"Stranger Things" on Netflix

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

  1. bloodisthin

    bloodisthin And after all, we're only ordinary men

    Location:
    Australia
    I noticed the Extreme track too, and noted it was from three years into the future from when this season was set. But I think the explanation is that it was being used diagetically - ie. it was on the soundtrack of the show, but unlike Kate Bush or Metallica it wasn't playing in the show's universe; the characters themselves in that moment weren't hearing it, only the audience. Same reasoning behind Peter Gabriel's 2010 recording of "Heroes" being used in season 1 which took place in '83, or the repeated use of Moby's "When It's Cold I'd Like To Die" from 1995 - they're being played from behind the 4th wall.
     
  2. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    The headline to that linked article ('Stranger Things' Creators: Get Ready for More Deaths in Final Season) is a complete misrepresentation of what the Duffers actually said. Saying more deaths "could be on the table" is hardly equivalent to saying there will definitely be any deaths.

    I don't think there will be much (if any) killing of main cast members. That would not at all fit with the tone of the series, which in its own way is optimistic and hopeful. If you defeat the menace but half the kids die, that's a very bleak outcome that would completely run counter to the established tone. At its core the series is a children's fantasy with the kids succeeding where the adults fail. If you kill off half the kids you seriously undercut that. Millie Bobby Brown won't be in the writer's room so what she thinks or says doesn't matter, and her comments about killing people off seem joking in nature anyway.
     
  3. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Vancouver
    And the character they mentioned nearly killing was Enzo the Russian guard — whose survival surprised me. It’s not like they were thinking about killing one of the main kids. (And they brought the one they did kill back to life…)
     
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  4. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Yeah, I think everyone expected Dimitri (Enzo) to die. The pattern seems to be that they only kill newbie characters (pun intended). The only significant characters I can think of who were killed after their first seasons are Billy and Brenner (assuming he actually is dead). So if you make it past your first season and you're not a villain, you seem to be pretty safe.
     
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  5. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    Rule of Cool - TV Tropes
     
  6. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Yeah, a couple of times, I nudged George Lucas and said, "hey, what's up with that?" (during a moment in Star Wars), and he's shrug and say, "aaaaaa, we thought it looked cool at the time." So the "rule of cool" is a thing. Still, you can't be cool with an electric guitar and no AC power.

    I could flip that argument and say, "any real war is worth serious risk, and there's always consequences in a battle-to-the-death." So in the original Star Wars, we had Luke's Aunt and Uncle die, the entire population of Alderaan die, several of Luke's fighter-pilot friends die, and Obiwan Kenobi "essentially" die (plus all the bad guys on the original Death Star). I'd argue, Star Wars is as much a kid's story as Stranger Things -- in fact, the latter is actually a lot more intense as it is -- but the body count is very high.

    I had a thought coming into work today: what if they had one of the leads -- say, Eleven -- fighting and losing against the evil forces of the Upside Down, but then the dead victims already there come back to life just long enough. to save her? I don't see why it's not possible: they make their own rules, and perhaps she can draw upon the strength of characters who died in there. Also, we can assume Paul Reiser is still around, and he might be a worthy character to kill off in service of the story. If they kill off Will Byers, that'll be going into the "kill the gay best friend character" trope, and I'm going to assume they won't do that for that reason. Same thing for Lucas, where they can't/won't kill one of the minority characters. (Max is still a question mark: having all broken bones, being blinded, and being brain dead is a tough way to get through life.)

    Could they kill off one of the other characters? Hard to say. To me, the entire finale seems to be leaning towards Elle sacrificing herself to save everybody else, but then we thought they did that at the end of Season 1. My guess is that the Duffer Brothers won't repeat themselves.
     
    Last edited: Jul 8, 2022
  7. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    There's always a war between the use of diegetic music -- what you hear on a radio or a TV or a record/CD player in specific scene in a show (also called source music), actually heard by the characters -- vs. the underscore, which is the orchestral score going on in the background. It's legitimate to grab a rock song and use that for the latter, but I think in a period piece, it's confusing to use something that's way out of the time era. I wouldn't use a 2010 background song in a 1985 movie, and I wouldn't use a 1985 background song in a 1960 series (though The Amazing Mrs. Maisel does just that in the end credits as an ongoing bit).
     
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  8. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I'd say Star Wars (in the original 80s films) is quite similar to Stranger Things in that regard. In both cases, peripheral characters die, but the main characters do not. Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, the droids, Lando, Yoda... none of them die. Ben becomes "one with the Force" but that isn't the same as dying, really, since he isn't killed by Vader's light sabre and reappears in the sequels as a ghost, so there's not the sense of loss that comes with a real death. Both Stranger Things and Star Wars have a lot of peripheral character deaths and deaths of "cannon fodder" characters (the crew of the Death Star is analogous to the entire population of the Russian prison in ST). Imagine if 3 or 4 of the main Star Wars characters had died... that would have ruined the tone of those films. I think it's the same for Stranger Things.
     
  9. Daniel Plainview

    Daniel Plainview God's Lonely Man

    I think killing off Jonathan or Steve would be an easy way to resolve that love triangle, but I really don't want that to happen.

    Bob was such a great, likeable character. Sean did a really great job with it. I really wish they kept him around.
     
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  10. BluesOvertookMe

    BluesOvertookMe Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX, USA
    Protect Harrington and his hair!!! :shake:

    :D
     
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  11. MechanicalAnimal6

    MechanicalAnimal6 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    man..., i hated Bob and was more than glad to see him go.
     
