Seen them both, and contrary to your feelings about Kurt Russel, I have to say, I love what he does onscreen. The Carpenter version subverts his heroic persona to a degree, he is possibly ineffectual, either one of the remaining two characters is The Thing and will freeze until a rescue mission is at hand in which case it will be revived, or the whole of the cast has perished in the process of destroying the alien interloper. Bleak in either case, leaving us uncertain as to the outcome. It's the visceral nature of the carpenter version which really hits home. That said I also love the Christian Nyby original, some say was partially or largely scripted by Howard Hawks.<br /><br />I'm working on a screenplay, (long term project) of a new version of The Thing, involving a team of scientists retrieving samples from lake Vostok. A large probably metallic object is imaged at the bottom of the lake, any retrieval of which is impossible, but anomalous biological specimens are extracted from the lake water. You can guess some of the rest, but the film itself is a dialogue between the conquering alien organism, and the science team, us in other words, about whether it would be better to succumb to the polymorphic alien ensuring the survival of every genome on the planet against the unchecked ravages of unmodified humans waging war on each other and their environment. Instead of a conflict of species, it becomes a conflict of ideas.<br /><br />I was discussing the idea with horror writer Ramsey Campbell at a barbecue this summer and he seemed quite interested by the premise. Perhaps I'll actually complete the damned thing one day!<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font size="2" color="#339966"> I wish I could remember<br /> But my selective memory<br /> Won't let me</font><font size="2" color="#99cc00"> </font><font size="3" color="#339966"><font size="2">- </font></font><font size="1" color="#339966">Mark Oliver Everett</font></p><p> </p> </div>