“Stranger Things” will get sequel instead of second season — 'Stranger Things 2' Trailer Reveals That the Second Season of the Netflix Sci-Fi Hit Will Feel Like a Sequel - The Atlantic
My only criticism is that the show is too fucking dark. I don’t mean in terms of subject matter, I mean I was blindly guessing what was going on at some key moments of action because I couldn’t fucking see anything.
Some people are just skinny.
Just watched the first episode and am pretty impressed. (I haven’t read anything in this thread; just went from the general interest and one personal recommendation I give it a try.)
One minor question from the first episode: It’s 1983, and at the middle school there is a sign for the “TOWN NAME School Drop-Off Lane” or some such.
My recollection is that kids being driven to school and formal drop-off lanes and such is a much later phenomenon, not being common until at least the early 1990s. Am I misremembering?
You are not - mandatory parents dropping the kid off didn’t start till the 90’s at the earliest, IIRC. Before then kids walked or took the school or public bus on their own.
Drop off wasn’t mandatory but some parents did occassionally drop off and there would have to be a separate lane so that they didn’t mingle with school bus or staff traffic.
Just finished it, and freakin’ loved it. The last D&D game definitely lampshaded the season: paraphrased, “The campaign was only ten hours long, and it didn’t make any sense! What about the lost knight? The princess? Those weird flowers in the crypt?”
For an 8-hour campaign, the show made enough sense, even though we don’t know what’s happening with Hopper, the lost knight; whether Eleven, the princess, survived; or what’s going on with all that weird organic matter in the Upside Down.
Just finished it tonight.
My wife and thoroughly enjoyed it, although it’s much more of a “boy’s” show. Having been introduced to D&D the year after it was released, I found the kid’s game-playing extremely realistic - something my wife had to take on faith.
The last episode is clearly setting up a season two, and I’m looking forward to it.
ETA: my wife was in awe of the child actors - she said “where do they get those kids?”
Wtf?
No it isn’t.
I liked the show, but probably not as much as some people on here.
The first half I thought was great. For several episodes there, the revealing of the mysteries in the show was intriguing and it all just got better and better. I liked how Chief Hopper became a more and more reckless badass as things developed, I was expecting a straighter arrow. I liked the teen romance and 80s teen anxiety. I liked all the 80s details. I liked the music. I liked the monster- no one mentioned Beowulf, it seemed like that as much as anything to me. No one mentioned The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe- I never actually read all those, but the portal to another world thing echoes that. I liked that it pretty much seemed made for me- I could have been one of those kids by just a few years, only things were not as harmonious where I grew up.
Well, by the end I thought it kind of had an effect like V for Vendetta had- the setup was just awesome, but to achieve that it had to go too far and make a full resolution kind of impossible. I wasn’t let down or anything, I just felt like by the time things were unveiled, it was hard to avoid schmaltzy horror redundancy. Monsters, kids, authorities, magic powers, noble tough guy cops, and moms moms moms. Don’t get me wrong, I Did enjoy the whole thing. Overall it was something fresh on TV, even though it was total 80s. I’d say I liked American Horror Story better, but hey, AHS is just about my favorite.
We binge-watched it last weekend and then binge-watched it again today in other to show it to a relative. We loved it. It is all about nostalgia. We caught many references but there are many we missed in sure. One of my favorite moments is when the subverted the “fleeing in the car” trope and Mom went back inside.
I love stories that take the world of children as equally valid as the adult world. There were a ton of influences but the ones I caught most were from IT. I was born the year this story takes place. It’s hard to deny nostalgia is a major factor at play.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Yeesh, sorry for all the typos. I haven’t figured out a way to edit posts in Tapatalk.
Ditto. I watched it on a tablet, and was frustrated I couldn’t crank the brightness past 100%.
There are four boys who play D&D. They’re one of the main storylines, possibly THE main storyline.
There is the mom, and the cop, who pair off.
There is the sister, and her boyfriend, and Will’s older brother, who hang together.
There is Eleven.
There is the evil doctor.
These, I’d argue, are all the main characters. Of the 11(!) main characters, three are women. It passes the Bechdel test in at least one and probably multiple scenes (Will’s mom tells Eleven that she’ll be right there, e.g.), but while there are lots of scenes of dudes interacting with other dudes, there are very few scenes of the girls and women interacting with one another without guys around.
I’m not saying that makes it a boys’ show, but there’s an argument to be made.
Earlier in the thread - there was a question regaurding -
[spoiler]that there were 6 taken/missing and that no one seemed to be looking - you have to remember that the ‘men in black’ (brenners org) was actively covering these things up - and monitoring alot of communication -
Barb ‘ran away’
Will was “found” in the quarry
and so forth - so absolutely no reason they weren’t doing similar for the other 4 that were taken (and that may have even referred to the one we saw they sent thru as well)[/spoiler]
We weren’t sure about this series - it turned out much much better than expected, and I think it built the layers and tension up quite well.
My count:
1) Scientist in the first two minutes of the first episode: easily covered up.
2) Will: death faked.
3) Barb: runaway faked
4-5) Hunters: a few days in, very possibly turning into a big deal that our protagonists didn’t pay attention to.
6) Soldier with “REDSHIRT” tattooed on his forehead who went in with a tether and stayed in without a tether: also easily covered up.
What I want to know is why Brenner was so upset that #6 on your list died. He even tried to abort the mission to save the guy’s life. He didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about anybody else who was killed in the line of duty. Made me wonder if that guy was some other experiment he felt strongly about.
I have now watched this through twice. It was quite entertaining the second time around, too. Watching it the second time, though, you get a deeper impression that Hopper is sketchy as hell. It will be interesting to see how they address his situation in the 2nd season.
First–do we need to be posting in spoilers any more? I figure if you’ve made it to the second page, you’re either okay with being spoiled or you’ve seen the show. Fair warning.
Second, yeah, Hopper’s decision to give up Eleven to Brenner was totally sketchy, and it strained his characterization for me. The main motive in his life was love for his little girl–a girl whom he’d see die, with shaven head, in a medical setting. I get that he identified very heavily with Wynona Ryder, but it’s hard for me to believe that his identification extended to giving up a little girl with shaven head who would, due to his treachery, likely die in a medical setting. Why didn’t he at least offer a fake location for them, ferchrissakes?
Thanks for doing the analysis.
I wasn’t even thinking that deeply. What I saw was the main plot line revolving around four boys who played D&D (something that essentially zero girls did at the time), and their demigod-like female friend, who is so androgynous that they are not even sure she is a girl for awhile.
Just as a sanity check, I asked my wife, and she agreed that it’s much more of a boy’s show than a girl’s.
BTW - she mostly hates “girly movies."