In S3's first half, teen angst must quickly take a backseat to far-reaching trouble.
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Stranger Things 3, eps. 1-4: Hawkins, Indiana, will never be the same
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The first season had a giant government building on the outskirts of town, with agents going around killing people and driving white fans trying to capture the kids.
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The show places a lot of blame on the shiny new mall for killing downtown, but I was thinking that the loss of a huge government facility must have been a hammerblow to the small town economy. Plus we saw that the steel mill was already closed. I'm not sure downtown would have survived even if the mall hadn't moved in.
I was also impressed at how large the hospital was for a small midwestern town. Shame the local economy crashed right in the middle of their renovation.
I was also impressed at how large the hospital was for a small midwestern town. Shame the local economy crashed right in the middle of their renovation.
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I know I'll never listen to Billy Don't Be A Hero the same way again. *sniff* Billy, O Billy, we hardly knew ye.
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Love the Russian plot. I did feel like Netflix was definitely cashing in on product placement rights. Perhaps a bit overboard at times. I had to explain "New Coke" to a co-worker and it made me feel old.
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The whole show makes no sense after season 1. After season 1 these people should all be filthy rich and living in the Bahamas thanks to all the gov’t hush money and wrongful death civil suits.
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Economists have largely pinned the blame for the hollowing-out of the economy of small-town America on this:
They consider the melting down of random members of the population to serve as Voltron-style components in an evil interdimensional meat-puppet to be bad fiscal policy. Reagan's HUD secretary should never have suggested it, but I guess hindsight is 20/20.
Not sure how well this applies to Hopkins, though.
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It lacked the mystery of last 2. The first one had a nice homage to 80s filmmaking and 2nd was always wondering what would happen next. The 3rd was more 80s cliche, the plot lines were a mess (how could it possibly take so long to realize the UpSideDown was back?), the characters were more annoying and the teenage relationships cringing.
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Just running through a second binge watch and haven't commented on the season yet, so...
There were a few rough spots (like how the heck could the Russians build such a massive underground complex so fast, in the middle of the US no less; and why no one bothered to inform the police about mall deliveries being done with several guys with automatic weapons openly walking around a publicly viewable area; and why something that secret wouldn't be using actual encrypted coms instead of trivially cracked codes, 40 years after WW2 military secrets were using encrypted coms).
(spoiler tags for talking about things beyond eps 1-4 as the article title might make people halfway through show up)
But mostly I loved it. Robin was a great addition, Erica's expanded role was fun, thought the inevitable teenage dramas with the kids was handled pretty well, even if Hopper was a little overboard with Mike.
Overall I think I liked it a little more than S2.
There were a few rough spots (like how the heck could the Russians build such a massive underground complex so fast, in the middle of the US no less; and why no one bothered to inform the police about mall deliveries being done with several guys with automatic weapons openly walking around a publicly viewable area; and why something that secret wouldn't be using actual encrypted coms instead of trivially cracked codes, 40 years after WW2 military secrets were using encrypted coms).
(spoiler tags for talking about things beyond eps 1-4 as the article title might make people halfway through show up)
Hopper immediately went after and beat information out of the mayor, but spent a whole day playing nice with Alexei and getting him a slurpee before getting aggressive, when that guy seemed like one good punch to the face would have him spilling his guts?
They saw what that rat was doing but still thought it was just rabies for a while?
They saw what that rat was doing but still thought it was just rabies for a while?
But mostly I loved it. Robin was a great addition, Erica's expanded role was fun, thought the inevitable teenage dramas with the kids was handled pretty well, even if Hopper was a little overboard with Mike.
Was so happy Suzie turned out to be real, was amazed how they turned Billy around so much I was tearing up with that last scene with him and El then him breaking the Mind Flayer's hold and sacrificing himself, and the letter at the end omg
Overall I think I liked it a little more than S2.
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Might have been more interesting though to keep the viewer in the dark and introduce the Russians around the same time that the main characters figure it out? Let us wonder about the weird happenings.
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Considering you've presumably gotten over your outrage over Lucas at this point, you'll adjust to Robin just fine.
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The gay people/person you might be referring actually had an impact on the story. The character they spend time with needed a platonic friend instead of a relationship to grow up as a person.
