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

I watched Watcher a few years ago. It's a very satisfying combo of "not as scary as you remember" mixed with "fucking hell, this is supposed to be a kids' movie?!?"

This scene was almost in a Disney movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkpf2IzmMVg

That's *almost* a pretty cool monster, but I guess not everyone's Stan Winston. It still would have scared the fuck out of me, obvs.

I don't think their background (are they aliens? mutants? witches?) is ever really explicitly spelled out.

It is spelled out, but it is in a such a low-key way it doesn't really make a strong impression! They're aliens... but hey, also this black cat is going to live with the old guy in a Winnebago now, which is equally amazing.

woop woop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgS2L7WPIO4

Trailer creeped me out, good sign.

I already know Shakey is going to extra hate this just because of how many time-specific pop culture references there are (and probably the Thriller interpolation too).

But idgaf I have already watched it five times.

Great trailer.

so down w this

btw is America turning into France? forever reliving its "best" days, like a baseball player who keeps the haircut from his career year?

i mean, this stuff hits all my buttons so idgaf but sometimes i wonder...

I already know Shakey is going to extra hate this just because of how many time-specific pop culture references there are (and probably the Thriller interpolation too).

This is where I'm at but I mostly blame the Ready Player One trailer. But hey as long as there are some homages to more recent stuff I haven't seen as with season 1...

I agree, this nostalgia craze is so weird and unprecedented, I've never seen the like, oh my stars and garters.

Hmm, I want to say it's relatively new to have the actual properties show up? That is, they are wearing Ghostbuster costumes in the trailer. And obviously in Ready Player One there are actual toys and Back to the Future cars and whatnot. Is that a relatively new thing? When was the first movie to feature kids playing with, say, actual Star Wars toys? I dunno.

http://brandedinthe80s.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ET-1.jpg

ET, btw, in case that extremely vague and confusing image didn't speak for itself.

haha was just about to post this image:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zuAKSFbVrGA/TWb0TOfyQHI/AAAAAAAACAI/RTiy0NLpdDQ/s1600/et+halloween+yoda+cameo.JPG

I figured that was more Steve and George in-joking, the same way Stripe hiding among ET dolls in Gremlins was a little Steven in joke, too. But neither of those are nostalgia, really, since they're referencing contemporary stuff. Hmm. What were the primary Halloween costumes in ET? Totally generic, right? Pirate, ghost, etc.?

Hmm. Back to the Future I guess has a Darth Vader reference, but that's also a sort of contemporary in joke, since "I am your father" is an iconic cultural line. Revenge of the Nerds (year before Back to the Future) has the guy wearing a Darth Vader mask.

marketing is not a new thing. youth culture itself is probably a new thing post-WW2 but most IPs are thinly veiled rehashes of classic myths and legends we have referenced in media for thousands of years. im sure there are Shakespeare era plays where a kid is playing with a doll of King Arthur or whatever

xxpost Yeah, but those shitty mask & highly-flammable vinyl costume combos were all the rage back then.

Really, you can probably blame boomers for the initial commodification of nostalgia.

any period piece is going to need cultural signifiers. for kids they have toys and action figures. for adults they drive old cars. the difference is nobody is crying nostalgia marketing when a stationwagon is in a movie because there aren't any station wagon movies out nowadays.

I guess a difference with stuff like Stranger Things, I suppose, is that while nostalgia by definition infuses many period pieces, the show also approximates the look and feel and vibe of things made around that time. So it doesn't just recall ET, it's at times made to look like ET, or sound like ET. It's a more pervasive multifaceted nostalgia. Unlike, say, Guardians of the Galaxy, whose central character is driven by nostalgia but which otherwise is thoroughly modern looking and therefore more ironic in its references.

I mean, there's nothing particularly new or 2010s-ish about nostalgia films with period dress and wink-wink things for people The Right Age. The boomers did this endlessly, with American Graffiti and Happy Days and I Want To Hold Your Hand and A Christmas Story and Forrest Gump and so on and so on. Before them, there were plenty of postwar Hollywood films playing up the still-in-living-memory 20s and 30s (running from, say, Singin' in the Rain to The Sting). If we're talking specifically about the use of consumer products and media artifacts, deployed at this density, to evoke childhood and time-and-placeness that might possibly be something new, since the sheer quantity and variety and brand-mobilizability of merchandised crap for kids surely spiked after the release of Star Wars... but idk.

Probably closest in terms of "hey, remember this barrage of things from When We Were Kids?" are list songs like Jimmy Buffett's "Pencil-Thin Mustache" (1974) and the Statler Brothers' on-the-nose title "Do You Remember These?" (1972).

I agree, this nostalgia craze is so weird and unprecedented

You must be kidding. The 1980s itself was all about the 1950s: color palettes, eyewear, hairstyles, etc. If anything, 80s nostalgia is way more subdued than when we revisited the atomic age.

you must be kidding, 1980s bore no resemblance to the 50s. 1980s were like the late sixties + the late seventies / the color beige.

um what? John Waters films, Memphis furniture and Googie rediscovery, Pee Wee's Playhouse, B-52s, Stray Cats...

