"Stranger Things" on Netflix

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by davidshirt, Jul 15, 2016.

  1. Rufus McDufus

    Rufus McDufus Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    I think we saw dead Barb on more than one occasion didn't we?
     
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  2. davidshirt

    davidshirt =^,,^= Thread Starter

    Location:
    Grand Terrace, CA
    Yeah I forgot she was actually killed. For some reason I thought she was stuck in the upside down.
     
  3. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest
    Although Barb was taken later, she looked like what would have happened to Will had they not got to him in time.
     
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  4. Yeah, when Will hacked up that slug-like thing in the bathroom, the slug was little, compared to what appeared to be the same slug-like thing that crawled out of Barb's mouth in the Upside Down, which was huge!

    It left me wondering 2 things:

    1.) What is the correlation, if any, between the slugs (which obviously grow) and the main Monster, who appeared to be the only one of his kind, at least in the general vicinity? I noted the egg/pod that appears to have hatched something. Hopper noticed it on the way in. Was this another Monster being born, or another threat like the slugs, or do the slugs grow up to be big Monsters? Hmmmm...

    2.) Why would the Monster eat the deer right away, yet leave a human for later? Either a.) the Monster had already killed Barb and left her body for the slugs, or b.) humans are more crafty than a deer, therefore more difficult to capture and track down, meaning that the slugs got to Barb before the Monster did. Will was caught later, it seems, because he had a safehouse, while Barb didn't. This still begs the question why would the Monster save Will for later, instead of killing him right away like the deer?

    My best guess is that the Monster needs a human for something other than food, perhaps breeding. Still, Barb died awfully quick, although we don't know how fast time moves in the Upside Down.

    Maybe I'm reading into it too much, though.

    It's all fascinating!
     
  5. bababooey

    bababooey Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX USA
    For those who were paying more attention than I was. What was the significance of Hopper placing the Eggos in that box. I know 11 liked Eggos but why that spot and what was he hoping to accomplish?
     
  6. jriems

    jriems Audio Ojiisan

    To me, it just screamed Eleven is still alive and kicking, but is in hiding. As to why it's a box out in the middle of the forest, perhaps she has interacted with him since her "demise," and he's helping her out without telling anyone she's still around in order to keep her safe. It's a second chance for him to help the "daughter" he lost.
     
  7. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest
    I can't answer all of these, but I thought it was mentioned repeatedly that Will was hiding from this thing down there. So, that's why Barb went quicker and was much farther along in the "process".
     
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  8. Solaris

    Solaris a bullet in flight

    Location:
    New Orleans, LA
    I think the nod is certainly strongest in King's direction, from the title font, which shows up on quite a few early King paperback covers, to the shots like the one on the railroad tracks, which references a similar one in Stand By Me. There are also two direct mentions of King, one in a visual and the other in dialogue. There's a dash of ET-era Spielberg here and there in some of the shot setups and in the bicycle rides, which seem like a direct ET homage, but it's like Spielberg-lite for the most part; the first two acts of 8mm captured the depth of that Spielberg vibe much better. I found the Aliens references more derivative than reverent, though.

    That's not to say that this isn't an entertaining show. The first five episodes in particular are really strong because we're still learning so much about what's happening, so the level of suspense stays high. The last few episodes have a little too much reliance on smart characters doing stupid things and stock Hollywood tropes, but if you stick with it, the momentum carries you along. The acting ranges from pretty good to outstanding, with the four main kids and the sheriff being my favorites. Matthew Modine has never been a very good actor, and he doesn't fail to disappoint here, but he does seem right for the part.

    I love that the opening credits recall late 70s/early 80s cheapie horror movie trailers. I remember seeing those as a kid and found them far more unsettling than the actual movies in most cases.

    This is a fun show, and I think 8 episodes was the perfect length. Looking forward to Season 2 for sure!
     
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  10. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    I must say I greatly admired JJ Abrams after seeing Super 8 (not 8mm, sir). You're absolutely right. That was the best that anyone has ever nailed the Spielberg Touch. I adored the first 2/3's of that film.

