f13.net

Stranger Things trailer. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWxyRG_tckY)

This just came out and I went to check out the first episode and ended up binge watching it all.  It's fantastic imo.  Definitely worth checking out on Neftlix.

Yeah, I was just about to come on and post about this.

Huge 80's nostalgia, not just for the time and place but for the storytelling. It's all the vintage Spielberg that JJ Abrams only wishes he could be.

I've only watched four episodes but this is great so far.

So damn true it hurts.

We binge watched it yesterday. It was amazing. I liked how all of the backstory got woven in between various episodes and it never delved into stupid cliches that we've seen a million times poorly executed. The wife is excited that it may have a second season based on how it ended. I hope not personally because it was wrapped nicely despite the last scene.

This was great. I do want to talk about a moment from the final episode real fast:

 

Ok, just finished the whole thing and it was great.  Only thing that bugged me was how much of a carbon copy of "Alien" the monster was.

Did not like.

Far too much pastiche for my tastes. Nearly every plot beat, cool scene, relevant character, etc, feels lifted from other movies. Obviously everything is, to some degree, "inspired" by other things but this was just too much for me, and the series didn't do enough to justify some of the borrowing or make it feel owned. In a lot of cases it felt like the logic of the series was less internal than "well this happened in other movies so it will happen in this thing too."

It also felt to me that the series wanted to feel like it was about something, but to me ultimately it was just about being a patchwork quilt of other properties.

I haven't watched it yet but

(http://www.gstatic.com/tv/thumb/tvbanners/12991665/p12991665_b_v8_aa.jpg)

It's really fucking obvious from the getgo that the entire plan was to create said patchwork quilt.

That poster gives me the impression of "IT" more than anything else.

I'm three episodes in and it's pretty good so far.

This show was pretty great.  Really curious to see what season 2 will look like, but I liked that the ending didn't feel cliffhanger-y despite leaving a few questions unanswered.

On a second watching I think you'll find there are a lot of little moments that open doors that go someplace they have planned out, but are just a WTF moment for the characters.

The thing that bugs me about this show (not in a bad way) is that it makes me want to be a research studying that place. 

I got so tired of the constant yelling.. and the mom could have been a lot better.. admittedly it was an impossible role tho.

also boo on the predictable ending.

All in all, 6/10.

Finally finished this. Enjoyed the shit out of it. Excited for second season, bummed about Barb. For no other reason than she was nice.

Then you might be happy next season.  Maybe. 

I do get tired of nice people dying for no plot reason.

I too enjoyed the shit out of this. I thought the final episode was very well handled. They aimed for "really dark Amblin" and delivered. Couldn't ask for more.

Barb looked and dressed like a teenager who babysat for me and my little brothers back in 1985 or so. Same clothes, hair, outfit, attitude... it was uncanny.

The show really nailed this.  Everything looked and felt about 1984-1986.  Nothing was really out of place except one nitpicking thing that bugged me and no one else.

Which was?

Those of you that liked El's performance may want to check her out in Intruders from a couple of years ago. The show itself was meh, but the girl killed it in her role. Almost literally.

Barb’s 1988 Volkswagen Cabrio (http://jalopnik.com/the-cars-of-stranger-things-are-as-perfect-as-the-show-1784727336)?

Yes!

Also, it's Indiana. Everyone is driving 5-10+ year old (for the time) cars around.   Not a single spot of quarter or rocker panel rust/rot to be found. No ones driving a 1973 Ford LTD daily in the slush and salt in 1985 and NOT having rotten quarter panels...

It wasn't something I spotted (I googled it) because I know nothing about cars, let alone American cars of the 80s, but that page I linked seemed to be saying that some of the cars were fucked up bangers? Generally I thought the attention to 80's detail was excellent.

Also liked the show, tempered a bit because I found the kids incredibly annoying but I chalked that up in my head to them being good at acting their parts and it was actually the characters that annoyed me. Bit like Winona Ryder's character - she was perfect, just the right shade of crazy. Good acting.

Looking forward to a 2nd season.

That quarry seemed a bit deep/tall for Indiana, didn't it? I guess it could look that way in the southern third of the state.

Did you also notice how crisp and cleanly cut the gravel was? If you focus closely on the ground when Nancy climbs through the tree, you'll also see what is clearly fake moss painted around the base. They didn't even use a real monster. Ridiculous.