I was absolutely kidding.

Also, I just remembered westerns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBkw0RfY-Q

John Waters films, Memphis furniture and Googie rediscovery, Pee Wee's Playhouse, B-52s, Stray Cats...

Ladies and gentlemen ... the '80s!

Millennials totes invented nostalgia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHN5U_j4_o0

Boomers trafficking in nostalgia were just copying their parents. This was released in 1963:

https://waxvinylrecords.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/071011131.jpg

Millenials are one of the biggest audiences for Netflix content, so I think that might account for the very specific era nostalgia you see in shows like ST as well

Yeah, I remember when yard sales were *stuffed* with moldy 20s comps from the early 60s (typically re-recorded efforts, no doubt due to quality/availability issues with the source material), but presumably they scratched the same itch. "Oldies" from the 40s and 50s were a reliable market and radio format for a long time. The Boomers, let alone the late Gen-Xers of Stranger Things, certainly did not invent getting wistful over old tunes, or kidding each other about how silly their old fashions seemed from a few years' distance.

As for Season 2, I dunno, they seem to be pitching it hard as basically more of the same. I liked Season 1 so I'll probably watch and like this. I'd be a little more pumped if the trailer hinted more strongly at genuinely new elements, or teased some intriguing new characters.

Christ that Ready Player One trailer is so depressing - people in the future yearn for the 1980s because their present is so dire. And the movie is coming out next year. Like some kind of weird corporate cautionary tale

tbf the book is terrible

When was the first movie to feature kids playing with, say, actual Star Wars toys?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXADBfCH5cw ?

I guess a difference with stuff like Stranger Things, I suppose, is that while nostalgia by definition infuses many period pieces, the show also approximates the look and feel and vibe of things made around that time. So it doesn't just recall ET, it's at times made to look like ET, or sound like ET. It's a more pervasive multifaceted nostalgia. Unlike, say, Guardians of the Galaxy, whose central character is driven by nostalgia but which otherwise is thoroughly modern looking and therefore more ironic in its references.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, July 23, 2017 1:04 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we are just better now at emulating older media. at first digital technology couldn't do it. it took too much processing power. a lot of artifacts are analog errors we lost in the switch to digital. things like film grain, video distortion, RGB offsets, all kinds of things digital media doesn't do. in the 90s a music video would have the option to shoot on 8mm film or use old equipment but with video technology at the time it was very difficult to emulate the look/feel of aged materials. i used to think about this a lot in the 90s, cos music and film tried to look like the 60s in a lot of ways, like Elephant 6 bands and Austin Powers, but the bands always sounded like they were still recorded in the 90s. now digital technology and production knowledge (enhanced by democratization of production software through smartphones) has taken us to the era of the Instagram filter where even your grandma can apply post-production artifacts with the flick of the wrist.

Guardians i don't really see as exploiting nostalgia all that much. the mixtape thing is a crucial plot point with a history and character meanings. it is a also fun device that explains the fun soundtrack. finally we get to hear Ziggy Stardust singing while aliens shoot lasers at a giant psychedelic tentacle monster atop a floating space disco. this is the kind of fantastical cultural alchemy that has long needed to be visualized.

Kurt Russell/Hasslehoff as movie stars themselves is a funny callback but again it is deeply interwoven into the story and character beats. it is an admitted nostalgia, and Guardians is unique in that it takes a step back and investigates, it thinks about this infantilism. Peter and his father have this psycho-Freudian discussion into the plasticity of these fantasies and what they actually mean to the characters having them. symbolized by these pop culture icons dueling like roman candles at the heart of a self-made living planet called Ego. the Guardians films are pretty smart about how they handle nostalgia.

http://i.imgur.com/8ldapR3.jpg

And it probably explains why, despite nostalgia being a big thing, it's still not very likely for a studio to produce a big 2D traditionally animated film, as way of banking on 80s and 90s nostalgia, because that still requires a lot more effort.

Guardians i don't really see as exploiting nostalgia all that much.

Eh, he turns into a giant Pac-man to fight his dad, iirc.

now thinking I dodged a bullet by not watching those GotG movies

They're fun!

are you familiar with what I consider fun

http://e-cdn-images.deezer.com/images/artist/8615f819b8497a9f8edb6d46d08e3939/200x200-000000-80-0-0.jpg

heh

"Eh, he turns into a giant Pac-man to fight his dad, iirc."

http://cdn.movieweb.com/img.news.tops/NEod4RHPW7aLrx_1_b.jpg

2015 4ever!

is anyone else watching s2?

I am very much enjoying Max and I find Sean Astin's corny middle-aged guyness endearing

also apparently Steve & whatsername were dressed as Tom Cruise & Rebecca DeMornay from Risky Business and even after I was told that I only barely saw it and seriously WHO would ever know that. Or am I just super dumb.

don't answer that last question it was rhetorical