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Come to think of it, the main reason for the baddies to pick Hawkins should have been the way the town inhabitants dismiss every anomaly.
"There's a huge secret government facility whose employees never talk to us? Whatever."
"Oh, these 5,000 Russians with AK-47s building a mall with unusually heavy machinery and frequent visits to the mayor? So what, it's not like magnets fall off the fridge."
I'm looking forward to Season 4, where nobody will care about or remember half the town, including the staff of the town newspaper, having been melted by otherwordly creatures.
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Snarky Robot
Ars Legatus Legionis
I don't think the show does as good a job of it, but I just wanted to say that this is actually something that's done with great effect by a man whose work influenced Stranger Things: Stephen King. Many of the towns that he writes about repeatedly have deep secrets that no one talks about, things that people want to stay buried and will go to great lengths to prevent from spreading.
I think that may be part of the Hawkins that they're going for. But it would help to see that fleshed out a bit more. Not that people there are actively stupid, but that they intentionally treat things that go wrong as verboten topics of discussion. I'm thinking something like a simple scene like
when Barb's parents decide to move away
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You're completely wrong across the board there - they were all very much the original recordings, with one exception ("Never Ending Story" sung by cast members).
I'm not sure how hearing the actual, original recordings made you think they'd been redone. Perhaps you remember them differently to how they actually are
If you pop onto Spotify, Apple Music etc you'll find the Stranger Things 3 soundtrack album - it's a compilation of all those '80s songs released by Sony Music, and yes, they're all the originals.
Indeed, I was starting to find the over-use of licensed pop songs cheesy to the point I thought "they're doing exactly what '80s movies used to do - licence a bunch of songs then shove them anywhere they fit to justify releasing a "soundtrack" album and cashing in!"
Maybe that was the point. Another "homage" to the '80s
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Gotta add "The frighteners" season 1. They even brought in Jake Busey this season.
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It's more or less impossible for any subsequent seasons to have anything even close to the same level of mystery nless the show turns into something completely divorced from what it is now,.
If she has a mortgage, it wouldn't be affected by anything that happened in the first 2 seasons unless she went and did a re-fi.
That said, in such a tiny rural town, home costs would be pretty low, particularly as it doesn't look like their lot was very large; most of their neighbors are farms, after all.
If you have no experience of small town USA during the 80s, then this show isn't aimed at you. It went in precisely the direction it's been setting up to go from the very beginning.
The complex was mostly built along with the mall. It's kind of not near anything else and they could have brought anything in during construction. Also, that loading dock was not in a publicly viewable area; they had to be somewhere they weren't supposed to be to see it. Also, there weren't guards there all the time; most of the time it was unguarded.
Pretty sure Hopper went to town on the mayor because he knew the mayor. He wasn't certain about Alexei at first, and then when he was, he realized that his best play was to play his game and call his bluff on running. Also, there may have been some calculus regarding Murray's view of him at play, as well.
As for the kids, why would they have any reason to suspect that the rat had anything wrong with it other than rabies? As far as they knew, the UD was closed and wouldn't affect them any more. They had more pressing concerns to deal with like rampant misogyny and the possibility of getting fired.
As for the kids, why would they have any reason to suspect that the rat had anything wrong with it other than rabies? As far as they knew, the UD was closed and wouldn't affect them any more. They had more pressing concerns to deal with like rampant misogyny and the possibility of getting fired.
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It would have been nice though if he could have learned to have a female platonic friend just because she's pretty cool and not because she's literally incapable of liking him back however. I feel like that sudden "actually I like girls" makes it seems like the guy person is only capable of hanging out with lesbians when it comes to women, otherwise he'll always want a relationship/sex with them.
But oh well, her being a lesbian works too I suppose for him needing a platonic friend.
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Only 1 year has passed since Season 2... unless they started long before even Season 1 (which they wouldn't have, because they chose that site because El opened the gate there), there's just no way they could build something like that... did you see how deep underground that was? And how long those tunnels were, and how complex the facility was? My issue was how they could have possibly done it in a year.
