Not as good as the first but still a great movie
If you take it for what it is -- an attempt at a prequel story concerning what happened at the Norwegian camp -- it's enjoyable. It can't really be compared to Carpenter's classic, which most people do, because they think it's a remake of HIS remake, which it's NOT.
Some things irk me about this prequel, though, no matter how many times I watch it or get smitten by the good things about it -- first of all, they never should have called it
The Thing, as this creates confusion and makes people think, as I stated above, it's a remake of the 1982 remake. I always thought they should have called this
The Thing: Beginnings or maybe even
Who Goes There, named after the novella the original story was based on. I said the same thing about the 2018
Halloween sequel -- why call that
Halloween? It's already been done for the 1978 original plus Zombie's remake, so why keep calling it the same thing? Not that
Halloween Kills or
Halloween Ends is much better...
Also, some of the events -- as close as they got them -- in the prequel just don't add up when comparing them to Carpenter's film in terms of continuity. Some are excellent and do match up, such as when they drag the ice block to that room (that they find in Carpenter's film) or when they find the two-headed creature. But what about the moment in Carpenter's film when they're watching the video of the Norwegians when they're placing the charges and flags around the ship, trying to blow it up....why wasn't that shown in the prequel? It was if it never happened.
Also, with regard to the aforementioned two-headed creature -- it was cool in terms of how they set this up, with Winstead's character burning it outside with the flamethrower for MacReady and Copper to find in Carpenter's take later on...but that creature didn't make any sense logistically. It is suggested this thing was an Edvard imitation (in the 2011 film), and when it attacks Adam in the rec room, it basically attaches to his face and becomes a massive two-headed creature with multiple limbs (and then starts randomly attacking everyone at the camp, which the creature we know would never do...it wants to remain hidden so no one figures out what is going on, unless it's attacked). But as I just said, this isn't the way this organism works -- it wouldn't have run around the camp as some unfinished mutation trying to kill people...it would want to assimilate Adam after it was "discovered" in the rec room as being the Edvard character, but instead what we get is a monster that is basically just there for shock value.
Then, there's the issue of Sander -- it's suggested at the end that Sander is the creature when he's seen driving off to the ship. We end up learning that
he is the "master creature" after the reveal in the ship at the conclusion, which felt like they were trying to rip off the huge "Blair monster" from the end of the 82 film, but this just doesn't make sense to me being that there were other creatures already running about, including the mutated Adam/Edvard Thing and, of course, the dog (who was apparently hiding out throughout the proceedings so he could escape at the end and run to the American camp, setting up John Carpenter's The Thing).
If you can look past some of the inaccuracies with regard to continuity, it stands alone as an effective prequel (taking that awful CGI out of the equation).
