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

and of course the obvious question - who were 001-010?

Most of sunny's questions are fine! I'm not saying questions are bad, just bad ones

This q though:

Another question: why didn't Mike try to contact 11 on the walkie-talkie?

― Quarter measures (sunny successor), Saturday, July 23, 2016 8:37 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because she's the one who has to make the walkie talkie work as a receiver, she can't (as far as I know) just make herself appear on any walkie talkie

Also, the waffles suggest he knows she's around and might be intentionally hiding her

i wish they hadn't done the hopper getting into the car thing at the end. it bugged me. and mike should have been the one leaving waffles in the woods.

― scott seward, Saturday, July 23, 2016 10:29 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Idk it made sense of course the Feds want to question him

This scared me and I got a lump in my throat in the last episode, F-

i watched this whole thing in <2 days and i'm deeply ashamed because it's so sunny outside.

thought kid w/o teeth was a perfect mix of neal and bill from freaks and geeks. he stole every scene.

Ryder is doing that thing that every single character in the omen does, of being like "hey, maybe if I act completely bananas 100% of the time, everybody will believe me! IM TELLING YOU HES THE DEVIL AGOOGOOBABAHEEHEE" which is obv a valid part of the playbook they're using here but can still grate

he stole every scene.

I really liked how they cast a group of people who looked so exactly like they stepped out of a 1980s film, then subverted the expectations people my age had for those characters. You expect the slightly chubby kid without the teeth to be the fairly useless, wisecracking one, but no, he's a solid group leader with science skills. You expect both him and Lucas to just do whatever Mike tells them, but no, they've got minds of their own and Lucas goes off to investigate by himself. You expect Nancy to be useless, but no, she's calmly amazing and resourceful and resilient. And so on.

Yeah the casting was excellent.

One thing I'm left puzzled by - was there/is there only one monster? If so whats with all the eggs and incubated dead people? Is the idea that S2 will mean more come back or something?

Don't apply logic to the monster

It's like alien they can do whatever they want with it

It killed all the soldiers it caught within seconds but that one kid it caught got away

The gunk covering everything in the parallel dimension definitely suggested 80s monster cocoons so I

...wouldn't be surprised by an aliens direction in s2

Oh great, a pile of references to a movie franchise I havent seen :(

this whole series is a pile of references! it isn't that alien-y tho

Yeah I got a lot of em! Alien(s) is the one Ive never really seen (and hasnt refs to it been done to death?)

Still, dont mean to sound like I'm whining, I thought this show was really good.

I was going off tuomas's comment re s2 but the main thing you need to know is that aliens has more aliens than alien (sorry if spoiler)

Speaking of references...

http://www.vulture.com/2016/07/stranger-things-film-reference-glossary.html

I've never seen Altered States. Is it good?

Yes it is. Or at least the first 80% of it.

I figured the trainline walk to be a hat tip to Stand By Me.

The reference to The Conversation was so well done bc you really *were* worried he'd end up like gene hackman's character

Reference to alien in the moment when he knocks down the older brother before the boyfriend shows up w a baseball bat

I'm surprised they didnt mention those two instances

This also in parts reminded me of every young adult novel I read at age 8-11

The monster was the least interesting thing about this. I hope they move on to something else for S2.

Is the portal still open? It could be a Hellmouth kind of situation.

When 11 first made contact with the monster, what was it eating?
How did the upsides own go from black nothingness to a parallel universe?
Where was the portal?
What deal did hopper make with Modine? When they took him away at the hospital I assumed he was with them but there he was at the local cop shop Xmas party.
If the monster appeared every time there was blood, why didn't it show up whenever 11 got a nose bleed?

― Quarter measures (sunny successor), 23. heinäkuuta 2016 16:32

Here are some answers to these questions:

* I mentioned this upthread, but my theory is that the upside down world used to be inhabited by humans (since it has the same buildings as the "real" world), but the monsters appeared from somewhere and killed most/all of the humans on that world. That's why the buildings are covered by alien slime/cocoons.

* The black nothingness wasn't the upside world, it was merely a visual shorthand to show how Eleven perceived things when she was trying to contact someone with her ESP powers. We saw the same black nothingness when she was spying on the Russian agent(?), which happened before she even made contact with the upside down world.

* The main portal was a hole inside the Hawkins Laboratory, but it seemed that the monster was able to take advantage of the way Eleven had weakened the walls between dimensions and create smaller portals itself within a limited area near the main portal. That's why it was able to hunt in the woods and near Will's house. My silly fan theory (which will no doubt irritate D-40, so he should stop reading now) is that the monsters are some kind of interdimensional parasites which move from one world to another, devouring the life within them. Maybe the upside down world was once a normal Earth, until they discovered means of creating their own portal, thus inviting the monsters in?

* The deal with Dr. Brenner (Modine) was he allows Hopper and Joyce to go through the portal to save Will if Hopper tells them where Eleven is. It remains unclear why Brenner didn't just get them shot after Hopper had ratted on Eleven, but later on he does say that Hopper and Joyce probably won't get out of the upside down world alive, so it seems Brenner hoped he wouldn't have to go through the trouble of killing them and faking their deaths as suicides or something.

