Stranger Things (Netflix) [Spoiler Thread]

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

Was that possible in the 70's? I really have no idea. 

This is an 80s show through and through. So yes, it was possible. 

[RumHam]

3 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

This is an 80s show through and through. So yes, it was possible. 

I know that. '83 I believe. But Eleven is more than three years old. So any prenatal DNA testing would have occurred in the 70's. 

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

I know that. '83 I believe. But Eleven is more than three years old. So any prenatal DNA testing would have occurred in the 70's. 

I'm saying in these kind of stories, the government always has far superior tech to what we know of the time.

But if they couldn't do a prenatal DNA test, they would have still kept the baby for testing. And with their sinister government minds, they would have conceived that it would be better to keep the baby separate from the mother, thus faking the still birth.

[SpaceChampion]

Geek hipsters on the internet apparently love the Barb character, calling her a true hero for ... well, I'm not sure for what.  I'm sure I'm not the first that now completely loathes Barb.  Thanks, internet.

[drawkcabi]

7 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

I thought of you when I watched it with all the 80s throwback I knew you'd love it!!

You know me too well.

Damn I hope Spielberg is taking notes from this (I mean it's a large part an homage to him anyway) for Ready Player One.

I just want the movie to be more in this flavor, just, dear gods, please no, not like Pixels.

[Dr. Pepper]

38 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Geek hipsters on the internet apparently love the Barb character, calling her a true hero for ... well, I'm not sure for what.  I'm sure I'm not the first that now completely loathes Barb.  Thanks, internet.

She's a hero because she was captured.  You like people that weren't captured.  You don't like losers.  

[RumHam]

53 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Geek hipsters on the internet apparently love the Barb character, calling her a true hero for ... well, I'm not sure for what.  I'm sure I'm not the first that now completely loathes Barb.  Thanks, internet.

I'm not sure what's heroic about her. The actress was clearly awesome. I really felt for her,

The idea that internet hipsters could cause you to "completely loathe" a character who basically existed to be grounded and harmless and then die probably speaks more about you than the writing.

I might be wrong, but I feel like the idea of hating something because too many people talked about liking it was pretty much the central tenant of Hipsterism 

[SpaceChampion]

Good grief.  I was joking.  However, they're ascribing things to her character that was completely invented in their minds, and I suspect doing it ironically instead of enjoying the show for what's actual there .  I never said anything negative about the writing in the show, clearly.  It's the Boba Fett effect around her that's making me role my eyes because it's every pop culture or geek site on the internet right now.

[red snow]

I also think the monster was an accidental consequence of the astral spying. Like above, the government agents weren't going to ignore any potential weapon and the monster fits into that.

I don't think the monster is an extrapolation of Eleven's fears and is some genuine resident of the upside-down. I get the impression the acrobat and flea analogy is meant to be what we're seeing - another dimension to our reality. This fits with the mirroring of objects - although I concede these things weren't present when Eleven initially opened the gate. At one point I thought it would be cool if the monster was the representation of a person from our part of reality eg a serial killer but it turned out all the disappearances were monster/government related so back to thinking the monster is just a monster.

What is weird is how organic-looking the breaches are - almost as if the upside down is the inside of a bigger monster or just a play on evil dead/clive barker's living-pulsing versions of hell.

[MisterOJ]

13 hours ago, red snow said:

I know the show has to cut characters somewhere but it struck me as odd how two of the kids never seemed to have parents (or ones that cared). Just seemed a bit odd them not turning up at the hospital at the end vs Mike's parents turning up.

I think that part was (at least in part) another homage to 80s movies. Because that was so often the case with movies back in the day.

[Argonath Diver]

That's exactly how I thought the waiting room scene happened as it did. It's an 80s movie, Lucas and Dustin's parents are outside, or at work, or with their 12 other kids. It's irrelevant to the moment.

It's little bits like this where logic starts to creep past the loving 80s pastiche that makes me unsure if a second season would be able to keep up the same sense of retro wonder that got me so wrapped up in this show. Then again, the actors did such a fine job with evolving their characters that I have faith they could pull the wool over my eyes again. I wouldn't mind at all.

[red snow]

5 hours ago, MisterOJ said:

I think that part was (at least in part) another homage to 80s movies. Because that was so often the case with movies back in the day.

it's convenient when they can use flaws as retro nods. I'll let them off as there is an element of that but like I say it's very convenient as it allows them to avoid wasting screen time on justifiably establishing why the other 2 kids parents are never around.

[Corvinus85]

31 minutes ago, red snow said:

it's convenient when they can use flaws as retro nods. I'll let them off as there is an element of that but like I say it's very convenient as it allows them to avoid wasting screen time on justifiably establishing why the other 2 kids parents are never around.

We see Lucas's parents at Will's funeral.

[DunderMifflin]

17 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Geek hipsters on the internet apparently love the Barb character, calling her a true hero for ... well, I'm not sure for what.  I'm sure I'm not the first that now completely loathes Barb.  Thanks, internet.

Because she valiantly tried to cock block the evil jock from corrupting the perfect Fancy Nancy.

[Lord Syv Aldlark]

So obviously with Will spitting up the slug, and Barb showing a slug and the giant egg and Barbs body being untouched..

