Stranger Things

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Tom Nook's Gloryhole dijo:
Finally caught up so I can actually sperg about the show with you guys rather than try to avoid threads like these before I get things spoiled.

I've such a love-hate relationship with the show after the end of Season 2. Season 1 was incredible and caught me completely off guard by not actually being the leddit bait tier 80s reference show that I always imagined it as, Season 2 was mostly a retread but whatever, it was nice comfort food and if you got to the end of the season you could realistically end it there with no MAJOR issues. But oh god Season 3 was where the show jumped the shark HARD with stupid plot threads, a radically expanding cast, flanderisation of everyone etc. The reason it's taken this long to finally get around to the show was because every single person I knew who watched the show told me that Season 3 sucked and that was enough to convince me it wasn't worth trying and honestly they were half right.

Like I'm expected to believe that in a single year RUSSIANS have constructed a major mall in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and created a top secret science lab underground too? I'm expected to believe Hopper, an ex-Vietnam vet would shoot all rounds into the chest of a Russian without a single shot in the head? I'm expected to care about the most retarded relationship arguement in the whole series between Mike and L or Hopper being flanderised as angry man? The season was what I always imagined Stranger Things to be: An 80s nostalgia show that sprawls out due to shitty writing and uses the very same shitty tropes that it tries to mock for irony reason; or to put it bluntly, Leddit the tv show. Member New Coke? Here's a fucking monologue that mocks advertising of it while offering nothing of substance. It's worse than product placement, it's fake product placement to extend a scene for no reason.

Season 4 so far is pretty good but is suffering from script bloat (hence why these episodes are getting slightly longer and longer and the final two episodes are gonna be as long as a feature movie) and I've really started abusing VLC's 1.5 speed playback to hammer through some of the scenes that take forever. The entire Russian arc could have been cut completely and nobody would have had an issue with it, it only exists as a way of removing Joyce from the story and is the plot thread with the most retarded immersion breaking scenes (surviving a fucking plane crash? Hopper running through the snow with a broken ankle? Joyce somehow magically having $40k in her accounts despite being poor as fuck throughout the whole show? Lets not forget the season 3/4 thing where for some fucking reason the US military storms this secret compound under a mall and somehow Russians manage to kidnap Hopper AND escape easily?).

Also I'm genuinely surprised that the writers haven't had the balls to kill one of the major characters in order to move the plot along and stop having to break up the kids into small packs. What exactly does Will or Jonathan offer? Hopper and Joyce could have absolutely died in the explosion under the mall and not a single major thing would have changed. Instead they just kill off minor characters like Bob or Billy and pretend to be a high stakes daring show.

Overall I'll probably watch Part 2 for completion sake but if they throw a Season 5 at us I'm out.
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I use the arrow keys in VLC to scrub through the boring scenes.
 
For as much as a huge fan I profess to be, it’s odd that I never finished Season 2. I’m doing so before Volume 2 in order to get up to date with things I noticed were still aluded without me knowing.

I never knew Jane actually did meet Terry, for example.
 
You know, if they cut the Russia parts of Season 4, these would almost be normal episode length. God I hate the russia bullshit. Vecna is a decent villain though, and do like the horror angles.
 
There's just so much shit that could have conceivably cut from Season 4 that (I hate to use THAT book) it reminds me of the absolute car crash that happened to Harry Potter books once JK Rowling got too powerful to ever use an editor. So many scenes just run an extra minute or two too long and all of the snappiness and lightening quick pace sof the first two seasons disappear. The writers have all the clout and an almost unlimited budget to do whatever they want as long as Netflix keeps their flagship show so we're going to see sloppy writing because they can CGI their ways out of it.

The Russia plot stands out as the worst bit by far of Season 4 (doubly so because you can tell they dedicated a decent amount of their budget towards it) but there's still the extended L bullying scenes (come on now, did that roller rink scene have to be THAT long?), the Suzie household scenes, L training scenes, Robin talking too much scenes, and a fucking 20 minute monologue by the big bad at the end of Episode 7 to tie everything together because the pacing was completely fucked and they clearly realised they needed to get everything together before the season break.

I also don't buy that the final two episodes of the season were originally planned to come much later, if they wanted two parts they could have easily broken the Season into equal parts. This screams of creative issues and not actually having the episodes ready by the time part 1 dropped. If I'm a betting man I think they'll end Season 4 on a cliffhanger just so it buys them enough time to unfuck the story in a year or twos time.
 