Fuck, you people are old.

Started watching this (hey they have netflix in thirdworldia now!) and it's pretty great. However,

Spoiler: A pretty good fan theory about Eleven and the monster. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VlaDE2cMAE)

Season 2 confirmed (http://www.themarysue.com/stranger-things-season-2-confirmed/). I'd've been happy if they'd left it at one season but I don't mind another one too.

4 in and diggin' it! I knew right from the start with the kids playing DnD that I was going to like it. Love the '80s vibe.

I am secretly hoping for an all 80s D&D sessions spin off  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah yeah late to the party but I just talked the wife into watching this, and we both ended up loving it. Great on nearly all fronts, but as this is the internet I'm going to spend the bulk of the post bitching about something.

Why, after shooting the show so obviously in middle and north Georgia, did they set it in Indiana? I mean, even though the town of Hawkings was made up, they still used local town and place names to the region (Cartersville, Jonesboro, the Etowah River). It's like when they scripted it they were planning to keep it set on location, but then changed plans at the last minute. Early on the show I even paid them the compliment of, even though it was set in the South, not overdoing the accents. Then I finally noticed an Indiana license plate, so compliment withdrawn!

But okay, other than that, some solid "nostalgia done right."

I'm SO in love with this (watching Ep. 4). I could listen to that main theme and the '80s synth background tunes all day.

"Nostalgia masterfully done right". It's like I'm suddenly binge-watching ET, Neverending Story, Navigator, DARYL, Labyrinth, The Goonies all over again with a sprinkle of Carpenter on it. Oh, and during the "high school moments", there is some some vague (and not so vague) "Nightmare on Elm Street" atmosphere (Nancyyy!!!) And I like it  :grin: :Love_Letters:

Just found this. Holy....  :heart: :heart: :heart:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cn-XoliWcAA8AoP.jpg:large)

(https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2017/07/11/11-stranger-things-s2.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.jpg)

ooooo.  I can't wait for what ever the fuck that is!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

I love that role playing cover.  Love it.

(https://redcrowgreencrow.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/chibi-cthulhu-150.jpg)

Here it is, first trailer of Season 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgS2L7WPIO4

The first 20 seconds  :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

That was good

Oh good.  On Halloween, no less.  Popcorn, candy apples and spooky stuff on TV.  Yay!  (http://www.4smileys.com/smileys/halloween-smileys/halloweensmiley_4.gif) (http://www.4smileys.com)

I'll likely have finished Season 2 3.5 days before Halloween.

It does look good, but Will was barely in the first season. It starred the other kids trying to find him. Can they pull off a season that seems to star Will?

I finally got around to watching this. Fuck me, really good fun, especially for kids from the '80's like me. It wasn't overly in your face nostalgia like The Goldbergs (which I also love for different reasons) but it all fit pretty well. Enough that I was questioning if X movie would have come out before this was set and such. I feel like 8 episodes pretty much nailed the right pacing so that it didn't feel padded or stretched out (something the Marvel shows that I love do - 13 episodes is a bit long).

That season 2 trailer was fucking awesome.

Winona Ryder is nearly ruining this for me.

Stop crying, you butt.

Why?  That's pretty much her entire job in this show.

because it sucks, that's why

I stopped watching exactly when she entered and went full crymob.  HOWEVER, I went back months later, and then got into it.  The kids and maybe the Sheriff are the best actors and parts.  Ryder fits in eventually by going full Close Encounters of the Third Kind obsessed and it's OK.

literally just finished this so I could be up to speed on the new season

the ending was garbage

winona was intolerable

i care about 15% of the cast

this entire thing was just hilariously overrated

season 2 looks better (which really doesn't seem that high of a hurdle, frankly)

I didn't have that big of a problem with it, but I somewhat agree.  I thought the setting, general story, and direction was great.  Problem was that I honestly didn't like any of the cast other than the sheriff.  Most of the kids were annoying as fuck and their fights against each other felt forced and really stupid.  I wanted somebody to just punch Winona most of the series.  It was a good attempt at what it was going for, but the characters themselves ended up turning me off.

Season 2 has potential though!

I finally watched season one Friday night (just one episode... maybe just one more... then it was 4am) and really enjoyed it.

