d_jedi1
Sr Member
While true of reality, they always seemed to work like that in 80s MOVIES and this is essentially just a long 80's film.
Granted, it doesn't get everything right.. but it gets enough right.
Stranger Things (Netflix)
- Thread starter Vivek
- Start date
Granted, it doesn't get everything right.. but it gets enough right.
Sandman0077
Sr Member
Exactly. It felt more 80's then most modern 80's films, without shoving it down our throats.
I believe the primary model they use is the Realistic TRC-214 Walkie Talkie. I don’t know the exact range.
Yeah I don’t know either. But season 1 I thought the only reason they could go log range because they were cop radios minus the com on their shoulder
I’m probably wrong but that’s what I thought lol
sztriki
Sr Member
Well my expectations were pretty low to begin with. I was okay with S2 and thankfully the way that season ended allows me to just stop there and have a finished story if S3 was to disappoint. Which it kinda did for me but not in a Last Jedi way. I was pretty meh with it all along. I wasn't excited, too invested, it was just watching it for the sake of it.
The main problem I think is that the show had a great concept for one season. S2 was stretching it and now they can only repeat themselves and try to heighten elements. Plenty of times this season felt like a parody of itself. Everything in that underground Soviet facility felt like out of The Man Who Knew Too Little or Rocky and Bullwinkle, some bordering Austin Powers territory. David Harbour was hamming it up so much that it hurt, I have no idea who told him to overact that much and I loved him in the first two. Hop's "death" I called the moment they sat down to have their emotional moment with Joyce and I was pretty damn sure that after the supersappy ending he's gonne be in the Upside Down, but they went with a subtler hint but still so damn predictable.
I missed Paul Reiser, he was probably my favourite new character in S2, Billy I think had much more potential...bloody Neverending Story, OMG...both Billy and Hop would have survived if that wasn't done and they gotten the numbers on time. What was that scene supposed to be, charming? In the middle of deathly peril...? Talk about deflating tension. And who just decided that Eleven should go with Joyce instead of staying at Mike's?
I liked the changed dynamics, in fact I really liked the first 2-3 episodes where it was mostly these characters interacting and becoming the annoying teenagers that we all have been. The kid actors were still great, Mike and Eleven's scenes were very good, Max was much less annoying for me. Erica...mmm no, thanks. Steve was also wasted in this season, I really liked him in the first two.
I dunno. I mean after S2 I felt like yea fine, I'd be cool if they left it here instead of milking and stretching until it becomes stale and pointless...I guess everything has to go down that route? Also more and more seasons just completely undermine the concept of a small little town where nothing happens facing cataclysmic events if three's a cataclysmic event every year...I'm just happy that I can stop at S2 and still feel like the story is complete instead of having to drop out midway cuz it went stupid ways.
The main problem I think is that the show had a great concept for one season. S2 was stretching it and now they can only repeat themselves and try to heighten elements. Plenty of times this season felt like a parody of itself. Everything in that underground Soviet facility felt like out of The Man Who Knew Too Little or Rocky and Bullwinkle, some bordering Austin Powers territory. David Harbour was hamming it up so much that it hurt, I have no idea who told him to overact that much and I loved him in the first two. Hop's "death" I called the moment they sat down to have their emotional moment with Joyce and I was pretty damn sure that after the supersappy ending he's gonne be in the Upside Down, but they went with a subtler hint but still so damn predictable.
I missed Paul Reiser, he was probably my favourite new character in S2, Billy I think had much more potential...bloody Neverending Story, OMG...both Billy and Hop would have survived if that wasn't done and they gotten the numbers on time. What was that scene supposed to be, charming? In the middle of deathly peril...? Talk about deflating tension. And who just decided that Eleven should go with Joyce instead of staying at Mike's?
I liked the changed dynamics, in fact I really liked the first 2-3 episodes where it was mostly these characters interacting and becoming the annoying teenagers that we all have been. The kid actors were still great, Mike and Eleven's scenes were very good, Max was much less annoying for me. Erica...mmm no, thanks. Steve was also wasted in this season, I really liked him in the first two.