I finally sat and watched it. It's a lot better than Season 3.
Episode 4 is genuinely a great episode with a lot of emotional payoff.
The Russian shit is lame and I think Vecna essentially being Freddy Krueger-Voldemort is pretty dull, but at least he's a credible threat.
 
Última edición:
Gender: Xenomorph dijo:
If I were to discribe season 4 in one sentence it would be "Oh wow the kids stop another global level threat with the power of friendship!"

But I like the eldritch/lovecraftian landscapes in this one.
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It's basically 'It' meets 'Nightmare on Elm Street', but at least season 4 has been a marked improvement on the last two.

Tom Nook's Gloryhole dijo:
I also don't buy that the final two episodes of the season were originally planned to come much later, if they wanted two parts they could have easily broken the Season into equal parts. This screams of creative issues and not actually having the episodes ready by the time part 1 dropped. If I'm a betting man I think they'll end Season 4 on a cliffhanger just so it buys them enough time to unfuck the story in a year or twos time.
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Has anyone watched the Duffer brothers other pastiche show 'Wayward Pines'?
They really fucked up the ending of that show pretty hard. I hope they manage to pull of a better end to Stranger Things, but there's a certain whiff of JJ Abrahams about them and that last show had a lot of retarded mystery boxes.
 
Comicsgeist dijo:
Has anyone watched the Duffer brothers other pastiche show 'Wayward Pines'?
They really fucked up the ending of that show pretty hard. I hope they manage to pull of a better end to Stranger Things, but there's a certain whiff of JJ Abrahams about them and that last show had a lot of retarded mystery boxes.
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Duffers only wrote two episodes of Wayward Pines in the very first season of the show. That's like claiming that JJ Abrams was a major driving force behind Avatar: The Last Airbender because he wrote The Drill episode.
 
Tom Nook's Gloryhole dijo:
Also I'm genuinely surprised that the writers haven't had the balls to kill one of the major characters in order to move the plot along and stop having to break up the kids into small packs. What exactly does Will or Jonathan offer? Hopper and Joyce could have absolutely died in the explosion under the mall and not a single major thing would have changed. Instead they just kill off minor characters like Bob or Billy and pretend to be a high stakes daring show.

Overall I'll probably watch Part 2 for completion sake but if they throw a Season 5 at us I'm out.
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It's the Joss Whedon method, where you take characters that are generally likable or charismatic enough that people enjoy their presence on-screen but not important enough to the story that it would dramatically shake everything up by killing them. It's basically cheating.

I actually thought Season 3 was pretty comfy. Yeah, it wasn't the "shit going down in some quiet American town in the Midwest" flavor of Season 1 but they couldn't really do that after Season 2 anyway. That's why Season 3's ending and Season 4 so far is bugging me because the Upside Down should be a major fucking issue that everyone know about by now but they are still doing the "plucky heroes fighting evil while everyone else remains oblivious" shtick. Even the "Hopper trapped in Russia" side plot is utterly inconsequential.
 
I heard criticism that S4 dieregards previous lore, and yea, I see it now.

It really feels like it was written by a completely different team that has basic understanding of the plot and world.
 
ArthuriusMartyrius dijo:
I actually thought Season 3 was pretty comfy. Yeah, it wasn't the "shit going down in some quiet American town in the Midwest" flavor of Season 1 but they couldn't really do that after Season 2 anyway. That's why Season 3's ending and Season 4 so far is bugging me because the Upside Down should be a major fucking issue that everyone know about by now but they are still doing the "plucky heroes fighting evil while everyone else remains oblivious" shtick. Even the "Hopper trapped in Russia" side plot is utterly inconsequential.
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See that's why I started watching Stranger Things. I saw the El Santo tie in images so had the impression that by around this point, the spookiness had spread across the WHOLE world and the current season was so huge because it was the world facing this existential threat and not just a very select group of kids and adults. Kinda like how Breaking Bad slowly increased the stakes every season until Heisenberg was practically Escobar v2 with a worldwide empire.

I mean Season 3 saw tons and tons of people straight up die including kids to become the massive flesh monster (that of course nobody managed to see) and it crashing through the festival could have been the lightbulb moment that made it too obvious to ever be covered up again. They've had so many times to change the dynamic significantly but instead they'll just introduce supernatural shit to a new character and either they'll just unexplainably roll with it (like Robin) or spend forever trying to be convinced (like Max) but in general it's still just a select bunch of kooky kids vs the world.