    I'm so picky, I'm sure it will be a decent series to finish.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2016
  11. Solaris

    Solaris a bullet in flight

    Location:
    New Orleans, LA
    Yes, Super 8! Got my titles scrambled there. Thanks for the correction.
     
  12. Silken

    Silken Forum Resident

    Location:
    Argentina
    The most obvious nod to King is the similarities with "Firestarter".
     
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  13. Malina

    Malina Forum Resident

    Location:
    NYC
    I enjoyed the series. :D I did find Wynona Ryder grating.
     
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  14. Fify.

    (Although, really, those should have been separate sentences.)
     
  15. amoergosum

    amoergosum Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    "Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ Season Two Will Be a Sequel

    More than a few of you probably spent your time last weekend binge-watching Netflix’s latest series Stranger Things. Matt and Ross Duffer‘s sci-fi show was embraced so quickly by the streaming service’s customers that a season two is already confirmed. The Duffer Brothers have shared a few details about what to expect from the next season of their hit show.

    Below, learn more about Stranger Things season two.


    Executive producers Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen told us season two would follow the same characters and introduce critical new ones. Season one ended with, as Levy said, “questions that merit future stories and future investigation,” especially regarding one key character’s surprising change in motivation.

    Speaking with Variety, Ross Duffer said there’s plenty they know about this world they’ve yet to show viewers:

    There’s a lot there we don’t know or understand. Even with ‘The Upside Down,’ we have a 30-page document that is pretty intricate in terms of what it all means, and where this monster actually came from, and why aren’t there more monsters — we have all this stuff that we just didn’t have time for, or we didn’t feel like we needed to get into in season one, because of the main tension of Will. We have that whole other world that we haven’t fully explored in this season, and that was very purposeful.

    The co-writer/director added we’ll see more of what was written in that 30-page document in season two:

    We leave these dangling threads at the end. If people respond to this show and we get to continue this story — we had those initial discussions of where we might go with it. If there was going to be a season two, we would reveal more of that 30-page document, but we’d still want to keep it from the point of view of our original characters

    Matt Duffer told IGN the next chapter of Stranger Things is more of a sequel than a second season, which is a slightly vague but still telling tidbit:

    We don’t answer all the questions by the end of the season — there are definitely some dangling threads. The hope is that it feels satisfying but that we left room and that if people respond to it we can go back into this world. But if we do get to go back, it’s not a second season as much as a sequel.

    Key mysteries are resolved in season one of Stranger Things, but anyone that watched the first eight episodes knows the finale ends with two major scenes setting up what’s to come. There are a few unanswered questions left, and since season one of Stranger Things is exceptional entertainment from start to finish, probably more than a few people are excited about receiving the Duffer Brothers’ answers to those questions."

    Stranger Things Season Two Will Be a Sequel »
     
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  16. jriems

    jriems Audio Ojiisan

    You know, after I posted my original thoughts above, I almost added a different possibility regarding the Sheriff. Now seeing this bolded quote above, I think it might be true: What if he's not feeding Eleven in order to try to help her, but instead gain her trust in order to re-capture her for Matthew Modine & Co.? Remember, we saw the Sheriff getting picked up by one of Modine & Co.'s cars near the end of the last episode. What if he's now working with them? I smell something fishy.
     
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  17. peopleareleaving

    peopleareleaving Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    I don't agree with all of it, but interesting perspective from 'The Atlantic'

    Where Stranger Things Loses Its Magic

    Despite its charms, Netflix’s 1980s throwback series errs in how it treats its most important young character.


    *****This post contains spoilers for the first season of Stranger Things.******

    It’s impossible to talk about Stranger Things, the eight-episode Netflix sci-fi drama series released this month, without talking about all the ’80s references. Like the J.J. Abrams film Super 8, Stranger Things is an homage to all things Spielbergian—broken families, kids having secret adventures on bikes, supernatural beings, government conspiracies, heartfelt endings. After the series debuted, journalists began publishingcomprehensiveguides to its many, many allusions, a testament to the show’s dedication to authentically reconstructing the past.

