2011’s The Thing will get you lots of mixed responses when you bring it up. Many people were frustrated with the special effects being largely CG on the final cut. What a lot of people don’t know is that practical versions for almost all the effects were made and many even shot first! However, many were replaced entirely by CG for the release.
In the video above you can see bench tests of many of the practical effects. Some of which did make it through to the final cut.
If you haven’t seen it yet, I’d highly recommend you give it a try. It doesn’t match the first in my opinion, but it is fun nonetheless.
One of the most egregious replacements was the animatronic “Edvard-Adam” monster. As you can see in the video above, they filmed it! In the final release, seen below it has been replaced with CGI pretty well.
