I never saw the latest remake, but Carpenter’s Thing was great.
It and the original are both great, though very different.
The 2011 ‘prequel’ was supposed to be an account of the alleged events that took place just prior to the Carpenter movie, when the Norwegian team discovers the Thing. Without giving away the plot or any other details, the final scene cuts over to the sled dog/creature from the beginning of the Carpenter film running through the snow, towards the American base. That part of it was pretty nicely done and really dovetailed it to Carpenter’s opening scenes. I admit I was pleasantly impressed in how they worked that in, I didn’t see that one coming. I just found the plot and characters a bit on the watery side, but your mileage may vary. I didn’t get the Hawks/Carpenter suspense goosebumps out of it; it seemed a little too contrived and drawn from trying to rehash plot points from the other two (especially Carpenter’s) to try to knit it all together. It’s a decent, rainy Saturday night watch if you can find it, but I found it to be like the annoying, tagalong younger cousin to the other two. There’s supposedly a remake of The Thing curently in the works that incorporates elements of both previous films and the novella they were based on. Now we’re getting into uncharted ‘don’t mess with a classic’ territory here. That could easily lay a gigantic egg.