A thread for Stranger Things, the "Goonies meets X-Files" new Netflix series (with SPOILERS!)

IT could use a better adaptation than the one that currently exists, but I can't help but think that, even with the inclusion of Finn Wolfhard, this show is going to be hard to top re: a well-cast group of kids who will have to pretty much carry the remake.

great show

i know i said that ages ago but i felt like reiterating. i actually watched it twice through.

just want to repeat

Finn Wolfhard

It's the best actor name I've encountered since learning that Armie Hammer's real name is (seriously) Armand Hammer.

My two favourite actor names: Mimsy Farmer and Randy Mantooth.

Thank you for adding substance to my life.

are we still talking about the skinny girl's arm musculature?

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Monday, August 15, 2016 12:03 PM (1 hour ago)

skinny girl = cocaine

I was rooting for Steve to get horribly beheaded, but once he saw the monster & got the living shit scared of him I found him hilarious & ultimately kinda likeable

i dont know what that says about me

also i like how all of the attractive ppl are attractive in a Canadian public television /Degrassi Jr High kind of way where they still look like ppl you kinda know irl

It's the best actor name I've encountered since learning that Armie Hammer's real name is (seriously) Armand Hammer.

Pre-wiki, i had an argument that lasted for about a year over whether the tycoon Armand Hammer (who is Armie's great-grandfather) was a real person or some kind of made-up Col. Sanders style corporate avatar which was only resolved by me finding a photo of his tombstone.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cnct06yUIAAzUFB.jpg

also i like how all of the attractive ppl are attractive in a Canadian public television /Degrassi Jr High kind of way where they still look like ppl you kinda know irl

totally, and unlike the british children's tv of my youth, where everyone looks they've been locked under the stairs for a decade

Srsly. I've seen dangerously skinny people before. I never once thought this was that while watching the show. Did you guys not ever know a gawky angular teenager before?

― how's life, Monday, 15 August 2016 17:46 (3 hours ago) Permalink

More than one!

xpost oh god that is otm

lol if you pause the title sequence at just the right time, you get a bit of subliminal advertising

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CpzBMK8WgAA4Sum.jpg

no you don't

no two H's or a W in

I just laugh at what twitter tells me to laugh at.

It's been about a month since I binged the whole thing, so I'd forgotten that the title pretty much comes together in right angles. It's obv shopped. Now I must fall on my sword.

i was gonna say

fp'd u Johnny Fever for being gullible

it's a pretty good shop, tho!

solidarity - it got me too

hey guys i just heard that today is the day mikey mcwheel travels back in time to in "stranger things," pretty crazy stuff huh?

Haha, I just remembered this: https://twitter.com/PFTompkins/status/754010500279566336

Paul F. Tompkins ‏@PFTompkins Jul 15
"Time's almost up, you two. Those stage names ready yet?"
"Almost there."
You have 5 seconds left."
"SHIT."

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnbIit7VYAE0HQJ.jpg

joining the cast next season: art vandelay, bubba bo-bob brain, and joey joe joe junior...shabadoo?

Just popping in to say this is OK so far - I'm on episode ... 5? - but it's pretty overwhelmingly Stephen King to me, with a modicum of other obvious stuff. Don't get any Goonies or X-Files, get a good deal of ET, at least in passing. Thus far (again, episode 5) doesn't really justify taking 5 episodes to get to where I am now, but as a mood piece it's cool enough. Super worried it'll be all mystery, no payoff.

The music cues this far have irked me a little. This is set in 1983, right? Big brother dude namedropping the Smiths in podunk USA 1983 probably makes him the coolest teenage in America. Got some podunk USA midwest friends who grew up in the same place/era, and their big irk is the kids having movie posters for The Thing and Evil Dead. They noted it was hard enough to get movie posters in 1983, period.

Like the kids in this, they're pretty good kids-kids, not Hollywood kids.

Yeah, we've discussed the Smiths a fair bit itt, but I was thinking the other day about the movie posters thing - feels like contemporary people just thinking backwards from a world where movie posters are really widely available and popular as room decor, big dealers hawking Scarface and Pulp Fiction standards on every college campus, etc.... but was it like that back then? I mean obviously I know posters were a thing, but movie posters specifically... would Jonathan have needed to be like, lurking around at the local cinema and bribing the box office attendant for posters after the movie wound up its booking or what?

From said friend:

See also: movie posters of The Thing and The Evil Dead on kids' walls. Neither was a big hit, so how they got those posters is a mystery. Speaking as a kid raised in a similar podunk, I was very plugged into new developments in genre cinema in the early 80s, and did not hear of The Evil Dead until I went to college in 1986. I was keenly disappointed not to be able to see The Thing when it was new in 1982, so it's entirely possible that they could have heard of it, but are not likely to have seen it. And as far as acquiring movie posters - that was pretty hard to do as a tween in the early 80s, I know because I tried! Unless you had access to movie collectible dealers (exclusive to much larger, more cosmopolitan areas than the one on the show), the only way to get them was to beg them off of the theater after the movie's run ended.