    But even if you’ve never seen E.T. or The Goonies, or lived through the 1980s in suburban America, Stranger Things has plenty to offer. Set in a small Indiana town, the story centers around the mysterious disappearance of a young boy named Will, the search effort that ensues (led by his mother, played by Winona Ryder), and the arrival of an odd young girl with strange powers. In the hands of its directors, the Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things is at turns touching (when it explores teenage love and friendship) and harrowing (when it follows the creature that turns out to be terrorizing the town).

    Over the first seven episodes it’s easy to get swept up in how well the show reanimates beloved movie tropes and channels the feel of the 1980s. But by the finale, it becomes clear that the series has an ugly side that can be traced to the show’s treatment of its most vulnerable and enigmatic major character: the 12-year-old girl with magical abilities who goes by the name “Eleven.” Judging by her arc, which involves near-constant suffering, Eleven seems like Stranger Things’ biggest blind spot. The show harbors empathy for its many characters: Ryder’s harried mother Joyce, Police Chief Jim Hopper, Will’s best friend Mike, Mike’s teenage sister Nancy. Yet despite a rich backstory, Eleven is the show’s most thinly sketched protagonist, and it sometimes feels like Stranger Things’ reverence for 1980s pop culture is to blame.

    In her first scene, Eleven is walking alone and barefoot in the woods, wearing only a hospital gown. She has a shaved head, can barely speak, and has a tattoo of the number “011” on her wrist. By the time Will’s friends Mike, Lucas, and Dustin find her, she’s already witnessed the fatal shooting of a kindly restaurant owner who tried to get her help. When they ask her what her name is, she points to her tattoo. (They call her “El” for short.)

    Through brutal flashbacks, the show reveals that a secret government program was studying Eleven for her telekinetic powers. It also emerges that her mother was the subject of an earlier experiment that used LSD on patients, and that the government covered up Eleven’s birth. Growing up, the girl is treated as a prisoner, only dragged out of her tiny, bare room in a windowless bunker when it’s time for scientists to conduct experiments on her. They use her to spy on communists and make contact with inter-dimensional beings, but the latter mission goes awry, and Eleven accidentally frees a monster from a dark netherworld, causing Will’s disappearance.

    Though deeply traumatized and physically and psychologically underdeveloped, Eleven becomes uneasy friends with Will’s group—especially Mike, who’s incredibly protective of her. And at first things seem hopeful: The boys realize she’s their key to finding out what happened to their missing friend, so they help hide her from the government agents trying to track her down. But mostly they’re impressed by her abilities. “We never would’ve upset you if we knew you had superpowers,” Dustin tells her. Eleven is often treated like a liability—a major character relegated to the corners of the story unless it’s time to save the day with her mind.

    Eleven is clearly the token girl of the group—recalling the “Smurfette Principle” trope that pervaded children’s TV during that decade—but the show doesn’t display much self-awareness on this point. There’s even a textbook “makeover scene” involving a wig, some makeup, and a dress that leads the boys to behold a transformed Eleven in awe. In some ways, El’s background makes her more complex than the average young female protagonist. But because of what happened to her, she doesn’t talk much, leaving her a cipher to almost everyone who meets her—and to the audience. Her silence makes her mysterious, but it also flattens her character.

    But the show is most generous in exploring the confusion and thrill of adolescence when it comes to the boys. Eleven herself doesn’t get to “grow up” herself; she’s there to help her new friends learn important life lessons. The best evidence for this comes in the climax for the series’ disappointing finale, “The Upside Down.” With the monster going on a rampage through the town, the group hides in a school classroom. Having just killed a horde of evil government agents, Eleven is almost unconscious. “We’ll be home soon and my mom … she’ll get you your own bed,” Mike tells her, clasping her hands. “Promise?” Eleven asks, crying. “Promise,” he replies. Moments later, the monster rushes in. The end seems near when an inexplicably revived Eleven slams the monster into the wall. Nose bleeding, she turns to the horrified boys behind her. “Goodbye, Mike,” she says. The monster explodes, and when the dust clears, Eleven is gone, too.

