NYCC 2010: Hard-Hitting Questions for the Cast of The Thing

What was it like working with practical monsters as opposed to like, tennis balls on sticks?

Joel Edgerton: It's better than working with tennis balls, because I love tennis, and the idea of pretending to be frightened of a tennis ball doesn't really make sense to me. I have heard a lot of actors talk about movies they've done where they're literally running around on green screen, sometimes for the entire movie, and reacting to nothing. And while as an actor I back myself for having a pretty decent imagination, there's something about acting to nothing that I don't enjoy. Much of this stuff in practical elements there, it was cool.

This being a prequel, we know all these people die. How do you keep it fresh, or keeping some level of surprise?

Joel Edgerton: It's an interesting world we live in now, with spoilers and the Internet and all that stuff, is like, how much do you want to know, and how much do you want to keep a secret. You know, what lures me to see a production of Hamlet even though I know everyone dies at the end is not so much what happens in the story, but how the story is told. And I think in this there's a certain element of that. How are we going to tell this story?

And you may know that the majority of people are going to die, but then you haven't met these people yet. You don't know who they are or what they are. So the excitement will be, you know, a few of the things that you do know about the original film-the man who committed suicide, the axe in the door, the full morphed alien-human figure-how does that all happen? Who are these people? And I think we're telling a really great story of a mixture of grunt workers and scientists who all get caught in this terrible mess.

So we'll get to see the stretched face man and how he got that way?

Joel Edgerton: You'll get to see that, and the axe in the door. You'll get to see the suicide. There's a lot of stuff. It crosses a lot of T's and dots a lot of I's from that first half an hour section of Carpenter's movie. And the great thing is - I think it's the most exciting alien horror movie you could have in your hands in a way, because it's alien vs. human, and because of the paranoia, it's human vs. human. Anybody can be the alien. The alien can not only be any one of us, but it can take on any shape that it wants. So there's a sense that there's villainy around every corner, and in every person. And that's exciting subject matter.

Since the alien can turn into any one of you, did you have to get scans, or take body molds, or anything like that?

Joel Edgerton: It seems like every time I walk on any movie these days, I get a body scan. I know that in my old age, senile life living in a caravan someone on the central coast of Australia, I can just talk to all my figurines. I don't know if that's a plan for any computer game or any merchandising or any of that stuff, a lot of that really had to do with certain CG elements that will be incorporated with the practical effects. Cause I think what we have the great opportunity to do and what I think Matthijis will handle very well is a huge amount of practical effects and compliment that with the CG, or larger CG elements that we almost come to expect a level of excitement that CGI might be able to deliver in moments that practical effects can't. I'm looking forward to seeing what the final balance is.

Jump to:

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje defies stereotypes, doesn't die first

Director Matthijs van Heijningen on bringing The Thing into a new era

Keeping The Thing scientific, Eric Christian Olsen

Representing the Danish acting community, Ulrich Thomsen