There's obviously a more powerful being of Alien queen proportions in the Upside Down.

The demagorgon took Will to the school and stuck something in his mouth.

Either to make babies or make babies for a master.

[The Anti-Targ]

Haven't seen the whole season yet, so I won;t read the thread or get into discussions. But I do want to note that Winona Ryder has re-emerged and reminded the world why she was so highly rated as an actor before things went tits up for her a while back. She is a talent that was rather lost to the world for a while and I hope we see more of her in the coming years.

[Joe Pesci]

This show was totally rad.

Also, I was left curious as to what, if anything, Hopper may have learned when he leaves the hospital and gets into the black car with the government guys, and if that ties in with him leaving food in the box out in the woods. Plenty of intrigue for a second season.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

I'm curious as to the ages of those who loved this show, and how it affected their viewing experience. Personally I'm a child of the 80's and was hugely aware of all the elements it referenced (ripped off), at every turn. For some I can imagine it was like a beautiful whiff of nostalgia, but for me, while at times it did almost hit those notes, in the same way that Super 8 tried to do a few years ago, of what it was like to be a kid in the 80s, where anything could happen and there was an adventure around every corner, it also felt like a cynical attempt to pull on those memory teets to drain any last drip of nostalgia milk! 

Ok I thought it was pretty enjoyable and was almost binge watching it at one point, but by the end I felt like it was kind of lacking any sort of depth and didn't really leave me wanting more. Guess it didn't help that the finale just felt like a lack lustre X Files episode (maybe the whole show was just an over extended version of that), a monster movie that was too long. 

I think there were some cool ideas in there, especially the upside down world, but the execution and imagination of that world wasn't that exciting or interesting. I mean you have this other dimension which sits right next to ours, but instead of anything interesting it contains a nasty monster that eats people. Maybe thats cool in the 80's before Stephen King , but now its kind of tired. There were so many interesting things they could have done with that idea, but instead they just ripped off Poltergeist and Close Encounters. 

At some point a homage has to stand up on its own feet, and for me it didn't really quite pull it off.

[red snow]

25 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

At some point a homage has to stand up on its own feet, and for me it didn't really quite pull it off.

I think that's why I liked it because ultimately I did feel like it was its own show. Conversely I never felt like "super 8" was anything other than a homage. If you try and emulate other shows there comes a point where the viewer may as well just go ahead and watch the show that's being emulated because it will be better.

One thing it certainly didn't do in terms of 80s homage was to go for compressed storytelling! Like you say all the things they are emulating are sub 2 hour movies or 40 min installments of "outer limits" style shows. Whereas it took them 8 hours. That extra time did allow them to play around with certain characters a lot more as I think a compressed approach would have meant one of the kids/teenagers/parents elements would have been cut to background.

It seems from interviews that the showrunners have a "bible" of the upside-down so it seems this will be built upon further. With season one we need to remember this portal had only been open for a short time. Who knows how it evolves going forward or whether what we saw was the other dimension or just a portal between? One thing I was wondering based on the sparsity of the upside down was that the whole place we saw was a membrane between our reality and where the monster actually comes from.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

1 minute ago, red snow said:

I think that's why I liked it because ultimately I did feel like it was its own show. Conversely I never felt like "super 8" was anything other than a homage. If you try and emulate other shows there comes a point where the viewer may as well just go ahead and watch the show that's being emulated because it will be better.

One thing it certainly didn't do in terms of 80s homage was to go for compressed storytelling! Like you say all the things they are emulating are sub 2 hour movies or 40 min installments of "outer limits" style shows. Whereas it took them 8 hours. That extra time did allow them to play around with certain characters a lot more as I think a compressed approach would have meant one of the kids/teenagers/parents elements would have been cut to background.

It seems from interviews that the showrunners have a "bible" of the upside-down so it seems this will be built upon further. With season one we need to remember this portal had only been open for a short time. Who knows how it evolves going forward or whether what we saw was the other dimension or just a portal between? One thing I was wondering based on the sparsity of the upside down was that the whole place we saw was a membrane between our reality and where the monster actually comes from.

Sure, though I still feel like every single character and relationship is almost a direct trope of most 80's movies, which while was comforting in some ways, was also a little tiresome, because I've seen it so many times and could see what was coming. Nancy's entire plot felt like a it was pulled from some John Hughes movie, with a bit of Flashdance sprinkled in there. For me the sheer amount of standard classic tropes was almost too much for me bare. Maybe I've simply seen too many movies. 

I did like that Upside Down world appeared to be geographically the same as our world, existing in the same space, but slightly different. It does raise a number of questions however. If upside downworld contains all the objects from our world, like houses and furniture... why doesn't it contain any of the animals or people? Who is building the houses in upside down world? Do they just appear when they are built in our world?

Why is seemingly the only creature in upside down world the faceless monster? 

Upside downworld was more interesting when it was pitch black, like when 11 was there when in isolation. ( Although again similar to Under the Skin , which might itself be a homage to something else) because it was let the imagination fill in the blanks and was a far more surreal experience. The negative 'shadow realm' itself was pretty uninteresting and unimaginative and obvious.. kind of like the D&D stories the kids were reading.