More proof that every movie would be cooler with a John Carpenter tribute.
As it turns out, Pacific Rim Uprising director Steven S. DeKnight is a big time fan of John Carpenter’s The Thing, particularly of its insane practical effects that still hold up incredibly well to this day. Of course, one of the most iconic effects moments comes when Norris’ head tears itself from his mutilated body, sprouting spider legs and crawling off.
Believe it or not, Uprising *almost* paid homage to that gruesome scene!
“There was an action scene that I came up with during the Shatterdome attack that I loved,” DeKnight explained to Den of Geek. “It was my beloved child, but I was like, ‘Ah right. Okay, it’s going on a bit too long.’ Jake and Lambert were actually gonna make it inside Gypsy, and they were gonna fight one of the Kaiju drones, and they were gonna punch it so hard that it knocked its brain out. The brain was gonna fall to the ground, sprout legs and teeth, and try to eat the cadets. It was my nod to John Carpenter’s The Thing.”
Ultimately, DeKnight came up with various reasons to excise the tribute.
“Once we got in, it was like, not only was it massively expensive and taken more time shooting… it’s like a top hat on top of a derby,” he explained. “It’s just, let’s focus on the story. Sometimes you can just go off on tangents that are great and wonderful, but the aggregate of too much is that the audience just gets exhausted.“