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

I would personally request that you make an attempt to like the right things, shakes.

I keep trying but for some reason it never works out

are you asking for a list or just telling me to stick to those threads :)

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 30, 2016 2:15 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have only noticed your cinematic expertise here and on the Star Wars threads. I don't wanna tell you to go home or anything like that and you're a positive contributor all over ilx. But in both these cases, it's nigh-Morbsian.

what can I say, sometimes ubiquity warrants critique

Have we talked about Mr. Clarke? I love that character. He's always there to supply extemporaneous science explanations whenever the story needs it, even if it means interrupting a hot date.

i was so relieved that he didn't die or turn out to be a creep (as his mustache would suggest).

The black void also appeared in an episode of Space 1999 in the 70s. So there. Someone else find something older.

I have a feeling that ST's black void was just an illustrative version of remote viewing/telepathy that was under budget. Had this been some Inception/Interstellar big budget B.S., it would have been all frenetic etc.

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!

― scott seward, Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Feature, not Netflix, but Alex Garland so there's hope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation_(film)

Welp, here you go:

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

Episode titles for Season 2:

Madmax
The Boy Who Came Back to Life
The Pumpkin Patch
The Palace
The Storm
The Pollywog
The Secret Cabin
The Brain
The Lost Brother

Madmax is probably a reference to 80s franchise Mad Max.

Well now you're just stretching things to fit.

However "The Pumpkin Patch" is almost certainly a reference to horror classic, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!"

Really pointless teaser - episode titles don't seem v important in this show.

leading with what they do best ie opening title sequences

I've just finished the series thus far, and I'm ambivalent: it's well acted (especially the parts of Eleven and the D&D kids), entertaining, and tightly constructed, but it seems kind of neat and safe next to most of the films it mines for material. (Maybe I want something more like classic Carpenter or Cronenburg than like classic Spielberg.) I guess I just don't understand why you'd collage together so many 80s media tropes without apparently having much to say about 1980s cultural politics or the present moment beyond "the Cold War was used to justify various abuses of state power" and "misfits are cool and should stick together." I'll look forward to the second season, but I hope the series can develop into something gayer, messier, and more troubling.

I basically agree with Emily Yoshida, in other words: "I just don't know why you'd do a retro genre nostalgia pastiche without making it either a) more morally complex b) grosser c) female"

a.) ugh, no b.) who wants that? c.) what? this series was hugely female.

lol @ being horrified by moral complexity/grossness in the sf/horror genre

I mean, there's an abundance of both available.

This show was morally complex? Good/bad divides were p clear and static imo

i think you're misreading the comment

On c), I like Will's mother, Nancy, and especially Eleven as characters (Barb drops out of the series almost immediately, and Nancy's mother doesn't have much to do), but I don't know that that translates into a "hugely female" series so far, since the first two characters' role in the narrative is so heavily determined by the search for Will, and Eleven's self-sacrifice for her friends lets the writers get out of dealing with recovery from trauma in much more detail. (I hope she's developed further in the second season, given the hints that she survived her disappearance.)

c.) what? this series was hugely female.

It never really went beyond basic competence in terms of representing women, if that, and very little interaction between two or more women in the show which made the treatment of Barb extra sucky. Could've been a lot worse of course.

I basically agree with Emily Yoshida, in other words: "I just don't know why you'd do a retro genre nostalgia pastiche without making it either a) more morally complex b) grosser c) female"

― one way street, Wednesday, August 31, 2016 2:43 PM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because you don't have any particular political commitments

On the female representation, I'd go for "it had just enough". Yeah, there were strong female characters, no, they didn't feel sidelined, but as others have said, there wasn't a huge amount of interaction between them, and it probably wasn't even 50% female in terms of leads. The D&D boys obviously skewed that, and I can see reasons why they wanted that group to be all boys, but still...

This show was morally complex? Good/bad divides were p clear and static imo

tbf one of the "good guys" straight up killed a whole lot of people, plus made a little boy piss his pants in public then broke his arm in half. Bully or not, that's pretty harsh.

