Can I Still Prove MacReady Is The Thing? Let’s Go Over The Responses

It just shows how amazing this movie is, that decades later, almost half century, we still discussing the plot and mystery

Twist ending: MacReady was just a psychopath who enjoys drinking gasoline and wanted everyone else to drink gasoline then as they got high on gasoline one-by-one they all shared gasoline induced hallucinations. That's how Fuchs burned so much, MacReady knew Fuchs was secretly consuming high-octane gasoline and didn't want to share. That's why Blair was building a vehicle, the natural companion to gasoline. That's why they did the blood test using a hot poker, to see how well they each combust. Moral of the story: Use gasoline responsibly.

Maybe the real friends were the things we turned into along the way.

I would describe this film's narrative as "perfectly crafted ambiguousness". It's over 40 years old, and yet even younger generations can still have fun with it. Coming up with theories. Discussing them. Debating them. Insulting and attacking each other over them... It's great!

Man. That sequel was so good right up until the post production guys got hold of it. The entire point of making the film in the first place was a special effects team wanting to show off their practical effects skills, so they bought the rights and made this movie to present their incredible skills. It was all amazing. They didn't find out until the movie premier that all their hard work had been covered over by shabby CG. Like, not even good for 2011 CG, just totally phoned in. Aaaaand they never got work again. If you haven't seen any, watch some documentaries about the making of the 2011 Thing. It's so much lost potential.

Unlike movies like Alien, another one of the greatest Horror films ever made, where we're only shown 2 or 3 seconds of the Xenomorph gliding through the corridors or salivating in close up getting ready to strike, or Brucie in JAWS only being shown for a few seconds max at a time, forcing us to fill in the blanks in our imaginations, The Thing shows us everything. It lingers to such an extended degree of Horror that the Horror becomes the How's and Why's and Who's! Many people regard The Thing as a Whodunit, but it's actually about Suspicion and Paranoia. There's no real way of knowing who is The Thing at any given time unless explicitly shown. As many theories that naturally abound about all of the Red Harrings of the story, all we can really know for sure is that we can never really know for sure, such is the brilliance of The Thing.

I’ve seen your original video a few times and it’s a fascinating theory. 👍

Came from your last Thing video and was glad to hear some of these explanations. Two things I noticed on a rewatch that you didn't address, one being much more important than the other: #1: Everybody automatically assumes the "dirty drawls" that were found came from Palmer after he assimilated. However, Mcready can be seen wearing the exact same longjohns in the opening sequence of the film under his grey shirt. In fact, just about every character is wearing this type of cloth. His labeled vest was obviously mangled and re-hidden after being discovered by fuchs, but nobody talks about the undergarments. Mcready is seen inspecting them by the radio before throwing them in the trashcan when the doctor calls him to the store room. This leads me to my second observation.. #2: NAULS was the one to find the torn up undergarments when he rolls into the lounge and says "who left their dirty drawls in the kitchen trash can?"... the next time we see what we can only assume to be the same garments are mcready throwing them away in the radio room. However, when we return to mcready's next radio diary scene, there's more drawls on his desk and he is again inspecting them, concluding it tears through your clothes. He tells the radio that WINDOWS found the shredded longjohns. He's either lying, has bad memory, or is referring to an off-screen scene where windows indeed finds additional clothes. I might be over-analyzing but i felt that was the only stone left unturned with your videos. Seriously great work man, i enjoyed diving back into this.

I've watched this film over and over and over, one of my favorites and I never added all this up! Holy crap MACREADY was the THING!

The dog scene may add credit to this, apparently the thing made the lights not work in the cage, homie left and turned off the light, then returns and the light just doesn't work. Later, Mac uses the light on in his cabin to separate them further. I think the "things" that just start turning into grotesque monsters are extensions to throw the others off, while protecting the primary.

I feel either mcready is the thing because in the prequel it didnt know how smart humans are at detective work and learned from its mistakes and it makes sense to act the most paranoid and infect the bottle at the end. OR They both are human and if indeed alchohol is somthing that the thing disliks Childs taking adrink confirms he is human and Mcready chuckles realizing he doesnt have to die the only human and the music at the end just empathizes the reaization they still lost to the thing. The thing still has blood and parts of itself undiscovered or forgotten in the area that can just reassemble itself at a later time when people come to investigate. Great video both this one and the one before. I agree tiktok brain attention span ruins appreciation for a lengthy explanation. Well done

I've only watch your video 2-3 times but i always watched the entire thing. I've always heard one side to the theories but the McReady is the Thing is new and well crafted.

