Yeah, not huge on villains that are evil simply because they are. It's lazy. What this kid just massacred his whole family for no reason? Cool I guess.
They have to make it so that people are born inherently evil, else you would have to look at society etc. this way you can also affirm the Boomer mentality of being harsh and punish the sinners.
They failed to be critical of that trope and instead just incorporated it as their guiding principle, even if we would judge it a bit differently than the chars in season 4. We know that whatever Mr Evil says that the environment of torture and military industrial exploitation that he was put in was actually not beneficial to him (even though he tries to assert his identity and self control by saying only the chosen ones - like Eleven and him - are able to shape society (fascist allegory)).
Though taking a cursed child to be the pure evil which is cursed not by the superhuman abilities, but by his lack of morals and thus being mentally ill, being a deviant to society who tries to bring down the world into chaos is worse than the satanic cults in the 80s was.
It leads to enshrine the ideas of it being good to exclude "mentally ill" - us neurodivergents - from society as we are worse than the US military torturing, killing and inhumanely experimenting on people as we are about to end the world, while the sects of the military are just misguided and try to do the "right thing" TM. It does that in 2022.
I felt they lost it in season 3 when they suddenly went "you know this show where the American government has been the bad guy all along? Well now it's the Russians! Surprise!" I mean I still think it's fun to watch, but I really didn't like that weird pivot. Also I've noticed a lot more advertising on the show in the last 2 seasons. Just Netflix trying to monetize every inch of this show.
The Russians are framed as the bad guys, but honestly, aside from the dubious "Let's breed man eating extra-dimensional horrors (that we found out about how again?) for...reasons...that are mostly The Americans Have Them" they act pretty fucking rationally.
All the prisoners absolutely belong there, Mr Good Cop is obviously guilty of espionage, and all the SU people absolutely are justified in stopping a) A guard committing high treason, prison escape, and theft of state secrets and b) a smuggler who is an absolute sociopath only tolerated because he was a war hero.
Meanwhile the US is all about either killing a young girl because uh, obviously that will work, lets not listen to the experts, or, exploiting said girl in a continuation of some pretty fucking extreme child abuse so that they get to continue Thinking With Portals.
it was during this season that I realised that Stranger Things is actually DOOM IP and is a prequel
no, I will not be taking further questions
That was the best episode, you’re 100%, correct on that
When I watched it I wasn't nearly as radicalized, so I'm sure I'd be down with the aesthetic and praxis of fucking with cops now, but back then I felt it was a really weird right turn out of the plot for a thread that was never picked up again
It was clearly supposed to end after season 2 and was milked for the moola
Yeah I liked the first 2 seasons but after that is seemed like it was trying too hard
Idk I liked it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The last couple episodes especially fucking ruled. I’ll never tire of seeing someone use telekinesis to rip a US military helicopter out of the sky.
Spoilers for the whole season:
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While I was really ready and happy for them to end it this season, I actually love the way they went with it. I feel like I don’t get enough scifi/fantasy stories that get to the point of “Nope. You lost actually. Everything is fucked and now you have to deal with the ramifications of that, while also preparing for things to get even worse. Also now everyone knows about all the crazy shit you’ve been keeping secret.” And I like when stories do that plot and do it well, which I trust the ST team to do.
Like Max actually getting her limbs broken and seemingly being braindead? That was fucking brutal.
The gulag shit fucking sucked though god damn
Edit: also just so we all know, they have the whole gulag arc but the gulag system was closed down 30 fucking years before this takes place, it’s fucking absurd
spoiler
My guess is that Max will actually survive. This is just my TV prediction brain based on nothing else besides watching tv before, but I’m guessing her “soul” or whatever the fuck is trapped somewhere with Vecna and they’ll revive her. And that’s why they didn’t kill her outright is because she will survive.
But I also don’t agree with this:
I watch media like this to escape from my problems, not be introduced to ones that look similar to real life.