I dunno. I mean after S2 I felt like yea fine, I'd be cool if they left it here instead of milking and stretching until it becomes stale and pointless...I guess everything has to go down that route? Also more and more seasons just completely undermine the concept of a small little town where nothing happens facing cataclysmic events if three's a cataclysmic event every year...I'm just happy that I can stop at S2 and still feel like the story is complete instead of having to drop out midway cuz it went stupid ways.
Spoilers ahead, warning
Now the mindflare dead again because the gate is closed, does this mean if the gate is ever opened back up the mindflare awakens?
.... again?
I remember after season 2 they had some interviews with the creators and the actors. Surprised we didn’t get something like this for this season
Would really like to hear from the duffers point of view
I still don’t get this season..
I totally agree why did Joyce take El, and she just not stay with mike and his family? I don’t get it.. maybe everything will
Make sense in season 4...
Now the mindflare dead again because the gate is closed, does this mean if the gate is ever opened back up the mindflare awakens?
.... again?
I remember after season 2 they had some interviews with the creators and the actors. Surprised we didn’t get something like this for this season
Would really like to hear from the duffers point of view
I still don’t get this season..
I totally agree why did Joyce take El, and she just not stay with mike and his family? I don’t get it.. maybe everything will
Make sense in season 4...
Sandman0077
Sr Member
I'm gonna guess Hopper and Joyce had an agreement about where their kids go if one of them dies. Plus, Hopper would never let El live with her boyfriend. They were already getting into 'horny teen' territory.
anamorphicWayne
Sr Member
Personally, I don't think Hopper is dead. He's in Russia.
Jaitea
Master Member
Perhaps Joyce is the type of person who would step forward and take El,...whereas Mikes mum wouldn’t
J
Excellent thinking!
anamorphicWayne
Sr Member
Plus Joyce has been around El more than Mike's mom and knows her powers, or lack of them.
CB2001
Master Member
Not to mention, Mike's mom thinks she's a dangerous person (due to what Brenner told her in Season 1 and there's no indication she knows about El being in Mike's life). Since she's never met El, she doesn't recognize her when she calls Mike in Season 3.
Plus, Joyce seems like the most logical choice, as she had shown her kindness and being motherly to her back in Season 1. Joyce was the first adult who showed her any kind of compassion that an adult should have towards anyone that young.
I'm trying to follow your logic, here... You mean the way she wanted to make sure Barb wasn't forgotten and how her parents had hired an eccentric investigator who turned out to be Murray and they got the information to him and jointly figured out how to convey it to the press in a way that it would get reported, but the weird stuff wouldn't get it all dismissed, I'm assuming. But beyond that I'm not seeing the leap from there to Nancy and Jonathan being responsible for the Russians finding out about the Upside-Down, that the last breach was in Hawkins, or anything that followed.
It's more that he's trying to cling to, recapture, and recreate a time before all the horrible stuff happened to him. The others didn't experience it as directly as he did, so they've been able to move on with their lives. This comes up in dialogue later in the season, in fact.
He did, in fact, try to convey that he was in earnest, but she was going to hang up on him unless he did the thing. What else would you have had him do to convince her to help that would have 1) not had her hang up on him and go back to her Le Guin book, or 2) taken longer than just singing the durn song? Frankly, I loved the reaction shots of everyone else hearing it. Hopper and Joyce, especially.
Part of the send-up of the trope, and the meta-ness of the series. It's not just '80s nostalgia, it's '80s movie nostalgia. As with the walkie-talkie thing discussed above. There were several movies in the mid-'80s that had Russian agents or whatever building secret Dr. Evil lairs under American towns or infiltrating us with their evil Commie sleeper cells or like that. This is a send-up of that only slightly more subtle than this:
Billy was the mind-flayer. Or at least empowered by it. You've had the rest of the season to see how strong and resistant to damage he is now. So it shouldn't be a shock that he can brace himself and hold it at bay for a couple minutes. And it didn't seem to be being hurt by the fireworks so much as kept stunned and disoriented. Physical attacks are only a temporary delay.
As I said above, he had to quickly find a way to cconvince Suzie to stay on with him when she was about to hang up. We are all very aware, and I'm pretty sure they are, too, of the consequences of the delay that caused. Quick -- you have thirty seconds, there's no internet, the libraries are closed, there's no such thing as cell phones yet, you need Planck's Constant NOW or everybody dies, and the only person you have access to who knows it is unaware of your situation and feeling a little dissed and is about to turn off her radio and go back to her book unless you do a very specific thing. What do you do?