As to what deal Hopper made with the authorities that allows him to stay as the local sheriff, that's a hook for season 2... Though I guess too many people know about the Eleven and the monster now that the men in black could simply kill them all without drawing too much attention, so presumably Hopper was able to cut a favourable deal with them in exchange for his silence?

* The monster was only able to prey within a limited area, where the barrier between the upside down world and the "real" world was weakened. That's why Nancy and Jonathan knew where to hunt for it. Eleven never even went inside that area, she was too scared of going near Hawkins Laboratory once she'd escaped from there. So the monster never smelled her blood.

one thing that bothered me about this, if we're doing quibbling, was that the ryder's son never told her that he had heard the same report of a man with no face from nancy. she was going crazy and he could have made her feel more certain she was right, it seems a really important thing to do.

That was explained onscreen though. After he hears about the faceless man from Nancy, he comes home and is clearly about to tell his mom... But then he finds out his dad has come to "help" Joyce, and later on the dad tells him that he shouldn't feed his mom's craziness, so he keeps quiet until after Joyce has kicked the dad out.

I guess yeah, feel like the sense of time passing was a bit hard to gauge.

As to what deal Hopper made with the authorities that allows him to stay as the local sheriff, that's a hook for season 2...

He's the chief of police rather than the sheriff, which I assume is a proper fulltime job rather than an elected position, so it might be a lot harder to get rid of him.

I guess yeah, feel like the sense of time passing was a bit hard to gauge.

I had a bit of problem keeping up with this too, but towards the end of the season they say that Will has been missing only a week or something, so it seems most of the events take place within just a few days. That means Will's funeral was held very quickly after his "body" was discovered, but other than that I think it works in explaining why the characters don't have the time to meet each other and share their information.

yeah that line about "a week ago i was buying new clothes" or whaatever kind of drew attention to the trickiness of the timeline, there was another part where they said "yesterday" and it was something from like two episodes ago. i'm only really criticising this cos i think about this stuff a lot when plotting fiction.

i was p impressed with this show overall - it felt almost cynical in the way it so expertly tapped into nostalgia for et/goonies etc. but it still was pretty well done - i also have to admit finding the last episode and the relationship between the children really affecting. all the child actors were great, especially lucas.

i guess it owed a lot to let the right one in as well.

For something so heavily referential it was surprisingly unpredictable ... Like they played with these tropes and cliches in a way that made them feel new and unexpected.

Cabin in the Woods:Slasher/Horror Movies::Stranger Things:80s/Spielberg/King/Cronenberg

actually they said "shit" E.T. too

And "douchebag!"

haha i am the worst.

For something so heavily referential it was surprisingly unpredictable ... Like they played with these tropes and cliches in a way that made them feel new and unexpected.

Cabin in the Woods:Slasher/Horror Movies::Stranger Things:80s/Spielberg/King/Cronenberg

i don't think this is accurate at all. this was so, so much more slavish referential pandering than it was subversive, meta, or re-inventive.

for 'slavish referential pandering' i was extremely invested in the characters, their stories & ideas, i don't think for the average kid watching this (and at some level this does feel like a kid's movie) they're spending all day pointing at the references to films that came out two decades before they were born

i mean show not movie obv

The Duffers always viewed it as a movie, so you're not wrong.

it feels like a very long movie

star wars is such slavish referential pandering...haven't these people read Dune or seen The Hidden Fortress

i realize this is more densely referential than star wars but i think it's very purposefully done, it's not like a game of 'spot the reference'... like i said w/ the example of the conversation, if you recognize the reference it adds weight to your fear that the chief might be losing it before he figures out what's going on

https://vimeo.com/175929311

Side-by-side supercut of Stranger Things scenes and similar scenes from 70s/80s films. Incredibly well done.

I guess yeah, feel like the sense of time passing was a bit hard to gauge.

I had no trouble with this at all? Only a few days passed in total afaict. This was made pretty clear when Nancy refers to "what you did yesterday" to Wills brother re the camera thing.

And thinking about the rapid funeral, perhaps that was in an attempt to cover up the fake body.

OK in ep 2 i am warming to the friendship vibe with the kids and 11. (am i weird for wondering how everyone knows she's a girl right away? i totally thought boy and still sort of do.)

does jonathan drive a Ford LTD? i partially grew up in one. bench seats and lap belts. the period details like that, the clothes and haircuts and furniture feel completely legit. if a little bit overdeterminedly drab.

i love how wanker love interest's parent-free party is totally LAME.

ok holy shit the wall

nance is a dickhead to barb. DICKHEAD.

less-than-zero bangles version of hazy shade of winter surely a bit too late for the period they're evoking

we got a big t.v. today at the mall with much better picture than our old t.v. and this show now looks 100% different. very weird. it looks much more like an 80s shot on video t.v. show. maybe our old t.v. was just really bad. its way brighter now. (it does have that pan & scan feel that i have noticed on big t.v.s during action scenes. don't know what that's about.)

(my kids are enjoying this by the way...)

haha, i thought that when i heard hazy shade of winter too. but i let it go.

the "pan and scan" vibe is a setting that you can turn off. frame interpolation is the technical term for it i think? but different TV mfrs call it different things in the settings? you should probably turn it off

ah okay.