000s planned a sequence where it would have been electro-shocked back to its original shape. Even 2011's The Thing prequel resisted the temptation to reveal its original form, as it landed on Earth in another imitation shape.
Source: The John Carpenter Website