Frankly, I'm curious to see if this impacts how Dustin feels about Suzie in the future. It would be very easy for him to blame her for their deaths. I didn't find it silly. I love the song, and at the same time I could totally get where everyone else listening in was all "frikkin' seriously?" because of everything hanging on this oblivious teenage girl who thought her boyfriend who hadn't talked to her since they parted (and seriously, he spent, like, six hours straight trying to call her -- where was she?) was making up some stupid crap about Russian invaders to deflect her feeling slighted. I can very easily see a conversation the next day along the lines of "Welp, my friend's older brother and the chief of police are dead now because you didn't believe me and made me sing that damn song in order to get the information I needed. I hope you're happy." It's an instance of unintended consequences, and having to live with them. Which sorta leads me to the big takeaway over the three seasons so far...
One thing that I like, but that also makes me slightly uncomfortable (in a seeing-the-rosy-glow-fade sort of way) is the progression over the five-year arc of the show (or, rather, the portion of that we have so far) from the awesomeness of being a kid in 1983 with Return of the Jedi and D&D fading into more adult awareness of the ugliness of the world and finding your place in it. There's a certain loss of innocence that we react viscerally to because a lot of us went through the exact same thing at the exact same time (albeit with fewer dimensional breaches or soul-sucking monsters). It's why we went from listening to Duran Duran and ELO to listening to The Smiths and Depeche Mode. The MTV Generation fading into Grunge. It's a paean to simpler days at the same time as it shows an awareness that those days end. I am hopeful that, after going through everything they go through, the kids -- from Will up to Jonathan (nice that one family spans the age range of the young end of the protagonists) -- are able to give us a happy ending where they process the trauma and become functional young adults who retain their ability to have fun in life.
We're in the middle of the arc. Classic story construction dictates this tends to be when things are at their worst.
sztriki
Sr Member
Oh I understood what was going on, no problem there. My question was more along the lines "what were the filmmakers thinking when they wrote that scene". It clearly very quickly went to an upbeat fun direction from endless peril only to quickly sink back to even more dethly danger then characters dropping (arguably as a direct consequence). Tonally jarring. I could write a story where Darth Vader kicks off a sick dance show to "Staying Alive" when Palpatine is zapping Luke. The explanation is that it reminded him of Mace Windu and Mace was a massive disco head. There's the backstory to explain it. Still stupid and out of place.
Considering how Max and Lucas were jovially making fun of him and he still sided with Suzie...I'd say it impacted nobody except the deceased.
Good for you and I do mean that without any sarcasm.
CB2001
Master Member
I'll walk you through it step by step:
1. Barb dies by the Demogorgan.
2. About a year later, Nancy and Jonathan get Hawkins Labs closed down in an attempt to get "justice for Barb."
3. Instead of being a government facility there to scare off the Russians looking to take advantage of a recently closed gate that was still "healing" (as explained by Alexi), it leaves the door open for the Russians to set up a lab underground in close proximity to the now abandoned Hawkin Labs and using the mall's construction and existence as cover. Not only that, it results in a delay in the government getting involved with stopping the Russians and help with the Mind Flayer issue. By them barely opening the gate, it allows the Mind Flayer to take over 30 people to get mind flayed, leads to their deaths, Billy's death, Alexi's death and the possible death of Hopper.
So, thanks to Nancy and Jonathan, there's at least 20+ deaths on their heads and thanks to them, they left Hawkins open for the Russians to set up shop in town and those who could have helped in any capacity was run out of town months before and came in late to the party.
You may not agree with it, but to me, this season was the end result of "Justice For Barb." Yes, the Lab was responsible for opening the gate to the Upside Down, the releasing of the Demagorgan and the deaths tied to it. But, as it was stated, those responsible for those events were no longer there, and the Lab did seem like they were trying to help with controlling the gate and we're trying to help Will. But, Nancy and Jonathan were the ones who allowed the Russians in.
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Sandman0077
Sr Member
After rewatching season 3, I think the best scene is the one in El's head where Billy is telling her how she let them in and now she has to let them stay. That whole scene is just amazing to me. Music, script, everything.
Never really thought of it like that until you said it. That’s really good thinking! I like it!
