Alternate Alien Pilot Designs For THE THING (2011); Plus Deleted Scenes
Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc. (ADI) has released a new behind-the-scenes video featuring their alternate designs for the alien pilot in 2011's The Thing. Also, check out deleted scenes from the film.
The plan was that there would be 3 versions of the Pilot in THE THING (2011). Here are two: the mummified Pilot, and the Thing having replicated itself as one of the alien crew members. In the story originally, the Thing needed to become one of these aliens in order to fly the ship buried under the ice. (Note the bio-mechanical connections implanted in the creature's back.)
ADI designed the character, built a limited animatronic puppet, and performed it on set.
The third Pilot was going to be a digital version of this creature, but due to a story change, it was never executed. The mummified Pilot was covered over with a digital energy effect, and we designed a new character, the Sanders-Thing, which was realized digitally.
The scripted ending to The Thing (2011) featured Kate inside the spacecraft, discovering the mummified remains of the pilot who first brought the craft to Earth, unleashing the Thing. A second pilot, still alive, attacks just as it mutates into a Thing version of itself. Shot but ultimately discarded in favor of a different direction, it gave us a great opportunity to design and build a unique alien life form and then push it into Thing territory when it changes. A full size animatronic/rod puppet provided physical elements on stage with a planned CG counterpart to flesh out the action. Watch The Thing Tom Woodruff Jr On Fire to see fire elements that were shot for what would have been the death of the CG pilot! All that burnin' and nothing to do with it...
THE THING - DELETED SCENES
PLOT - Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they’re infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet.
THE THING (2011) was directed by Matthijs van Heijningen, from a script written by Ronald D. Moore and Eric Heisserer. The film starred: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Ulrich Thomsen, Eric Christian Olsen, and Trond Espen Seim
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