Based on the 1938 novella “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, John Carpenter’s “The Thing” remains one of the best monster movies ever made. A major reason for the 1982 film’s success is because of its premise where the alien monster shape shifts into its victims. The ending of “The Thing” works as well as it does since the viewer is left unsure if one of the survivors, MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David), is the imposter in disguise. As it turns out, fans owe Russell a debt of gratitude for the cryptic finale that remains a hot topic to this day.
Chatting to CHUD.com in 2006, Russell revealed that he wrote the ending. “It was difficult because John [Carpenter] and I were saying throughout the whole movie, ‘We don’t have an ending, we don’t have an ending,’ and then I wrote that,” Russell said. “He said, ‘I don’t want to go through two hours and have them come back to square one,’ and I said, ‘John, that’s what the movie’s about.’ And the truth is that ‘Who Goes There?’ was what the title of the book was, and at the end of the movie you have to ask, who goes there?”
So, who really goes there: MacReady or Childs? Russell isn’t telling.
Read more: The Most Shocking Movie Endings
Carpenter’s lips are sealed on the truth of The Thing’s ending
Kurt Russell’s MacReady freezing in The Thing – Universal Pictures
Ask any fan about the ending of “The Thing” and you’ll receive different responses. “MacReady is the Thing.” “No, Childs is the Thing.” “No one is the Thing, and both of them are about to freeze to death for nothing.” Even those who worked on the movie have weighed in. Cinematographer Dean Cundey said the giveaway is in the lighting of the characters’ eyes, suggesting that MacReady is actually human at the end, while Childs is the Thing.
John Carpenter disputed this theory to ComicBook.com, stating that Cundey ” … has no clue.” However, the “Halloween” and “They Live” director disclosed that he does indeed know who the Thing actually is by the end. When pressed for the answer that every fan has longed for, Carpenter said, “Nope … Cannot tell you. Sorry.”
Maybe ignorance is bliss in this instance, since it’ll keep everyone pondering the movie’s ending for the rest of time. Sometimes, it’s okay not to know everything about a film, with the fun lying in speculation. At least Carpenter, Kurt Russell, and company didn’t go with the alternate ending of “The Thing” that would have been completely blah in retrospect.
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Read the original article on Looper.
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