Starting in on season two now.

Finished season 2 and while it wasn't bad it felt rather unnecessary (can't think of a better word to describe how I felt about the second season).

Through the uprights and it was good...but a few why the fuck nitpicks that aren't break the show worthy but "not the best syfy" worthy.

Just finished. I enjoyed it. Had some ups and downs, but it was entertaining and nostalgic, so I was happy. Far less Winona crying this season was a plus.

Season two was good stuff.  Not quite as amazing as S1, partially because there's no way to go in completely cold, but still very solid overall, and some nice payoffs for things from before and setup for whatever's next.  Had some really great moments.  And the Dustin / Steve team-up was inspired stuff.  I hope we get to see some more mixing up of the main characters in season three -- now that we know a bit more about these people, letting them play off each other is fun.

I think most improved in season two is steve he has grown up and matured into a pretty solid all around good person.

Steve was definitely the MVP of season 2.

Other than episode 7, which while not bad per se just felt really out of time and place, that was a bloody good successor to the first season.

Finished Season two.  Loved it just as much.

I get that it started slower, but given season one, I didn't mind it all.  Finished strong.

Episode 7 I think was important to give some closure to eleven and make some important choices on what kind of person she wants to be it did feel a bit odd and disjointed from the rest of the story.

i have always derived better satisfaction of stranger things by understanding that its genre is movie nostalgia. shit will work like it would in a 1980's made for tv supernatural horror.

Also just finished season 2 and loved it.

In addition to the movie references, I thought some scenes referenced Half-Life.

P.S. I played AD&D in the 1980s, sometimes with friends, but often just writing modules by myself or finding ways to play it alone, and the Mind Flayer in the Monster Manual stuck out to me... Maybe because Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was one of my favourite modules. I love how the Duffer Brothers are able to pick that level of nerdy eighties childhood detail even though they were born later.

I think if they had threaded the ep7 El storyline across 2-3 episodes, interwoven with what the rest of the gang were up to, it would have worked better.

Dropping it between the cliff-hanger at the end of ep6 and return to that in ep8 was clunky.

It also tied in to her figuring out what/where "home" was.

Episode 7 set up part of season 3:

It was the first half of a Heroes Journey arc, made less obvious by spending most of the screen time on the gang. Very by the numbers if you look only at when Jane/Eleven is on screen.

--Dave

Dagobah episode.

Loved Season 2. I also loved how Steve and his kids have become a meme along with HopperDancesTo on Twitter.

This was good.

Wife and I finally finished Season 2. Late to the table, but I like to watch an episode and give it a few days before the next...

Wife loved it, I enjoyed it about the same as season 1. Scumbag Steve >> adventures in babysitting Steve was pretty great. Wife HATED Steve in Season 1 but really changed her tone in season 2 - of course that's probably because she had a new mullet scumbag to hate.

Noah Schnapp (Will) needs some kind of acting award because holy shit he was amazing, especially for a 13 year old kid.

Season 3 trailer. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEG3bmU_WaI)

The girl who delivers the final line is the daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke.

Welp, guess we're turning the Netflix sub back on.

--Dave

Does the third season get any better after the first two episodes? It has spent roughly 90 minutes on shots of Waldenbooks and Sam Goody at the mall and about three minutes on plot.

Yes.

It's pretty fucking awesome and accelerates a lot faster than most Netflix fodder.

Good to hear, thanks for confirming. I was going to put it on the back burner but I’ll power through.

I thought the first three episodes of season three where pretty slow but the rest of the season is pretty good.

i just powered through season 2

it was trash and i'm not sure how it got a season 3 but here we are, on season 3

Schild dislikes pop-culture phenomenon, news at 11.

Season 3 was awesome.  8 episodes that went by in a flash.  I actually wish they would spend MORE time on the slow boiling 80s nostalgia stuff.  That's much of the reason this show is popular in the first place.

Yeah....... I appreciate the nostalgia of the show, and how well they craft it.  But I didn't even like season 1 very much.  Setting and overall setup was great, but almost every character was terrible.  I hated all the kids (except 11).  I hated the mom.  I hated the teenagers.  The cop was cool. 

I just didn't like any of them, which made it hard to get through, despite everything else being well done.

I made it 2 episodes into season 2 before giving up and never looking at it since.

