Obejrzałem ponownie "The Thing: Terror Takes Shape" i oto co mówi Todd Ramsay o wspomnianej przez Ciebie scenie. Nie będe tego tłumaczył, bo ktoś mnie jeszcze osądzi o przekłamania.

"There was an alternate ending to the film that was shot. I had spoken to John about this. I had said that I felt, 'Well, gee, this is a terribly nihilistic ending, very much downbeat, and perhaps we should protect ourselves while we have the principal - Kurt and just shoot ending where we see that he survives.' And John was open to this, so essentially what he did was, he staged a scene in which Kurt has been rescued and is sitting in kind of a small office structure and he's just had a blood test, so that we know he's not infected and he has survived this ordeal rather than the kind of mutual death that concludes the film now."

Zatem nie jest to, jak twierdzisz, skrywane zakończenie filmu, a jedynie zakończenie alternatywne. Wiemy z niego, że MacReady przeżył, nie wiemy co stało się z Childsem, nie wiemy czy Childs był człowiekiem, MacReady jest odnaleziony w bliżej niesprecyzowanym czasie, a powody dla których scena nieznalazła się w filmie są opisywane dalej:

"He just shot this for protection. He never previewed this. The issue did come up at the conclusion of the previews as to whether we should, perhaps, try this ending see how it flew with the audiences and/or make other adjustments on the film. And I thing John, essentially, at the time, was felt that he had achived in the movie what he wanted to do. He had made the story of 'Who Goes There?' the short story from which the original Thing was adapted. He was much truer to that, which I thing, was one of his intentions. He was a great fan od the original Thing. He and I watched it at least two or three times and John's propably seen it 50. And it is a wonderful film, but he wasn't trying to do that film. He was, in a sense, trying to go back to the source of it and I think he felt he had accomplished that. And so that's the way the film went out."

Czyli Carpenter zrobił "to na wszelki wypadek", dla bezpieczeństwa. Carpenter wiedział co chce zrobić za film i nawet gdyby publika nie przyjęła go dobrze, to on, zafascynowany orginalnym "The Thing" z 1951, chciał zrobić adaptacje opowiadania "Who goes there". Dlatego film wygląda teraz tak, a nie inaczej.