Andrew discusses the abandoned visuals of The Thing (2011) and Amalgamated Dynamics' Harbinger Down.
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| Related Article: The Many Faces of The Thing |
Last October, The Movie Sleuth unveiled a
unique series of reviews focused on horror films and science fiction thrillers
entitled 31 Days of Hell. Among the pieces released was an article I
wrote called The Many Faces of THE THING,
in which I covered everything from the 1951 Howard Hawks production, the now
iconic 1982 John Carpenter film, the 2002 PC videogame and lastly the much
maligned 2011 prequel to Carpenter’s film.
In it, I mentioned the film’s “serviceable CGI” which brought the 1982
creatures to life as opposed to older fashioned practical effects, a technical
move which elicited the most criticism from both fans and film critics alike. Unbeknownst to me, however, that wasn’t the
original plan.
According to a new online
petition enacted by Aidan Cosky the Academy Award winning visual effects team
behind Death Becomes Her, Amalgamated
Dynamics conceived and shot The Thing
as a practical effects sideshow on par with the 1982 film. Days upon days of painstaking but spectacular
visual effects props and prosthetic makeup effects were designed with the
intention of making a Thing prequel
which truly embodied the universe set forth by Carpenter’s film. Unfortunately however, Universal Studios and
CEO Ronald Meyer saw things differently.
After a test screening made from a work in
progress work print of the film, Universal Studios eliminated every special
effects prop designed by Amalgamated Dynamics, saying they “felt too ‘80s”, and
thus replaced every effect with newly rendered computer generated imagery. That was a bad move that wound up not only costing the
studio more money for reshoots and additional post-production effects,
audiences hated the cartoonish looking CGI and the film fell almost $10 million
short in ticket sales from recouping its losses. Much like Kubrick’s rejection of Alex North’s
score for 2001: A Space Odyssey, the
visual effects team did not learn of the studio’s hasty retooling of their work
until the film premiered. Alongside
Aidan Cosky’s petition for the original unaltered version of the 2011 The Thing prequel to see the light of
day, Amalgamated Dynamics responded successfully by releasing behind-the-scenes
footage of the makeup effects they had originally developed. In return they made a film of their own called Harbinger Down to show viewers what the 2011 The Thing might have looked like if their hard earned efforts were
left as is.
Harbinger
Down
Reportedly not the first time a special effects crew saw their work go to waste, Amalgamated Dynamics' Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. repeatedly found their visuals excised in favor of bad CGI. In a move showing
they weren’t about to go away quietly, Amalgamated Effects released several
videos of their pre-production work on Spider-Man,
I Am Legend and of course The Thing
to an enormously positive response from fans.
Furthering the impetus that nothing in science fiction horror works
better than old fashioned prosthesis, Gillis and Woodruff began a Kickstarter
campaign for what would become the most successfully funded Kickstarter film in
U.S. history: Harbinger Down. Costing a meager but workable $384,181 and featuring
B-movie icon Lance Henriksen in the lead role, the film set out to transpose Alien and The Thing to a fishing boat ala Deadliest
Catch.
Promoting itself as a ‘practical effects film’, this is more or less a
demo reel illustrating what The Thing could
have been if executive forces didn’t ruin the package.
That said, Harbinger Down isn’t without its own share of CGI laden problems. Some might be deliberate to illustrate the point of shoddiness that digital effects can bring with it while others just feel like budgetary limitations that
would otherwise relegate the film to the SyFy Channel. An opening computer rendered sequence of a
spaceship crash landing in an iceberg just looks flat out awful and begs the
question which is worse, CGI or the models of buildings often used in Toho Godzilla pictures. Harbinger Down does not get off to a good start. But once the CG shots
take a backseat to the real physical
prosthetics, it lights up really quick in a good way. As a standalone movie it doesn’t have a whole
lot of originality to it, but that’s not the point here. The point is to demonstrate how good
traditional setups can be when photographed on film with an effect happening in
front of the camera as opposed to digital doctoring. It has an organic tangibility to it and will
last far longer than any kind of Pixar cartoon will.
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| "And they say size doesn't matter. I mean, look at that thing." |
The story itself is a total rip off of The Thing. Knowing the reasons behind
the film’s inception before going in, I didn’t mind the derivation all that
much. Not only are all the wide shots of
the arctic base from Carpenter’s film present, but even the dipping birds from Alien prominently cameo here. I was really surprised, more than anything,
just how much the film owes itself visually to David Fincher’s Alien 3 with many, many shots designed
and framed virtually verbatim. The most
noticeable similarity involves scientists gazing inside the crash landed space
pod, looking more than curiously like Ripley’s ship being
excavated by prisoners on Fiorina 161.
In terms of
acting, Lance Henriksen is the only one here with ability even if he’s
entering his Rutger Hauer phase.
Everyone else ranges from passable to flat out bad, but again, they’re
secondary to the demo reel. It’s worth
noting the isn’t the first time a visual effects team wrote and directed a
film, the most notable of which being Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm and of course Roland Emmerich’s oeuvre.
As
I had mentioned, the story is derivative, the acting is sub par and most
aggravating of all is the film’s sound design.
While the creature sound effects and ambiance lend a rich atmosphere to
the proceedings, every time I heard the exact same stock sound effect of a squeaky
door opening for every single shot of a door opening and closing I was lifted
right out of the film. Things like that
stick out like a sore thumb and hurt whatever solidarity Amalgamated Dynamics
was hoping to imbue Harbinger Down with. Still, for an ultra low-budget look into the
possibilities of their makeup effects work, which are still some of the
strongest on the silver screen to this day, Harbinger
Down is a prosthetic driven gore-hound’s dream with lots of loving nods to
the team’s favorite science fiction thrillers.
For all its problems and risking becoming another forgettable SyFy Channel
romp, this is clearly a labor of love made by people who care deeply about
their work and aren’t about to let corporatism bury their efforts never to be
seen again. Not a masterpiece, but
recalling the vein of Roger Corman’s late '70s exploitation sci-fi flicks which
got the likes of James Cameron their start in the film industry, it serves its
purpose in reminding viewers CGI isn’t always the way to go.
-Andrew Kotwicki
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