I can't believe no one picked this one up. Yes. "Exorcist: The Beginning" is a bad movie. So famously bad that even the studio kind of relented on their poor decision making in the end and released the film "Dominion: A Prequel To The Exorcist" along with "Exorcist: The Beginning" in the definitive Exorcist box set.

Basically Morgan Creek hired director Paul Schrader to make "Dominion" and make it he did, it was finished, edited, scored, ready to roll. Morgan Creek got cold feet and fired Schrader, canning the completed movie just before it was scheduled for release. They then hired Renny "Have we got a part here for my wife Geena?" Harlin to make "Exorcist: The Beginning" more in line with what they imagined the audience wanted. They used the same sets, mostly the same cast, loosely the same sort of story but they just made everything.... wrong.

Being able to watch Dominion and Exorcist: The Beginning next to one another is a rare experience for any film buff. First you get to see a powerful, thoughtful, tightly directed piece about the nature of evil, the non-involvement of God in human affairs and other matters of faith. Then you get to see how some crazy hack re-imagines this as "Indiana Jones and the Crisis of Faith".

Stellan Skarsgard who plays the lead role in both movies (due to contractual obligations) is a picture in the latter movie when you know what's happening. He's just turned in this muted, subtle, nuanced performance in the movie he signed on to be in and then he's swaggering around with his shirt open being butch and ridiculous in this completely unnecessary and ludicrous remake. I might be imagining it but I think he did the whole of Exorcist: The Beginning with a slight squint of pain.

And, yes, I am a movie snob. :P

I picked up on it, but decided that The Phantom Menace was the bigger thing, especially since I haven't seen Dominion yet. It is quite the amazing story, that of The Beginning.

Isn't "The Thing" a bit of an odd film to do a prequel for anyway? I mean, the plot of the prequel will be pretty much identical to the plot of the original film - scientists find a spaceship, unknowingly release the shape-shifting parasitic alien lifeform which then proceeds to kill them off one by one and pretending to be them, with the film ending up with them burning it and none surviving (the original film showed the previous group to have all died didn't it?) just like the original film?

Setting it before the John Carpenter film lets them give it the usual remake treatment without all the pitfalls involved with literally remaking a fan favorite. It changes the tone of the project from replacement to homage. It might also let them play around with the lesser known Thing From Another World.

Setting it after the Carpenter film presents the problem of resolving the ambiguous ending, possibly in ways that would disappoint fans or even Carpenter himself. Replaying the same events a third time in a row would be silly. Whereas the prequel's setting was an integral part of Carpenter's plot. So if they want to emulate the Carpenter film without replacing it, prequel is the path of least resistance.

Or 12 years old and mixed up with coke?

I loved Rob Zombie's take on Halloween -- by far the best horror franchise reboot/re-imagination out there.

By gods if there are any such snobs here then I'm leaving.

Terrifying thought, isn't it?:)

Indeed. I can't fathom for someone actually to draw comparisons between a plant and an extraterrestrial being that imitates human flesh just because they're based on the same source material (the other one very loosely, mind you).

Not too large a bump, I hope, but I just saw it today. It was actually quite awesome. Not as good as Carpenter's, of course, but it hit a lot of the right notes. There were, naturally, some plot holes, some little areas that don't make a whole lot of sense, but in the end, everything came out really, really good.

The reviews are less than positive - to be expected for horror movies, but even so it seems as though the trailer is accurate portrayal of the movie: (Review synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes) "It serves the bare serviceable minimum for a horror flick, but The Thing is all boo-scares and a slave to the far superior John Carpenter version."

There are a lot more jump-scare than in the original, and the Carpenter version really is superior. It is an excellent companion to the Carpenter version though, and it does get a good sense of paranoia in, if not as good as Carpenter's version. I did find myself thinking a few times that there was a bit too much CG, I'm not saying it doesn't have any problems, but it is certainly better than most reviews will say. And, I will note, that Carpenter's version didn't get very good reviews at the time either.

That does tend to be true for horror and SF - horror is not typically a genre I like too much, but I'll agree that it suffers from the same "genre criticism" as SF. It's a lot harder, though not impossible, for even the good exemplars of those fields to achieve critical acclaim. However, in this instance, it seems the criticisms are well-founded so really it comes down to how much one would enjoy the movie despite them. I may indeed do so, but I'd probably rather just pop the Carpenter version in if the new movie is simply more of the same, but suffers from the comparison. :) But who knows? Maybe in twenty years people will view them as a classic duology better watched together.