Yeh, there were some good moments but the season outstayed its welcome and the finale was extremely overindulgent. Like five scenes back to back of characters having one on one expository conversations about their relationships. Plus following the tired “kill off a couple of popular minor characters while leaving the main cast in the thickest suit of plot armour” formula. I was ready for the finale to end long before it finally did. I was rolling my eyes through most of the scenes that were supposed to be the epic, emotional crescendo of the season.
My girlfriend couldn’t really remember much of the previous seasons, so since we watched 4 she’s gone back to watch from the beginning, I’ve caught some season one again as she’s been watching it and it really is far superior. The budget has gone up but they haven’t done anything too exciting with it. The original cast of characters have almost all been doing holding patterns for multiple seasons now in terms of character development.
They’ve just tried so hard to make it “epic” now, when the original low-key cosmic horror mystery was so perfect. I didn’t mind Vecna as a villain-of-the-week (season) but the whole reveal and retcon of him being behind everything from the start was pretty stupid. It’s clear they didn’t plan any of this from the beginning.
Weirdly, despite the budget being huge the overproduction and CGI have almost taken away from some aspects of the show. Watching S1 the other day, when they go through the gates to the UD they have to to through that whole gross mess of creepy vibes/eldritch cobwebs or whatever. Now it’s just a hole and you can see through to the other side clearly? The first season really had an 80s vibe with simple shots of kids riding around suburbs on bikes, now everything about the production looks so slick and modern.
I feel like it’s fallen into a classic trap - the more we learn about the mystery the less interesting it’s become. Funnily enough I had a similar feeling watching the John Wick movies - the more they revealed about the shadowy international assassin organisation the less interesting it became. Some things are best left up to the imagination.
There’s other weird shit that bothers me too about how they’ve escalated and changed things. In season one the UD was sparsely populated and dark, now it’s lit up like a rave with all this lighting and thousands of zubats flying around. They used to have to wear hazmat suits because the air was toxic, I guess that’s no longer a thing.
And they fucking ran Running Up That Hill into the ground, killed it, and flogged it post-mortem for good measure. I love that song but I was completely sick of it just popping up randomly well before the final episode. The score in general has, again, taken as step backward in my opinion - again trying so hard to seem epic and emotional when compared to the simple atmospheric moody synth stuff from season one, which was so reminiscent and evocative of 80s stuff like John carpenter.
I hope they find a satisfying conclusion in season 5 because on the whole I still enjoy this show, but it’s definitely lost its way somewhat imo from what made it great in the beginning. I’ve never done a rewatch so I guess it happened gradually over the years and I didn’t notice until going back. It’s almost like a different show now.
I feel like it’s fallen into a classic trap - the more we learn about the mystery the less interesting it’s become. Funnily enough I had a similar feeling watching the John Wick movies - the more they revealed about the shadowy international assassin organisation the less interesting it became. Some things are best left up to the imagination.
:10000-com: for me it’s telling that the show was originally intended to be a Twilight Zone-esque anthology show, with each season based around a “Strange Thing”, so to speak. The balance of exposition and mystery was great in the first season…beyond that, it felt to me like it was tripping over itself to keep the plot going forwards.
A victim of its own success under capitalism. I wonder what some of the other seasons they originally had sketched out.
I always thought that the series had Season 2 Flu, i.e. the first season was worked on for years and years and honed to perfection, and then it was suddenly wildly successful so they had to write up a second season in a year tops to capitalize on the new IP instead of letting the art be itself.
It was supposed to be an anthology series. Each season taking place at a different time and with a different cast, focusing on a different "Stephen King"-esque mystery/horror.
and retcon of him being behind everything from the start was pretty stupid
Yeah I liked it more when Eleven was thought to have killed people. Even killing them by accident to get One out of the way would've been good. But what they did now is really bad.
Yeh, there were some good moments but the season outstayed its welcome and the finale was extremely overindulgent. Like five scenes back to back of characters having one on one expository conversations about their relationships. Plus following the tired “kill off a couple of popular minor characters while leaving the main cast in the thickest suit of plot armour” formula. I was ready for the finale to end long before it finally did. I was rolling my eyes through most of the scenes that were supposed to be the epic, emotional crescendo of the season.
My girlfriend couldn’t really remember much of the previous seasons, so since we watched 4 she’s gone back to watch from the beginning, I’ve caught some season one again as she’s been watching it and it really is far superior. The budget has gone up but they haven’t done anything too exciting with it. The original cast of characters have almost all been doing holding patterns for multiple seasons now in terms of character development.
They’ve just tried so hard to make it “epic” now, when the original low-key cosmic horror mystery was so perfect. I didn’t mind Vecna as a villain-of-the-week (season) but the whole reveal and retcon of him being behind everything from the start was pretty stupid. It’s clear they didn’t plan any of this from the beginning.
Weirdly, despite the budget being huge the overproduction and CGI have almost taken away from some aspects of the show. Watching S1 the other day, when they go through the gates to the UD they have to to through that whole gross mess of creepy vibes/eldritch cobwebs or whatever. Now it’s just a hole and you can see through to the other side clearly? The first season really had an 80s vibe with simple shots of kids riding around suburbs on bikes, now everything about the production looks so slick and modern.
I feel like it’s fallen into a classic trap - the more we learn about the mystery the less interesting it’s become. Funnily enough I had a similar feeling watching the John Wick movies - the more they revealed about the shadowy international assassin organisation the less interesting it became. Some things are best left up to the imagination.
There’s other weird shit that bothers me too about how they’ve escalated and changed things. In season one the UD was sparsely populated and dark, now it’s lit up like a rave with all this lighting and thousands of zubats flying around. They used to have to wear hazmat suits because the air was toxic, I guess that’s no longer a thing.
And they fucking ran Running Up That Hill into the ground, killed it, and flogged it post-mortem for good measure. I love that song but I was completely sick of it just popping up randomly well before the final episode. The score in general has, again, taken as step backward in my opinion - again trying so hard to seem epic and emotional when compared to the simple atmospheric moody synth stuff from season one, which was so reminiscent and evocative of 80s stuff like John carpenter.
I hope they find a satisfying conclusion in season 5 because on the whole I still enjoy this show, but it’s definitely lost its way somewhat imo from what made it great in the beginning. I’ve never done a rewatch so I guess it happened gradually over the years and I didn’t notice until going back. It’s almost like a different show now.
:10000-com: for me it’s telling that the show was originally intended to be a Twilight Zone-esque anthology show, with each season based around a “Strange Thing”, so to speak. The balance of exposition and mystery was great in the first season…beyond that, it felt to me like it was tripping over itself to keep the plot going forwards.
A victim of its own success under capitalism. I wonder what some of the other seasons they originally had sketched out.
I always thought that the series had Season 2 Flu, i.e. the first season was worked on for years and years and honed to perfection, and then it was suddenly wildly successful so they had to write up a second season in a year tops to capitalize on the new IP instead of letting the art be itself.
It was supposed to be an anthology series. Each season taking place at a different time and with a different cast, focusing on a different "Stephen King"-esque mystery/horror.
deleted by creator
Yeah I liked it more when Eleven was thought to have killed people. Even killing them by accident to get One out of the way would've been good. But what they did now is really bad.