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

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.

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

I almost let that pull me out of it, but then I let it go.

Setting - 1983
Song - 1987

the only time the references put me off was how overtly alien-y some bits of the final ep were. at the same time, when i saw "telekinetic girl in a hospital gown with a tattoo of a number" my first thought was "akira," which is a reference i've seen few people making and also makes me think a.) the show's refs might be more compounded/layered/complex than simple "here's a shot that evokes (x)" or b.) some of this stuff is so deeply embedded in the pop culture of the past 40 years that you could easily say one aspect comes from x, y, or z and they all seem like plausible inspirations.

i agree with whoever said modine's death shoulda been...not necessarily more grisly but more impactful. but yeah this was great. the platonic 80s/90s stephen king tv miniseries finally done with an actual budget, good acting, and decent-to-great effects.

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

Ha, well, I liked that scene because it invoked exactly what asshole boys did at that age in my experience. There was no party, they just say there is to get 2 girls to come over and try and screw one or both of them (often with pleas to raid yer parents booze stash on the way over also). It, and Barb, resonated heavily for me.

Barb even looked a bit like my HS best friend, only I was the nerdy skinny one and she was the glasses/80s hair one but she was the bitch.

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

Well the last episode features a tune from Moby's Everything is Wrong (1995), so I guess they're not being too strict about the music being period accurate when it's non-diegetic.

i agree with whoever said modine's death shoulda been...not necessarily more grisly but more impactful.

The way I interpreted is that they left it intentionally ambiguous whether he even died, in case they want to bring the character back next season (and Modine is interested in returning). But I agree that his death was suprisingly lame, though he was kind of a lame villain to begin with, he never felt as threatening as they probably intended. Definitely one of the weakest parts of the series, alongside with the monster's CGI face.

at the same time, when i saw "telekinetic girl in a hospital gown with a tattoo of a number" my first thought was "akira," which is a reference i've seen few people making and also makes me think a.) the show's refs might be more compounded/layered/complex than simple "here's a shot that evokes (x)" or b.) some of this stuff is so deeply embedded in the pop culture of the past 40 years that you could easily say one aspect comes from x, y, or z and they all seem like plausible inspirations.

Somehow I hadn't made this connection in my mind, but you're totally right! IIRC there's even a scene in Akira where one of the ESP kids shouts and makes a car that's coming towards him/her fly in the air?

The "80s home video" vibe in the visuals was evident in the title sequence, where they made the red colour in the letter warble a bit and added some visual noise (those small white dots flickerring on the screen), as if you were watching this from an old tube television. I don't think they did that outside the titles though, everything else looked clean and HD.

"the red colour in the letters"

Someone please remind me of the name 11's mom called her

there is something odd about this mountain of 80s signifiers filmed in pin-sharp HD and using modern shaky-cam technique

Jane iirc? xp

there is something odd about this mountain of 80s signifiers filmed in pin-sharp HD and using modern shaky-cam technique

So you think all movies set in the 1920s should be black & white and silent?

excuse me?

1) i like odd things
2) it's not just set in the 80s, it's an homage to specific films from the 80s, which is reflected in color palette, shot composition, casting, genre, theme, etc. so in the respect yes, for me the shaky cam and hi-defness are odd, novel, a weird spin on things. (you could even see this as a mirror of the plot in that we get to see the "underside" or hidden aspects of those older movies). just as a specific homage to, say, the early films of jean renoir would be, yes, odd if it were filmed in color with shaky HD camera work.

in fact, and i think you'll like this analogy Tuomas, if you could go back in time to air this on HBO over 10 sundays in 1985 it would have the same sort of effect that johnny b. goode had on that high school dance in back to the future. just similar enough to what people knew to hook them in, but a qualitative jump in style and technique

I get that, but what would be the alternative? Film it in crappy-looking and/or stiff '80s television techniques? Some people are already criticizing the series for having so many shout-outs to its inspirations, if the visual style was total homage too, it'd be hard to treat it as anything else than a pastiche. I like the series just as it is: paying homage to inspirations, but also doing stuff (not just the visuals, but the more graphic horror too) that never would've made it to TV in the actual 1980s.

i like it too Tuomas

It's not actually paying homage to '80s television though. All its influences are cinematic

A couple of non-80s things the show reminded me of:

Like the (crappy) tv version of Under the Dome there were interconnected stories centering on a group of kids, a group of teens, and various adults (including cops)

Freaks and Geeks-- this is pretty obvious. 80s setting. 3 D&D playing boys. An older sister trying to change. Lots of gruesome deaths.

Lots of gruesome deaths.

Did I miss an episode of F&G?

the school shooting one. Or was that my fan-fic?

I feel like there is a bit of a Twin Peaks feel too (down to some of the cinematography).

twin peaks was way more colorful imo. this whole things is very, very taupe.

i do really like how genuinely crappy a lot of it feels, the high school, the rich asshole's clothes. their hair is probably a LITTLE too nice but only just. the 80s was still the 70s in many ways and this show gets that.

Agree this is very muted overall, but a lot of taupe in TP small town bits.