His friend:

Though so many movies passed us over, I did see The Thing in tiny Anna, Illinois in 1982--a milestone movie for me as a jr. high aged horror fan. I thought same thing about The Thing poster in ST though and agree '82 seems early for access to movie posters. Maybe by 85 or 86 as video stores begin to shed theirs--maybe. In Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse from 1981, the kid brother has generic Frankenstein and Wolfman posters on his wall. Even they seem "placed" in the scene, to me now anyway.

Agreed - actual theatrical movie posters were like gold!

Anyway, no biggie, just sort of short-cutty.

the only way to get them was to beg them off of the theater after the movie's run ended.

This was still common well into the 90s, but most people at the theater didn't give two shits and would gladly put your name on a list and give you a call when the poster came down. Especially if you were a regular patron.

Great info. Yeah, ultimately it's a pretty harmless shorthand, plus obviously a shoutout to a movie that they like, but it might have been cool for them to go another step further in the set-dressing of "what would they REALLY have had on their walls"? Oh well. I think it's a testament to the generally high quality of the props/sets/costumes that the ones that feel a little forced stick out, as opposed to a show where everything just kinda feels fake and forced.

he totally could have gotten posters from a friend who worked at the movie theater. maybe he even worked at the movie theater. everyone knew someone who worked at the movie theater.

my best friend in high school had a huge horror movie poster collection in the early 80's, but he was freaky and obsessive like me. this is his website:

http://www.kindertrauma.com/

he wrote about stranger things too:

http://www.kindertrauma.com/?p=39014#more-39014

Your friend's website is super fun, I like his take on the show too.

Let's just say the temporal inconsistencies in the show are a tribute to the extended version of The Stand.

Wasn't the A/V teacher watching The Thing on VHS in that one scene?

Apparently, The Thing premiered in theaters the same day as Blade Runner and wasn't a huge box office smash, but gained a cult following not long afterwards due to VHS and video rental stores, which were common by 1983. A lot of rental stores - or at least the ones in my town - sold movie posters.

Some thoughts on subsequent seasons from Matt Duffer here:

http://screenrant.com/stranger-things-season-2-harry-potter/

I mean, we shouldn't pretend we don't all really enjoy spotting inconsistencies in things. It's a plus in my opinion.

What I mean is, I've had many more conversations about 8th music and film because of the flaws than I would have if it had been perfect.

8th = 80s. Damned temp phone.

I love Kindertrauma. That and Everything Is Terrible are probably the websites I refer people to the most.

ET, Blade Runner and The Thing opened up more or less the same week, which is one theory as to why the latter two did not do so well. Obviously they and ET are all masterpieces, but ET's pretty upbeat compared to those others. (Other famed summer of '82 fantasy/sci-fi/genre highlights were Poltergeist, Star Trek 2, Conan the Barbarian and the Road Warrior.)

Oh, along with Goonies and X-Files, John Carpenter is another comparison I just don't get in this case. Even the score is way more Tangerine Dream than Carpenter (with one other cue that sounds like SAWII-era Aphex Twin). Stuff like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftckgVqc04E

So yeah, another episode down, and I still get overwhelming Stephen King - It, The Body/Stand By Me, the whole general vibe, including the batshit premise (at least as I understand it). I've never been a fan of long-form King, preferring his short stories, because like this show I thought his novels always felt way padded out by melodrama. What Stranger Things has going for it is definitely the cast and production values, which are largely a lot better than the cruddy King adaptations that got churned out.

Speaking of Tangerine Dream and Stephen King, I forgot about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQAf57MGPm4

i made my dad take me to see blade runner when it came out and i remember raving about it afterward to people and nobody i knew had seen it. i felt so all alone with my blade runner love. until i became friends with mr. kindertrauma in 1983. sometimes there really was just one other kid back then.

(the first tangerine dream music i ever heard was the soundtrack to Thief. i bought the LP at Caldor after seeing the movie with my dad in 1981.)

still get overwhelming Stephen King - It, The Body/Stand By Me

agree with this, the Spielberg comparisons seem mostly off to me. The only real connection to them is the kids, but mood wasn't as lighthearted as a Spielberg flick would be -- it wasn't a thrilling adventure offset with comedy and tear-jerky moments. It was mostly an eerie show where something dark was always close behind anything fun/lighthearted.

The Spielbergianism was mostly in the staging and shots imo. There was one particular tracking shot in the kids' classroom that felt like a pretty deliberate homage to similar shots in ET.

I can see that, and there were a few misty lens-flare kind of shots that reminded me of his lighting circa Close Encounters, Raiders

you guys all liked Super 8, right?

god no

I liked super 8. Not as much as this show though.

i've been watching Freaks and Geeks with my kids and i think Millie might be my all time fave Barb. though i'll always be fond of Betty Finn from Heathers too.

i also forgot about the vaguely Nirvana-ish incidental music on F&G.

i liked Super 8 a lot.

was the main kid supposed to look like sam weir t/n