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

That didnt happen til the 00s

Everytime I go out I'm forced into a conversation about this show and I'm looking forward to that not happening anymore.

Also I'm gonna say that I think ET captures the profound strangeness of confused childhood better than any movie ever and that's part of my hostility towards this thing that does the motions but misses the spirit.

Wah

emily otm. carbon copies and outright covers of 90s house tracks have been all over the charts for like 4 years now. craig david's back! and acts like little mix doing straight up TLC jams. i agree that cold 80s synths will always be with us. also agree about how 80s and 90s revivalism are running in parallel.

at least the whole 50's rockabilly malt shop stuff died out in the 90's

There's still a huge rockabilly/"pin up girl" subculture thing going on. Pinterest and Instagram are full of that shit.

i think scott meant as a mainstream thing. stray cats, levi's ads with big 50s cars in them. happy days ffs. these days if the mainstream goes back to a pre sexual revolution era it's the early 60s they're in love with for some reason.

lotta overlap there though - American Graffiti is set in '62 for example. But yeah, you wouldn't know that from the characterizations of the "Mad Men Era." Maybe a matter of urban vs. suburban early 60s or something.

90's revival is real & monolithic atm. department stores women's sections are full of ugly plaid & crotcheted 90's via 70's cardigans & horrific leather trimmed floral print backpacks

also i keep hearing all this new music at the coffee shop that sounds like Hole. some of it is Courtney Barnett, I think, but not all of it. plus a teenage band called Snail Mail that sounds very Matador/Kill Rock Stars i think. they sound pretty good!

so many Matador-esque guitar bands out there.

i feel like all of them played at my store last year...

This was so much fun, you guys! Although I am REALLY MAD that they played that fucking Moby song at the end and now the lyrics are stuck in my head, ugggh god. When it's Moby I'd like to die.

I loved the one-month-later D&D scene when Dustin complains about the campaign being too short and not making any sense.
Then he goes "What about the lost knight and the proud princess and those flowers in the cave?" and I'm not sure they could have laid it on any thicker. Everything in this show was exactly dumb and serious enough and not a bit more, and they didn't try to be overly clever with any of it. This is (somehow) a huge advantage in 2016 boutique television!

I really loved David Harbour in this. Very Raylan.

Everything in this show was exactly dumb and serious enough and not a bit more, and they didn't try to be overly clever with any of it. This is (somehow) a huge advantage in 2016 boutique television!

Some tv makers learned from the lesson of LOST and others did not.

i feel like more shows are better at the whole beginning/middle/end thing now.

like, if netflix were insane and decided not to give it another season it would still be a satisfying experience. and i see more shows like that. they leave an opening for more but they know its not a given that there will be more.

I wish someone would convince Amy Sherman-Palladino of that. Like, yeah, I'm still mad ABC Family didn't continue Bunheads past one season, but I'm VERY mad at AS-P for leaving everything hanging on a show that was never guaranteed and invitation back for year two.

I'm still mad at the Alf TV movie

OK I have read almost this entire thread now, all caught up, thanks deej and whiney for being you, and also Tuomas, I love ILX etc.

I'm sort of with Number None on the El - Demogorgon relationship. The Demogorgon doesn't come for her blood, and doesn't really even bother to hunt her down, because the Demogorgon IS the flip side of Eleven in upside down world / vale of shadows or whatever. Also Eleven kills like, over a dozen people? I'm also counting the poor suckers in the flipped van (that Matt Modine definitely didn't give a shit about - what a guy). So she's crazy and scary too, unless you're Mike, basically. Plus, the Demogorgon was basically unkillable until she decided to disintegrate it, which she knew was going to either kill her or trap her forever in flip world.

I like the idea that MK ULTRA//KIDS nos 1-10 are wondering around, possibly with their own local vale of shadows and counterpart beasties. What does the Soviet version of this program look like?

A bear made of Tetris blocks I hope.

I really liked the scene in the 'void' (and its literal appearance as the dark flip side of the game board) where Eleven encounters that Russian guy though, followed by the chilling sound of the monster. I really dislike the idea that the Upside Down might be some literal future/past 'ruined' reality of our world as it was presented to all the other characters though.

i just saw it as an alternate earth reality that some alien species had been able to get to. and eleven was their way into our world.

i really wish someone would make Area X into a netflix series. that is my dream. in that book a teeny tiny piece of an alien universe ends up on earth. hilarity ensues!

I really liked the scene in the 'void'

this was possibly the most irritating "reference" in the whole thing to me, mostly because it wasn't a rip of something from the same era as all the other rips and instead just a lazy bite of a film that came out two years ago

??

I got the sense that the upside down was like a shadow or reflection of our world. Winona is able to communicate with Will by painting letters on the wall. That implies that the same letters must have appeared in the upside down, which means that changes in the upside down are caused by changes in the real world. I think that accounts for why there are identical buildings in that world.

the idea that under the skin invented having a character walk into blackness is silly

oh come on

the walking on water!

George Lucas also did "characters in an empty void," albeit white rather than black, in THX-1138.

which looks totally different and is in a different context

the whole monster-that-eats-people-in-a-void-of-blackness with ripples of water providing a plane is 100% from Under the Skin idk how anyone could see both and not draw that conclusion

one of my favorite movies of all time is, of course, Cube, and the director of that movie made a movie about da void:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc8XXv3pl10

these two things that serve a similar narrative function and look identical are totally unrelated! yup uh huh

whatever, enjoy your sub-literate derivative nonsense

I got a Mork-calling-Orson vibe but you'll be pleased to hear I haven't seen "Under The Skin".

Feel like I've just got some major UTS spoilers, thanks.

Ha, I've still not seen Under The Skin yet. I found myself wanting a more imaginative other-world but I realise this isn't necessarily the show for that. I agree with a few upthread about all the studied references being a bore (whereas 20 years ago I loved that shit from The Simpsons to Spaced). OTOH maybe every generation needs their 'in' and this is done to encourage younger viewers to check out the originals. But yeah as in all art this is risky as it can devalue the power of those scenes.

Feel like I've just got some major UTS spoilers, thanks.

eh not really. UTS was 100% better than this garbage btw, and that "spoiler" won't ruin anything about it.

i haven't seen Under The Skin either. i've seen stills of it...

Under the Skin is great.

Feel like I've just got some major UTS spoilers, thanks.

UTS isn't "spoilable" really.

Now I wanna know the most obscure intentional reference in the show. Thanks a milli :(

this show was so not garbage. i mean i know garbage when i see it. it's not an art movie or whatever.

false comparisons!

Steve breaking Jonathan's camera is a reference to an episode of Tom Poston's forgotten sitcom from 1968, Now, How Do Ya Like That?

it's better than Wayward Pines. that's a more realistic comparison. i can't bring myself to watch 2nd season of Wayward Pines since my boyfriend Matt Dillon isn't in it. where did he go? don't get me wrong, Jason Patric was totally hot circa 1990, but he's no Dallas "Dally" Winston!

that reminds me that I've been meaning to rewatch the Outsiders for several years now

the void stuff does look exactly like under the skin.

under the skin is great and everyone should watch it (not just because it's filmed in Glasgow/Scotland)

FWIW I don't think the black void is the "upside down" but rather some kind of in-between space, either representing El's consciousness freed by sensory deprivation, or just, like, the medial space where she can roam free in the ether. The astral plane, or the space of the wire that connects the two phones. Within the thickness of the D&D board, if you will, and hence the reflections.

yeah the black voidy place is not the upside down