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/31/stranger-things-season-2-details-duffer-brothers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR4JLBG50uAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR4JLBG50uA&feature=youtu.be&t=12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR4JLBG50uA

I think there's a weird tendency to sneer at or disregard women in domestic roles (e.g. Winona in this show) as if they're inferior, invisible or immaterial to the story. That seems especially strange with this show when it has three really awesome, active central female characters (Winona, 11, Nancy), with only one in a traditional domestic role. Hopefully more for Faye Miller next season tho?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbqiN9hHyJo

Was sightly thrown by Eleven's english accent there, for some reason.

She has an American accent in the show

That might be it

Thanks.

lol

Is this the worst thread on ilx or are the ones for tv shows I don't watch worse?

might i suggest the Community thread to help you get a baseline reading

the lost threads should be stapled to the barbed wire when we finally abandon this place for good

lol

ilx ruins everything I enjoy, tbrh. I stopped reading ilm years ago because of.

how exactly does ilx ruin the things you love?

yes let's have this convo now

https://media.giphy.com/media/KOEc8ca7DELmw/giphy.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQt9tM3fWsY

omg at Eleven rapping

finally got around to watching this last week. did 3 episodes on Wednesday, 5 on Friday. first time my girlfriend and i have binge-watched a show, fucking draining experience, very much like overindulging in drugs. at least on the second night. anyway, loved this show, but two things really bugging me that haven't been extensively discussed here:

1) Fuck Steve. To whoever said upthread that Steve is "basically more or less reasonable 80-90% of the time" - are you high? Steve is not only an idiot, he's an aggressive asshole, up through the end (when he tries to bust into the Byers house, sees Nancy's hand, then looks at Jonathan and screams "DID HE DO THIS TO YOU??????" He's a Grade A asshole in every scene, and while I appreciate the show avoiding annoying cliches and tropes, I'm shocked that so many people are basically OK with Steve. What the fuck? I hope he gets gored in season 2.

2) I have a hard time believing the town going back to normal so quickly, although as someone else pointed out, the ending takes place during Xmas, so they were probably just putting on a brave face. The bodies at the school could've been cleaned up quick, but what about the architectural damage?

3) No one cares about Barb and her mom only shows up once. Before I watched the show, I saw soooooooo many memes about Barb and how awesome she was/how much she sucked. She's a pretty distinctive type, and I think her sudden absence was intentional, to start some Internet hysteria...

Steve might be my favourite character.

And I think he is morally complex! If you see him as a Biff Tannen-type bully jock, I think you're missing a lot.

But he's really, really dumb and a raging asshole. At no point does he redeem himself - the whole "need a hand?" thing with the marquee was just nauseating.

he tries to bust into the Byers house, sees Nancy's hand, then looks at Jonathan and screams "DID HE DO THIS TO YOU??????"

I just rewatched this scene. He really doesn't scream that line. I don't think it's a wildly unreasonable thing to wonder of a woman who is visibly injured and making weak excuses for it when you know she has been spending time with a weird stalker-ish guy. Forcing his way into the house might be beyond the pale. The circumstances were pretty exceptional, though, and it's not exactly the worst thing someone did in the series.

Not to keep the discourse churning, but I like this article's take on the series's gender politics, and it seems relevant to the question of Barb's (probably unintended) appeal:

People like Barb, because she’s the nerd girl, the point of access for a part of the audience neglected by this Boys’ Own Show. She is at least the beginnings of a character we could be happily attached to, the possibility of a show that honored female friendship as much as male friendship, and as much as heterosexual romance. People like Barb in defiance of what Stranger Things says is important, in defiance of her cut short existence and her lack of development. Liking Barb is the finding/making our place that fans do, attaching ourselves to characters who are underserved by the narrative, that resonate for we parts of the audience that are underserved by the narrative. Liking Barb, or Eleven, or Joyce, or Nancy is about making Stranger Things better than it sets out to be.

http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2016/09/01/the-cool-girls-missing-girls-of-stranger-things/

I liked Barb as on-the-nose visual shorthand of a very particular nerdy '80s type. She didn't have the opportunity to be much of a character though so, yeah, I think the hype is a little overblown.

The actress is going to be playing Ethel on the forthcoming Riverdale show, FYI.