Looks “a bit” like Alice in Wonderland?
They couldn’t beat you over the head harder without risking being sued.
The costume designer apparently also had to put her foot down about making the cape Holly wears gold, rather than red, because that was just too on the nose.
I caught up on the series. It doesn't particularly feel like "Stranger Things". One aspect of it is how cheap everything largely looks now. The Upside Down is very threatening during the early series - it actively feels like a rotting, disgusting parallel world that would be unhealthy to spend time in.
In this season they're relying on practical effects far more, but they end up just looking like papier mache Tim Burton vines on everything (because that's what they are).
There's zero threat in the Upside Down, now - the vines being dangerous and alerting the hive mind was a huge plot point, now characters just ignore them. Wildlife in the Upside Down was a threat, now it's just a big empty copy of Hawkins that characters wander around without much thought and a whole lab has been built in it. The air used to be toxic, now it's completely fine. It feels very much like they've just gone "spooky vines, red lightning, you get the idea". Particularly now the Upside Down is just a "bridge" and the really spooky evil place is Dimension X (a barren rocky wasteland where things like demogorgons would feel out of place, whereas before the Upside Down felt like an evil ecosystem).
The writing is pretty bad too, everything seems to boil down to
"How do we solve x?", "non sequitur", "wait, that's it! Non sequitur has inspired a plan I'll explain through props!"
"Character x, I need to talk to you about my feelings towards you" "I fully agree, Character Y, let's discuss this"
or just "Marvel action sequence".
They've completely abandoned "show, don't tell" and the writing simultaneously feels like it drags but also like it's rushed in several key points (which is a hallmark of unfocused writing). Will's coming out scene explicitly happens because Vecna tortures Will with visions of homophobia - we're told - and so he explains in order to defeat Vecna he needs to come out to everyone across a 10 minute scene so he can fight. While shoehorned in, they could have shown Vecnavision of his friends rejecting him, and Will realising it's a weakness. Instead he literally says "I tried to fight Vecna, but Vecna weakened me by showing me things I'm afraid of. Max says he's afraid of things too, so I can beat him. But I can only beat him by getting rid of the thing I'm afraid of by telling you all I'm gay. Now I'm not afraid, and so I can fight Vecna". I have no idea how that scene needed "two twelve hour days of shooting" (other than Noah Schnapp being a shitty actor).
It seems like Netflix have realised they've got a captive audience who'll stick with the show no matter how mediocre it becomes because everyone wants to see the payoff for the thing that used to be a huge phenomenon. I know it applies to me, I will watch the finale even though I found the last three episodes tedious. So the Duffer Bros are phoning it in, because it really feels like everyone's bored of this IP and is ready to move on.
It used to be that child stars were cute in something then disappeared to do their spiritual collapse in private. Since this show went on for 10 years with the same actors we get to see it and have everyone smile and pretend it's not happening.
I do think that's part of the reason there's so much emphasis on Holly Wheeler's plotline, because it means there's a kid on a mystical adventure (the original appeal of the show) rather than a bunch of actors in their 20s having drawn out angsty character plotlines (apparently all the main cast can do now)