I have this thought literally every time he posts on pretty much any movie, tv show or video game. Lol

Season 3 was really good. I have some theories about Season 4 and where it might be going but we'll see. Spoilers for the end of the season mixed in with my thoughts on potential Season 4 stuff.

Man, I just mentally reached out through my wifi connection and slapped you.

I can see not loving all the characters, but hate?  Lost me there.

You gotta be somewhat dead inside to hate Dustin, that kid is pure joy.

You can't know as much about pop culture as me and hate it. Anyway, Dippin dots were/are great even if storage is cost-ineffective. So, you just take that back.

My problem with stranger things isn't how embedded it is in pop culture. It's that most of the characters are crap, the writing is... mediocre at best. The story is a mess.

The teenagers, outside of Nancy, are largely intolerable. I'm with Teleku on this one. These are not good characters. They are unlikable and bad.

I enjoyed Stranger Things but it's definitely "junk food" TV. You like it for the nostalgia and some of the effects but it's writing is good at best, mostly serviceable at worst.

And then there's S2 Ep7 which was just an unspeakable abomination of shit.

I'm just annoyed no-one really helped Nancy's Mom.  All she wanted was to get ridden sideways.  What the hell.

She really needed some D.

I feel like we're really on the same page on this whole topic.

Also, Dippin Dots were fucking strange.

Finished binging this over the weekend, and I loved it more than season 2. It didn't have a dud episode like S2E7. The cast has probably gotten a little too big, but I thought they did a decent job of giving everyone something to do.

Haha, I had to go Google s2e7.  I do remember it being bad.  Or more appropriately, I don’t remember it being bad because I tuned it out both times I saw it.

They could cut out Mike and Will and no one would notice. Dustin had a fantastic season. 'What the hell?!'

I stopped watching this a little way into s2 when it became too obvious that this isn't a mystery just shit happening one thing at a time with way too much portent, and the characters weren't going anywhere, they were just messing about pretending to be the goonies, but spooky. 

Did I stop too early?

If you weren't enjoying it there's no point to keep watching, it is what it is, it won't suddenly get a lot better.

Yeah, if you disliked s2 enough to stop watching, this series probably isn’t for you.  As much as I thought it was less good than s1, I still loved it.

We all know what really happened here. (https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/25/us/maryland-gas-explosion-trnd/)

And I loved season 3.

Season 4 part 1 is out.  Part 2 releases July 1st.

This season is pretty good.  I mostly just necroed this thread to complain that LITE BRITES DO NOT WORK LIKE THAT, EACH PEG DOES NOT HAVE AN ELECTRICAL CURRENT GOING THROUGH IT.

That is all.

not sure if new ones work the same way or not but i'm pretty sure they make a retro version of the current one

but also I don't know what happens in the show, so

It's a minor thing.  There's a scene where a Lite Brite is used in a manner that's similar to the Christmas lights in the first season.

Which is dumb because the idea is that if you can affect electrical currents you can make a lightbulb flicker.  If you have a lot of lightbulbs, you can use the patterns to communicate.  But a Lite Brite isn't a lot of lightbulbs, it's one lightbulb that shines through a screen with a bunch of little plastic pegs in it.  It's like a projector.  If you mess with the electrical current, the whole thing will flicker at once, not the individual pegs.  If a ghost could bend the light in a Lite Brite to draw things on it, it could just as easily bend the light in the room and draw things in the air.

Anyway, WHATEVER.  It was an excuse to sell some Lite Brites, and I loved Lite Brite when I was a kid so I can respect that.  I can just pretend they knew Morse Code and that that whole scene never happened and the rest of the story works fine.

I was also annoyed by the way that gravity worked in the Upside Down gate.  They should have had to tie the rope off on both ends to keep it from being yanked through in one direction or another once there was weight on it.  Think with portals, bitches.  But again, whatever.  I can just pretend they did that.

Those nits aside, I wondered out loud "so wait, if every place and inanimate object in the real world is reflected in the Upside Down, what's the lag?  If I drop an object in the real world does it appear in the Upside Down as soon as it leaves my hand?" and then the show answered that question in a very satisfactory way about twenty minutes later, and I appreciated that.