Also, I hate to be an annoying nerd here, but how exactly can the parents think that their kids are actually part of this ritualistic satanic gang when just two seasons ago they were debriefed by the secret services over things that they'd seen? Did that annoying nigger kid not realise the stakes when she ratted out her brother to the cops?
 
Definitely enjoying S4 over S3. Very glad that they toned down the whole “all boys are dumb and/or controlling assholes” theme.

I’m curious about how the writers understand friendships. Do they really think that actual close friends constantly belittle and sarcastically put each other down? Yeah I know, friends josh each other occasionally, but it seems like that’s the primary way these teens communicate. At times I wonder why Dustin and Steve are actually friends at all.

It’s kind of weird.
 
Tom Nook's Gloryhole dijo:
See that's why I started watching Stranger Things. I saw the El Santo tie in images so had the impression that by around this point, the spookiness had spread across the WHOLE world and the current season was so huge because it was the world facing this existential threat and not just a very select group of kids and adults. Kinda like how Breaking Bad slowly increased the stakes every season until Heisenberg was practically Escobar v2 with a worldwide empire.

I mean Season 3 saw tons and tons of people straight up die including kids to become the massive flesh monster (that of course nobody managed to see) and it crashing through the festival could have been the lightbulb moment that made it too obvious to ever be covered up again. They've had so many times to change the dynamic significantly but instead they'll just introduce supernatural shit to a new character and either they'll just unexplainably roll with it (like Robin) or spend forever trying to be convinced (like Max) but in general it's still just a select bunch of kooky kids vs the world.

Also, I hate to be an annoying nerd here, but how exactly can the parents think that their kids are actually part of this ritualistic satanic gang when just two seasons ago they were debriefed by the secret services over things that they'd seen? Did that annoying nigger kid not realise the stakes when she ratted out her brother to the cops?
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Yeah, it feels like Season 4 is the Duffers trying to respond to the criticism of the show "pulling away from its roots" but like...the way they are going about it is fucking retarded. It also doesn't help that Vecna is kind of a shit villain that's basically Freddy Kruger crossed with Voldemort (and before some fag on here jumps on me with "READ ANOTHER BOOK", I call it as I see it weirdos) so I can't really take him seriously as a threat at all. The human antagonistic element and the supernatural antagonistic element in Stranger Things should have remained separate because fusing it into one with Vecna doesn't work.
 
I wish that Hopper had just been captured by the American government instead (if the show really needed to keep him alive.) It'd make way more sense if they knew about the Upside Down, since the energy lab is an obvious stand-in for the CIA, thus already having their own pet slenderman to feed prisoners to. The other prisoners can stay as captured Russian agents. And they could still be chasing after Eleven.

But no, we're just gonna go back and forth with Russia in the most meandering way possible. Oh, and the American government is also there, searching for energy lab staff + a psychic child...but they don't know or believe that gates to alternate dimensions exist? Because...they're dumb, I guess? I liked this season a lot, but the two government storylines are just so convoluted it hurts.
 
I hate bland villains that are evil because they were born that way. When there's no real nuance, it really makes them feel flat.
Vecna at least seems threatening. But backstory wise he's pretty dull. Lame sociopathic kids growing into sociopathic adults don't make for a compelling motivation.
 
Muttnik dijo:
I hate bland villains that are evil because they were born that way. When there's no real nuance, it really makes them feel flat.
Vecna at least seems threatening. But backstory wise he's pretty dull. Lame sociopathic kids growing into sociopathic adults don't make for a compelling motivation.
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I don't know i find him interesting compare to the past villains
 
Oats12345 dijo:
I don't know i find him interesting compare to the past villains
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Oh don't get me wrong, he's DEFINITELY a better trade-off overall. But idk, pure evil villains with no innate human motivations are still pretty snore-inducing. Much like Voldemort, all he really has is his design and what he could potentially do to the kids. But there's still very little complexity to his motivation other than being evil and hurting things.

The best villains, even pure evil ones, have a believable reason for turning out how they did. There's always a kernal of humanity or sympathy there. Or, at least, some level of depth.

But yeah. Evil kids with fucked up brains who torture animals and become stock Freddy Krueger knockoffs don't really have much in the way of being compelling. I'm glad that he has a presence and can potentially kill off our cast. But he's still pretty dull.
 
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