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Set in the 1980s, the show is a mix of The Goonies and X-files. The show follows a group of young kids who are trying to find out what has happened to their friend, who has gone missing. The first season is 8 episodes at about 45 minutes each.
I just finished episode 3 and I am enjoying it quite a bit. Anybody else been watching it?
Spoiler:
I am really liking their use of the monster so far, as well as the mystery behind the little girl.
I banged out all 8 of these last night. It was pretty good, very much felt like ET in all ways. Was never amazing, but was never less than good, either. Decent worldbuilding... I look forward to next season.
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
Usually "kids save the day" kinds of movies annoy me, but I really enjoyed this show. I did a marathon friday night and saturday afternoon and watched it all. I kinda wish there were more episodes but at the same time adding more would have probably just been useless filler.
I liked that the kids were all playing D&D, I forgot what a demogorgon was till now.
And there was a good use of 80's music in a not annoying way, and even the regular background music had a 80's movie synth kinda vibe to it, but was also done well.
This is on my list of things to watch. Don't know the premise of it, but all I've seen are good reviews of it. Based on others responses, it sounds decent and I'll give it a go
Ouze wrote: I banged out all 8 of these last night. It was pretty good, very much felt like ET in all ways. Was never amazing, but was never less than good, either. Decent worldbuilding... I look forward to next season.
Agreed, I really liked the ending of it. I am curious if they are going to keep with the same town or if they are going to make it an anthology show like True Detective.
Spoiler:
Did anybody get a Twilight Zone vibe from the end of the last episode? Everything seemed like it was back to normal but in the final two scenes, kid throws up weird Upside Down slug and the Sheriff is leaving food for Eleven?
My girlfriends sister was watching it at the weekend, so I saw the last 4 episodes or so. Kinda caught up on what was happening, and enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
Thought it was great. It's got some faults, sure, but one of the most purely entertaining shows I've watched in a while. Really liked all the kid actors, but Millie Brown (Eleven) was absolutely incredible - without even speaking for the bulk of things as well. Kid's going to be a star IMO.
I was born in 1984, and I honestly hate most everything out of the 80s (music, style, etc), but I really liked this show despite its overbearing 80sness.
I really liked that the mystery actually came together in a cohesive and logical manner, and wasn't all some kid's fever dream or something. Characters all were good too, really liked the sheriff.
Very much looking forward to the second season.
I do still have some questions, though. They may or may not be known to anyone, but just curious (spoilers abound):
Spoiler:
1: How did the original kid get originally transported to the other dimension? I mean, presumably it was by the monster, but why did it not kill him (like it did the girl, and everyone else)?
2: How was the kid able to communicate via lights with his mom?
3: How did 3 dumbass teens armed with a 6 shooter, a nail bat, a bear trap, and lighter fluid manage to hurt the monster more than an entire school full of armed soldiers? That seemed a bit silly to me, especially since (presumably) the soldiers knew roughly what it was that they had let loose. And it clearly had some corporeal form, so, hell, it seems enough bullets would have done something. But just shooting it to death would have been a bit of an anticlimax, admittedly.
One final note: The scientist guys may not have been very nice people, but holy gak, they were the only humans who knew anything about ANYTHING about what was going on with the tear in reality. And now they're dead, and little billy is spitting up alien slugs into the water supply. That's probably not going to end well. So very interested in the next season for that, and hopefully answers to the above.
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment." Words to live by.
These are my interpretations of what is going on in the show and how these things happened.
1. It appears that the Monster, who I am going to refer to as the Flea from now on, was able to transport people to The Upside Down. However, the Monster doesn't seem to have any senses other than the ability to sense blood and feel. I assume it killed Barb very quickly because she was trapped in the pool and it was able to find her quickly. Will was a different story, as he was not trapped and quickly ran away.
2. In the final episode, when Hop and Will's Mom are walking through the house while the teenagers are in it, you can see the Christmas lights popping up as they Hop and Mom pass them. The Mother can also hear the kids while she is in The Upside Down. I assume that there is some sort of electromagnetic effect that passes through the dimensions to effect lights and other things, but it only works with living things like people or the monster.
3. The Flea seems to only be weak against certain things. Gunshots can stun it and annoy it, but they seem somewhat ineffective. The kids took a different approach to the fight and not only did they engage it with a firearm, they attacked it using a bat with nails driven through it. I assume the Flea is not super strong and the bat was really messing it up. It also seemed like fire was highly effective against it, which the armed soldiers did not have readily available.
4. Yeah, I assume they kept some sort of record of what is going on though. I also assume that when they stopped reporting in to whoever they reported to, those people would send in new scientists/soldiers to see what is going on. I would be interested in a follow up season to what just happened, but at the same time making this show in to an anthology would also be very interesting. New town, new monster, new weirdo scientists messing with the fabric of space and time.
That is what I think was happening anyways. Anybody else have thoughts?
I too would like to see an anthology style series - hopefully one that is like True Detective without gaking the bed irrevocably the way True Detective did in the second season.
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
Man, SDCC made Geek Media really popular as of late. Anyways, there is news about Stranger Things! Looks like they are not going anthology, but the good news is they have already mapped out "several" seasons of the show.
The highlight of summer 2016 hasn’t been any blockbuster movie, at least so far. Nope, it’s the pleasant surprise that is the new Netflix series Stranger Things, which dropped its eight-episode first season on July 15. The horror/mystery series and Amblin throwback, which stars Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine, and is set in 1983, is the story of what happens in a small Indiana town when a little boy suddenly goes missing. This mystery eventually leads into an even larger, far more bizarre one.