The gravity thing didn't bother me for some reason. It did slightly because I thought "won't the rope move if they tug on it if it's just gravity holding it?" but then I decided the portal itself must "grip" and I was fine with it. It actually explains a lot like why you have to push through the portals and such.

I also liked the explanation for the Upside Down's timeline but am curious why it froze at that specific point in time as it seems to have. There is an explanation that works for me but...


Of course it's also possible the Duffer Brothers picked that particular point in time purely because they liked the idea of it and without any in-universe explanation.

I suspect we'll get the full explanation in the second half of the season.  My theory is that


re gravity (spoilering because literally nobody cares, not because it's a spoiler)

That is what I thought as well. But this doesn't work because:


As for the rope. I was surprised they didn't tie it off but I let it go. It reminded me a lot of the movie Poltergeist. Sure, in that movie originally the dad holds the other end of the rope but even when he lets go they still have to pull the mother and daughter out and they drop once they clear the portal. I think it didnt bother me too much because I just sort of mentally went "it's supernatural stuff, who knows how the hell it works..."

There were a few things I liked about the last couple seasons, but they were largely forgettable to me, and I always felt like the show would have been better as a one-off thing, ending after the first season. Having just finished season 4, I'm kinda glad they kept going.

This season was definitely stronger than the last two, and I suspect it will be more memorable; I realized as this one started that I couldn't really tell you what happened in seasons 2 and 3 other than adding a couple of new characters.  Very curious where the story goes from here given the shift in the status quo.

I basically remember Max and the Mind Flayer getting introduced in Season 2, and Season 3 introducing Robin and Max's brother getting possessed or whatever. Oh, and Season 2 was the season Sean Astin was on I think.

Sounds like they're contemplating doing a bit of a time jump for the next season since all the kids have aged so much which would possibly bring them close to 1990. They also just said it will be a shorter season without the ramp up of previous seasons since they've already got the threat set up.

The way they ended the season a time skip makes very little sense.

Open: A visibly, older, weary, and worn Eleven opens the door to the bunker in Utah. Glancing behind her at the red lightning of the Upside Down's influence, now spread nearly a thousand miles, she sighs and closes the door.

Done, time skipped

--Dave

Yeah, while season 4 ended with a sense of urgency there are ways to do a time jump if that's the direction they ultimately decided on. Either our heroes have been fighting a losing battle for a few years or at least a stalemate. They've gotten pretty lucky in every season so far to find ways of stopping the immediate threat each time, especially considering it's generally been a group of kids and teens with a few adults mixed in going up against other-dimensional evil, and occasionally Russians and the military. It's maybe not out of the realm of possibility that they find putting a more final stop to Venca and the Mind Flayer to be a longer fight than they've been used to.

Season 2: Steve becomes a single mother. Internet realizes Nancy is not worthy of Steve. Max comes to town. Billy bullies and beats up Steve cementing him as a new human bully. Mind flayer intro. Lucas acts like a dick off and on.

Season 3: Billy gets possessed and actually gets a bit of humanizing backstory. Russians invade the mall. Steve befriends Robin and shows he's way more mature than an 80s teen boy by accepting her when she comes out to him. Hopper acts like a dick for a lot of the season. Eleven and Hopper grow closer until he "dies". The Neverending Story moment is huge for a few weeks.

As for a time skip, it makes sense on multiple levels. It'll help with the aging actors. It'll give them an excuse to say "Eleven has been training." It'll also allow two major characters to heal.

That's an excellent point.

This was definitely a stronger season than the last 2. I do hate


but otherwise a strong entry to the series. It also made me rediscover both Kate Bush and Siouxsie and the Banshees so that's good.

I didn't even make it thru the first 4 episodes. For me it felt like the season was written after watching every after school special in the 80s and basing it entirely on that. I stopped after the 14 year old kids were told they were the ones that had the best chance to save Hawkins. Too far a break for me. I enjoyed the first season enough but everything after just didn't do it for me.

Contrast that with Umbrella academy which I enjoyed each season. Probably has to do with the actors in each show but also the writing just felt effortless in Umbrella and stretched for Stranger Things.

I'm the complete opposite I didn't make it thru the first season of Umbrella, got super bored when there wasn't fighting on the screen. Cared not one iota for the mystery or the characters. Not that Stranger Things is amazing or anything but at least its rather fun and SO will watch with me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