how much of the score did Morricone actually compose?

Main theme is credited to Morricone, although I agree it doesn't sound like the rest of his music. The opening credit/title track is Carpenter. Morricone provided all of the orchestrated music, Carpenter's contributions are pretty much all the synth tracks mentioned above, as well as "filler" tracks between scenes. One track of Morricone's you forgot to mention was during the visit to the Norwegian camp (reused during Blair's computer simulation & the closing scene with Mac & Childs). Also the violin(?) string plucking heard during the final showdown between Mac & Blair-thing. Fuchs & Bennings death scenes were re-writes/shoots, so I guess John decided to provide tracks for the new scenes.

I'm rather glad Howarth/Carpenter released a re-recorded version including some of Carpenter's more notable contributions to the film, since all we had available prior to this was Morricone's score, including unused material (not a bad listen, but John made the right choice to replace some of these tracks).

In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Carpenter reflected on working with Morricone for the film, which stars Kurt Russell as a helicopter pilot battling an unseen enemy that takes over the bodies of researchers at a remote station in snowy Antarctica. “He’s just fabulous and just genius,” the director said. “All I said to him was, ‘Fewer notes.’ If you see The Thing, the ultimate theme is the result of our conversation: really simple, synth-driven, effective.”

Two years later, Morricone reflected on the score. “The collaboration with Carpenter was really something extraordinary and something very peculiar, as well,” Morricone told Rolling Stone. “He came to Rome to show me the movie but immediately after the end of the screening, he had to rush away, so I couldn’t speak to him. I was very impressed by what I’d seen but I was concerned because he didn’t give me any clue or indication about what he wanted.”

He went on to make several different cues in many different styles. “In the end, he chose just one single piece of music,” Morricone said. “Now one of the pieces he didn’t use is in The Hateful Eight.”


“Ennio Morricone composed the magnificent score for my movie The Thing,” Carpenter said in a statement. “Because we weren’t finished editing the movie, Ennio had to score without seeing a complete picture. When we put everything together, there were gaps dramatically where I would have wanted music. So I went off and scored a couple of simple pieces that filled in.”