Now the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers, along with producer Shawn Levy, have revealed there are in fact plans not only for a second season, but several seasons. Although the show hasn’t officially been renewed by Netflix yet, with the outpouring of love and great reviews the series got with season one, it seems like a no-brainer. Series co-creator Matt Duffer recently talked to IGN about a potential continuation, saying, “If we do get to go back, it’s not a second season as much as a sequel”, which seemed to suggest that not all of the main cast would return, as was often common with horror sequels in the ’80s.
However, executive producer Shawn Levy has gone into a bit more detail about the potential future of the series, and confirms that most of the cast would indeed return, should they get the greenlight from Netflix. In an interview with /Film, Levy said the following: “We definitely are hopeful to go several more seasons. And the plan is to continue with this set of characters while introducing a few critical key new ones next season. So I’ll just say that a lot of the big mysteries get answered at the end of Season 1, but we are very much kind of unearthing new problems and questions that merit future stories and future investigation in the most enjoyable way.”
This is great news, as the cast of the show is such a part of the reason it’s so successful. Winona Ryder reminds everyone of her acting chops after far too long away from a prominent role in TV or movies. Plus, the kids (who are the real stars) are great, and have these amazing faces—the kind that stopped appearing in genre movies around the time Scream hit big, when suddenly everyone had to look like Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue models.
Stranger Things is as if Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, John Carpenter, and David Cronenberg got together back in the day and decided to make a TV show. And if you grew up in the ’80s, or just love movies from that era, Stranger Things will have you hooked, and you’ll likely binge watch thew whole thing over one weekend.
Are you excited about potential future seasons of Stranger Things? Let us know what you want to see out of the series in the comments below.
I am pretty happy about this. I hate it when shows have a great first season, but you can tell they hadn't planned for a second season. (True Detective) So if they have already made plans for 2-3 seasons, it looks like this show is going to be getting really good.
Kap'n Krump wrote: I was born in 1984, and I honestly hate most everything out of the 80s (music, style, etc), but I really liked this show despite its overbearing 80sness.
You can actually remember the 80's, being all of 1 through 4 during it?!?
Now if you want a decade that really sucked?
Yeah, that would be the 90's for ya!
Anyway, we're through episode 7 now - and loving it!
EDIT
And just finished it up!
Wow!
But yeah, those cliffhangers?
There had better be a season 2!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/07/26 03:37:05
Watched the first episode last night. Definitely going to watch the rest. Great start, very nostalgic vibe to it.
We were once so close to heaven, St. Peter came out and gave us medals; declaring us "The nicest of the damned".
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
It's been incredibly well received and has been topping their download list. It'll get more seasons.
Spoiler:
About that - the Duffy brothers have been talking about where they want to go. They've got several seasons worth of material planned, and will have it continue to be told from the current characters perspectives. So we should get some answers.
No official announcement of a Season 2, but the creator has talked about having outlined multiple seasons already. I think it would be silly if Netflix did not pick up a second season.
More than a few of you probably spent your time last weekend binge-watching Netflix’s latest series Stranger Things. Matt and Ross Duffer‘s sci-fi show was embraced so quickly by the streaming service’s customers that a season two is already confirmed. The Duffer Brothers have shared a few details about what to expect from the next season of their hit show.
Executive producers Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen told us season two would follow the same characters and introduce critical new ones. Season one ended with, as Levy said, “questions that merit future stories and future investigation,” especially regarding one key character’s surprising change in motivation.
Speaking with Variety, Ross Duffer said there’s plenty they know about this world they’ve yet to show viewers:
There’s a lot there we don’t know or understand. Even with ‘The Upside Down,’ we have a 30-page document that is pretty intricate in terms of what it all means, and where this monster actually came from, and why aren’t there more monsters — we have all this stuff that we just didn’t have time for, or we didn’t feel like we needed to get into in season one, because of the main tension of Will. We have that whole other world that we haven’t fully explored in this season, and that was very purposeful.
The co-writer/director added we’ll see more of what was written in that 30-page document in season two:
We leave these dangling threads at the end. If people respond to this show and we get to continue this story — we had those initial discussions of where we might go with it. If there was going to be a season two, we would reveal more of that 30-page document, but we’d still want to keep it from the point of view of our original characters
Matt Duffer told IGN the next chapter of Stranger Things is more of a sequel than a second season, which is a slightly vague but still telling tidbit:
We don’t answer all the questions by the end of the season — there are definitely some dangling threads. The hope is that it feels satisfying but that we left room and that if people respond to it we can go back into this world. But if we do get to go back, it’s not a second season as much as a sequel.
Key mysteries are resolved in season one of Stranger Things, but anyone that watched the first eight episodes knows the finale ends with two major scenes setting up what’s to come. There are a few unanswered questions left, and since season one of Stranger Things is exceptional entertainment from start to finish, probably more than a few people are excited about receiving the Duffer Brothers’ answers to those questions.
Greatly enjoyed it, Hopper and Eleven are stand out actors.
The cliffhanger ending was good, leading me to believe that the Upside Down is more than just the Monster.
I really, really hope the next season drops Will's mom. Winona Ryder just cannot act. Every scene with her she's in there hamming it up.
We were once so close to heaven, St. Peter came out and gave us medals; declaring us "The nicest of the damned".
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
There's nothing in any of the characters I could identify with (apart from being picked on at school, in the pre-internet days) and that's not exactly something that was a standout good memory of those days.
What's a demogorgon, anyway (I had friends at school who played D&D but I wasn't one of them. D&D was for nerds - I was the chemistry geek who also did electronics).
Two episodes in, I just gave up on it. I didn't much like the goonies or x-files, either.
I'm OVER 50 (and so far over everyone's BS, too).
Old enough to know better, young enough to not give a ****.
That is not dead which can eternal lie ...
... and yet, with strange aeons, even death may die.
~1.5k