  12. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Vickie and I are finally finished watching the entire series. I'll have to ruminate on it a little bit, but not only did it have Running Up That Hill as a giant part of the plot, the end credits featured my all-time favorite Siouxsie and the Banshees song, Spellbound.
     
  13. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I don't know how much more Metal anything could be than playing Master of Puppets while fighting off Hellbats.

    It's been established that Kate asked for and received information about exactly how the song would be used. It was helpful that she was a fan of the show.

    She owns the recording outright, having produced it in her own studio, and only licensing it to the record company, so they have to get her approval directly.

    Very much so.
    The scene in episode 4, season 4 had both Vickie and me in tears. We just watched it again, and it is still as powerful.

    We met because we're both huge Kate Bush fans, and Hounds of Love was the first album of hers we heard together.

    The way the song is used in the show is about the healing power of music, and is literally a way out of Hell for Max.
     
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  14. bloodisthin

    bloodisthin And after all, we're only ordinary men

    Location:
    Australia
    At some point on the weekend I realised Eddie never lived to hear ...And Justice for All.

    And Billy, a metalhead himself, never lived to hear Master of Puppets OR Reign in Blood. Damn.
     
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  15. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient

    Location:
    new york city

    It was a pretty dumb scene, though. All Eddie was doing was playing the lead guitar parts, right? There was no bass, no drums and no vocals. That was all imaginary, for the benefit of the viewing audience. All the bats heard was electric guitar, probably not being played all that well, as he was under duress.

    Beyond idiotic, and that's not even getting to Eddie's ridiculous "sacrifice." Too bad the writers couldn't have given him something actually heroic to do, except for a totally unnecessary "diversion."
     
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  16. cwitt1980

    cwitt1980 Senior Member

    Location:
    Carbondale, IL USA
    They are a bit long. At first I thought it was great. Then a few in, it sort of felt like a chore. Not a bad chore but I couldn't help but want to be critical when things were going slow or they had to point out the obvious things most people should be able to figure out. However now they appeal to everyone so I think they dumb it down. The story suffers and there's more action. The actors are the main thing keeping me interested. It seems they are even taking a backseat to special effects now.
     
  17. noname74

    noname74 Allegedly Canadian

    Location:
    .
    You and Vidiot should start a little club so you can nitpick everything together. You may not have many members but at least you’ll have each other to complain to.

    The guitar playing probably wouldn’t have been played well because he was under duress.

    You can’t make this stuff up. :laugh:
     
  18. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient

    Location:
    new york city
    I threw that in as a joke.

    However, can we at least agree that all Eddie did was play some electric guitar lines? "Master of Puppets" was not played on that day, in the Upside Down. The song that was heard by the audience has vocals, bass and drums, but nobody was actually performing doing any of that.

    Just really dumb, insulting stuff there.
     
  19. bloodisthin

    bloodisthin And after all, we're only ordinary men

    Location:
    Australia
    I really have no idea how to respond to people who complain about the lack of realism in their science-fiction/adventure/drama TV series that has hellbats and Demogorgons and an entire upside-down horrorverse frozen in time since 1983 and extensive non-diagetic music use. I mean, what's to be said?
     
  20. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient

    Location:
    new york city
    The Upside down and demogorgons exist within the world of the show. Vocals, bass and drums appearing out of nowhere don't exist in that world. It's a scene of pure idiocy, and it's frankly insulting to the fantasy genre that simply because a world was built that doesn't actually exist, it's OK to break all kinds of other rules as well. Good well-written fantasy sci-fi respects that. Idiotic junk doesn't.
     
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  21. bloodisthin

    bloodisthin And after all, we're only ordinary men

    Location:
    Australia
    Eddie is playing the song on guitar unaccompanied.

    We, the audience, are hearing the full song from behind the 4th wall as it soundtracks the action onscreen - I went out of my way in my post to mention "non-diegetic music use."

    I really can't believe I have to be explaining this.
     
  22. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Choices were made.
    Creative choices.
    That's why they/Duffer bros. get to call the shots.
    Ain't everyone gonna be happy all the time.

    Alternatively, having the full song being played, with all parts, may have been part of the licensing agreement.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2022
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  23. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient

    Location:
    new york city
    It seems almost inconceivable that in the same room with a guitar and a boombox, there wasn't a cassette that the could have played through the boombox to provide the same diversion. If for some strange reason the entire song had to be played, there's how you could do it.
     
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  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Ya know, it's always possible the show will never end...

    [​IMG]

    Ya know... it's possible they're just keeping it going for the money, and not so much for special effects or story or any of that. It's, "wow, we can make another $20M-$30M and be big shots for another year!" Note that the Duffers have just started Upside Down Productions to create more shows for Netflix and other channels.

    True, but tell me how the amplifier turned on. Where's the AC power coming from?

    There are times I've poked directors with questions like this, and they shrug and say something like, "well, hopefully nobody in our audience will notice that. Besides... it's really cool!" :sigh:

    BTW, I've been forgetting to mention this show has the worst wigs of any show on television. Damn near everybody is wearing a wig! I'm kind of in shock that they let that go and did it so badly. (By god, David Harbour's almost-bald head was real, and I think Millie Bobby Brown did wear her hair really short for the second half of this season.)
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2022
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  25. Old Fart At Play

    Old Fart At Play He won't eat it, he hates everything

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    He would have been pissed about the lack of bass anyway.
     
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