So the dog. Opening scene. If it’s just looking to infect everyone it possibly can, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for it to turn around and stare at the pursuing helicopter.
Are there prevailing fan theories about the reason that the dog, presumably the surviving thing, stopped and looked back at the pursuing helicopter?
The Thing is my favorite horror movie. With that being said, they probably didn’t have a grand plan for the dog turning to look back. They probably didn’t even direct the dog to do that, because it’s a dog, it was probably looking back at it’s trainer in that scene.
The motive for the The Thing is always survive, and in that situation it was being hunted, and getting away from that threat was first and foremost it’s goal. After it was safe, it wanted to leave the arctic, to most likely infect and convert more life forms. It’s unknown if The Thing is a space faring race on it’s own, or just a parasitic hitch hiker who consumes life forms and adds their understanding it it’s own. If it’s just a consumer of life, then it’s goal would be to get out of arctic to population centers and get to work taking over and mimicking more organisms. If it’s intelligent and isn’t just a consume, it’d want to get off of earth to continue doing what ever Thing things it would normally do. I definitely lean toward it being a consumer, having tried to take over the original owners of the ship it crashed onto earth in.