Is John Carpenter’s The Thing a Christmas Movie?

The debate of whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie comes up every year – and this morning, we even covered the fact that Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin weighed in on the debate this year. Now, a new debate is brewing over the question, “Is John Carpenter’s The Thing a Christmas movie?”

As I’ve said, I’m very lenient when it comes to accepting something as “a Christmas movie.” As long as it’s set during the holiday season and features Christmas decorations, I’ll welcome it to the list. The Thing, though? I have to lean in the direction of this one not being a Christmas movie. As someone who comes from a state where we might have some degree of snow around for six months out of the year, the sight of snow on its own is not enough for me to consider something a Christmas movie. We know that the events of the movie take place during the “first goddamn week of winter,” which would be in December in the Northern Hemisphere… but The Thing is set in Antarctica, where winter begins in March. So nothing about the movie says Christmas to me.

The folks behind the upcoming documentary The Thing Expanded, they consider Carpenter’s film to be a Christmas movie, and have even gone so far as to launch a petition to get John Carpenter’s The Thing officially recognized as a Christmas movie on IMDb and Letterboxd. They’re aiming to collect 10,000 signatures before sending the petition to those sites. If you’d like to add your signature to the list, click the link.

Carpenter directed The Thing from a screenplay by Bill Lancaster, which was based on John W. Campbell Jr.’s 1938 novella Who Goes There? The film has the following synopsis: In remote Antarctica, a group of American research scientists are disturbed at their base camp by a helicopter shooting at a sled dog. When they take in the dog, it brutally attacks both human beings and canines in the camp and they discover that the beast can assume the shape of its victims. A resourceful helicopter pilot and the camp doctor lead the camp crew in a desperate, gory battle against the vicious creature before it picks them all off, one by one. Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, Donald Moffat, Joel Polis, and Thomas G. Waites star.

The Thing is a snowbound movie that’s set in March. Do you consider it to be a Christmas movie? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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