Honestly I can see either way, and even see a theory that neither of them are infected. Its such a great movie

As someone that knows people who work in the medical field, they teach you how to remove gloves without contaminating yourself. It's actually pretty interesting

I appreciate your wild take even if I don't agree with it. I tend to lean on the idea that Childes and MacReady are both human at the end but neither of them trust each other and are ready to die freezing to keep an eye on each other

I think a better final question is, why didn't Mac drop the theatrics and attempt to assimilate Childs directly in the end? Why is he killing the other creatures? What is the point of destroying the outpost if he the Thing? My take is that Mac isn't the Thing, he's a sociopath. His behavior is fairly consistent with sociopathic tendencies, like destroying personal property for no obvious gain.

Starting my watch now, I’ll edit this when I finish with my takeaway. Yeah, im still not really convinced. I could break it down into details, but it’s really not that important. I really like the theory and you’ve probably heard everything I would say anyway, but the fact is that it’s nice to have differing opinions on the Thing because that was ultimately the intent. The fact that we have two completely different theories with almost equal amount of validity is a testament to how good the movie is. Cheers, I’ll be sure to watch your videos to come.

liked your past two videos, definitely check out how to edit the coloring/lighting in the editing software youre using though!

I LOVE THIS MOVIE. I literally play it going to sleep almost every night.... for like almost 2 years now. That's like over 500 times, I do fall asleep early on but still that's alot. I treat this movie as a murder-mystery where paranoia is just as much as an enemy as the alien Thing is. We start off with 12 humans, well 14 but the Norwegians quickly die so down to 12. Bennings gets assimilated and burned, down to 11. Fuchs dies somehow, 10. Norris fakes death from a heartattack(presumedly) and kills Copper, now 8. Clark gets shot in the face, 7. The Palmer thing kills Windows and gets set on fire and TNT'd, down to 5. Nauls and Garry both get assimilated by Blair Thing, down to 3. MacReady blows up the combined Blair, Nauls, Garry Thing, now just 2. The murder mystery no longer matters, its just 2 now and we know MacReady knows if this Thing gets loose it'll be doom for the whole planet so the game is up, it doesn't matter if Childs is the Thing or is human.... the only way to MAKE SURE 100% without a doubt is to both burn themselves up, blow themselves up, and leave nothing. So why the conversation? at this point its not a mystery, its a search n destroy. If MacReady was human he would've instantly killed Childs with the revolver he has on his hip he's carried the last half of the movie, BLAMMO shoot Childs in the face then burn his body to be sure..... but he doesn't... he talks to him. Strange. The Thing has a natural need for self-preservation, and KNOWING it has no way out now it just wants to "die" and freeze to death that way the rescue team can find the frozen body so not instantly killing each other at the end and just accepting a slow freezing to death IS THE WAY TO CONTINUE LIVING. Now the one thing MacReady knows NOT to do is to SHARE MOLECULES, yet he hands Childs the bottle. Childs KNOWS not to share molecules as well so a human Childs would NEVER accept it, that's like rule number-fucking-1 is DO NOT SHARE MOLECULES. Also another theme present is the human action of suicide, something The Thing cannot do because of it's need for self-preservation. MacReady figured this out when he saw the frozen Norwegian with his neck and wrists slit in the Norwegian camp. Suicide is the ONE ACTION that the Thing CANNOT DO, and its the one thing MacReady is absolutely ready to do multiple times in the film. So by "accepting fate" and MacReady saying "lets just wait here a while, see what happens" is basically the opposite of what the search n destroy mission's goals are which is to find and BURN the Thing so nothing remains. If MacReady and Childs just wait around and freeze to death instead of burning each other to death then there is a chance The Thing survives, in the frozen body of them. Point is, MacReady should've burned Childs or shot him in the head the INSTANT he saw him at the end: if Childs was human then ok, Childs is dead and throw his body in the fire.... if CHilds was a thing then the bullet wouldn't do anything and he could grab a spare stick of dynamite he had strapped to him and light it and BOOM the Childs Thing is gone.... but if both Childs and MacReady are the Thing then they wouldn't immediately be kill-on-sight but still be playing the murder-mystery game instead of the search n destroy game.... oh who is it idk .... Anyway this is long enough. Something to think about.... suicide is something only humans do in this film and The Thing only tries to survive.... some food for thought.

More I think about it, it makes sense. During the end, child's is supposedly wearing a different jacket, and he drank a molotov cocktail.