Maybe it’s me being baby-brained but it comforts me when media presents mystical problems like they would happen in reality, and then fixes them. I need to see it go wrong to a level that I know would happen in the real world for the solution to feel comforting.
I might be overanalyzing things but it might be my deep desire for literally anything to be done to stop climate change
Also yes the breaking of limbs to escape was so fucking stupid and they basically forgot he had a broken foot immediately and he just lives his life normally and it didn’t even work so why have that scene at all????
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See but I don’t think that’s what’s happening with stranger things. They failed to set up this feeble state to give us something to recover from. It’s not nihilism, it’s just a cliffhanger.
I did expect it to end nicely this season, and I would’ve preferred that, but we are getting another one and I do think they’ll do a good job of fixing it. Honestly any of the other seasons would’ve been better points to leave on, this one has the biggest setup for the next season.
The only thing I know about it is that apparently some monster taking on a human form named Vecna was the titular stranger thing all along
It's a
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human taking on a monster form and the kids named it Vecna after the D&D lich because they gotta keep up the references to D&D. Actual name is like Henry or something
true, plus the anticommunism in season 4 was much worse than in season 3
Couldn’t agree more about the propaganda point. Even if gulags were as bad as they depict, the last one closed decades before the show is set. They’re like 5 years from the collapse of the USSR at that point lol.
when I heard that season 3 was anticommunist I just never watched it again, nice to know I wasn't missing anything though
Personally this was my favorite season of the show. There is some hamfisted anti-communism, but it’s so hamfisted that if you can just turn your brain off and go “The Soviets are cartoon villains because in 80s media the Soviets were cartoon villains” it’s not too hard to look past. There is no deeper anti communism than “Oh no, the evil Russians!”
But this season is so well done imo. The cinematography is so good. The relationships are good. There are great dramatic moments. The effects are good imo.
I totally let you enjoy the show, since all of us like treats :large-adult-son:
There is no deeper anti communism than “Oh no, the evil Russians!”
Is something I am not so sure of. Not only is the Soviet populace and military shown to be a joke and only US protagonists (who fuck after crouching throw shit tunnels and being exposed to manual labour for weeks) are able to kill baddies, but more importantly the villages are empty and devoid of life. What is shown is that Socialism is something which will lead to more deficiency than being put into mental hospitals by some US military. It shows the US military responding fast and quick in multiple situations, while the KGB fails non stop and the Soviet military has poor defenses to guard evil beings and also doesn't have troops available to stop emergencies there.
They are also dumb enough to not use flame throwers and have no explosives in case something goes wrong. It feels as if there is a lot of pro capitalist messaging going on, too. Like using pizza shops for your goals just by offering a joint and no one is having really economic trouble in the show, not even after giant earth quakes.
Better than season three at least. I haven't been able to will myself to watch the second half of this season so maybe my opinion will change, but season three was utter garbage whereas this one is just standard grade slop.
the scene with will crying in the car had me bawling my eyes out
also i think will should be allowed to kill people (mike) next season
That's what happens when child actors grow up. Child acting should be illegal. Our media would definitely suffer for it, but fuck it - they already use CGI for everything else, they might as well use it to replace child labor.
Also I hate Jonathan and Nancy together and actually just hate Jonathan in general. In season 1 he was a creepy incel stalker and he never really atoned for that or changed his personality
I spent the first couple seasons wanting Nancy to start an FMM triad and live her best life. Fuck all this prude love triangle shit.
As someone currently in a poly relationship for the first time in my life I have to agree
Awesome, I'm still trying to not date monogamous women expecting me to change.😅 have you seen Trigonometry yet? It's quite :avoheart:
I don’t take it too seriously, so I enjoy the show, mostly. However, something else not discussed here is that there’s too many fucking characters. The young black girl and the girl questioning her sexuality are pretty much pointless. The pizza delivery guy, while kind of funny, also didn’t need to be there. The past two seasons they’ve introduced a new villain character just to immediately kill them off that same season.
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.