    Later, Will has been recovered from the alternate dimension, and the boys visit him in the hospital. “We made a new friend,” Mike says. “She stopped [the monster]. She saved us. But she’s gone now.” Then, they begin excitedly regaling him with tales of how cool Eleven was, comparing her to Yoda, recounting how she made a bunch of government agents’ brains explode. It’s at this point the viewer realizes: The real Eleven has been erased and rewritten as just another action hero. Stranger Things spent several hours unspooling the visceral horrors Eleven encountered in her young life, trying to make her pain and sadness real. But in its final scenes, the show undid all of that. It made her into a bizarre martyr: the tragic, silent girl who suffered for abilities she never asked for, who seemed to only exist so she could nobly sacrifice herself at the end of the story.

    No doubt, Eleven’s “death” was meant to be the sad-but-uplifting sort—but the casual treatment of her departure after so much buildup suggests that Stranger Things cared less about her than it initially implied. The show built Eleven to add more danger and excitement to an otherwise typical tale of boyhood adventure, only to conveniently dispatch her. (Oddly, Eleven’s story closely mirrors that of the female protagonist in last year’s pallid Goosebumps film.) In aping earlier cinematic glories, there’s always the risk of replicating more subtly retrograde tendencies.

    Stranger Things is unwittingly guilty of this mistake, overwhelmingly privileging the happiness, desires, words, and lives of El’s friends over hers. Still one of Netflix’s better dramas, the show will continue to find avid fans, eager to relish its attention to period-specific detail and its compelling central mysteries. It’s also further proof that there’s no shortage of talent and creativity in the age of Peak TV. But there’s a higher bar for original stories—even homages—to clear when it comes to incorporating the lessons Hollywood has learned recently about depicting female characters who are as layered as their male counterparts. For all its charms, Stranger Things doesn’t quite meet that standard.
     
  18. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US

    Did I say influenced by King? I should have said plagiarized from "Firestarter!"
     
  19. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Boy, I don't agree with this analysis at all. The reviewer is criticizing the show for not being what he wants it to be, rather than what it is. Of course the focus of the series is on the boys because it's about them and what happens to one of their friends and family members. This part needed to be richly depicted, and it was.

    And of course Eleven was 'thinly sketched' because she's an enigma, mysterious, almost other-worldly. The actor's haunting performance is perfectly calibrated for the role. Over the course of the series, the boys, along with the audience, slowly discover who Eleven is and where she came from. That journey of discovery is what make it interesting. To have Eleven fully fleshed out, like the boys, would have been a serious mistake, especially given that a second season was always on the cards.
     
  20. Rufus McDufus

    Rufus McDufus Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    The article is also making the assumption that Eleven will no longer be in the series. We don't know that for sure.
     
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  21. tremspeed

    tremspeed Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I would suggest it's also heavily inspired by a French video game called Beyond: Two Souls (which is no doubt also inspired by Firestarter). Several similarities to Stranger Things in the video game- an androgynous-ish young girl (Ellen Page, in the game) and a cryptic father figure (Willem Dafoe) as the scientist in charge of her "care", experiments conducted in a lab setting on a military base, the main aim of the gov't to use her powers to spy on foreign agents, coverups by weird government organizations, the psycho-kinetic talents, shunning by "regular" kids, flipping over police vehicles and fleeing into the woods, etc etc.

    I thought it was a good show- very binge worthy. But the Beyond comparisons (which I don't see anyone talking about) never left my mind.
     
  22. blind_melon1

    blind_melon1 An erotic adventurer of the most deranged kind....

    Location:
    Australia
    Gone!
    Gone!
     
  23. amoergosum

    amoergosum Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
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  24. amoergosum

    amoergosum Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    Awesome fan poster:

    [​IMG]
     
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  25. davidshirt

    davidshirt =^,,^= Thread Starter

    Location:
    Grand Terrace, CA
    I've seen some cool fan made 80s VHS covers for Stranger Things:

    [​IMG]
     

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