They had to go to the roof to see it without being caught... did we get a complete enough view of the layout to determine nobody walking around the parking lot or driving along a road couldn't see it? You could be right on that, but other store employees would be back there all the time anyway. I get your point, but still feel it's really implausible nobody else would notice the automatic weapon toting fellows.
Fair enough, but time was even more critical at this juncture so it was enough to make me stop and question it. And should have mentioned it in my post I thought Murray was another great part of the season.
The rat, because it was practically screaming, screams which sounded like a rat-size Demogorgon, and slamming itself into every side of the cage wall nonstop... and it's Hawkins... it even looked like Jonathan was starting to realize that behavior was way too extreme for rabies, but just didn't get there (possibly because of bigger concerns, point taken there).
The rat, because it was practically screaming, screams which sounded like a rat-size Demogorgon, and slamming itself into every side of the cage wall nonstop... and it's Hawkins... it even looked like Jonathan was starting to realize that behavior was way too extreme for rabies, but just didn't get there (possibly because of bigger concerns, point taken there).
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Everything seems to be lined up: time, country, and character, for a show down at Chernobyl in season 4.
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You're completely wrong across the board there - they were all very much the original recordings, with one exception ("Never Ending Story" sung by cast members).
I'm not sure how hearing the actual, original recordings made you think they'd been redone. Perhaps you remember them differently to how they actually are
If you pop onto Spotify, Apple Music etc you'll find the Stranger Things 3 soundtrack album - it's a compilation of all those '80s songs released by Sony Music, and yes, they're all the originals.
Indeed, I was starting to find the over-use of licensed pop songs cheesy to the point I thought "they're doing exactly what '80s movies used to do - licence a bunch of songs then shove them anywhere they fit to justify releasing a "soundtrack" album and cashing in!"
Maybe that was the point. Another "homage" to the '80s
As I recall, comments were made back during Season 1 about the fairly staggering amount of money paid for song licensing by the show's producers.
I didn't notice any non-original covers, either.
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Actually, it's 6 months later, being summer.
However, we know that the Key project the Russians were working on was started near the start of Season 1 as they were trying to replicate access to the Upside Down that Hawkins National Lab had managed via Eleven. It's likely that they had operatives within the CIA providing them information on the MKUltra project.
The opening scene shows the first key failing to open the gate back in Russia a year prior to the start of season 3. So it's likely that it wasn't very long after that that they moved to build the second key nearby. Since they didn't care about permits or safety or anything like that, they would have been able to get things built very quickly compared to regular construction.
Depending on the mall rules, there may not have been much in the way of employees in the access hallways except for specific times. I actually worked in a mall (or, as they required it be called, the plaza
) at one point and the place was super-strict about who could and could not use the access ways. Pretty much only security was allowed back there most of the time. They only let me in them at all because the office I worked in didn't have doors to the public areas of the mall, and I was only allowed to use a single door to get there. Considering the Starcourt was built by the Russians or their agents, it's likely that the mall was likewise strict about who could be in the non-public areas.Also, remembering more from the show, we can probably assume that the guards weren't there all the time; the Russian codes that the kids end up discovering and deciphering were specifically in regards to a delivery for the underground facility, so the guards were probably only there to see to it that the delivery made it down to the facility rather than being there all the time.
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In college do they have a specific writers course on how to add the use of air vents to every storyline?
I felt like this season was more like 'goonies' and less like stranger things.
Oh,. I think it would of been better if it they released episodes 1-4 and then in August released 5-8. Would have been easier to discuss show as most people I know binged watch it so quickly in fear of spoilers.
I felt like this season was more like 'goonies' and less like stranger things.
Oh,. I think it would of been better if it they released episodes 1-4 and then in August released 5-8. Would have been easier to discuss show as most people I know binged watch it so quickly in fear of spoilers.
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What the hell? Are you suggesting that a 18 year-old red-blooded straight male should have decided to just be friends with a hot girl who might have inadvertently given him the impression that she might be into him? Have you ever met an 18-year-old?
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More than that, it seems the Duffer brothers have been a bit coy about season 4. This little phone message makes it clear they already have season 4 planned, and it wouldn't surprise me if it were already in production.
Stranger things season 4 launching at the same time the new Disney streaming service does this fall?
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I think this is a problem for anything groundbreaking. Imagine if they tried to make sequels to The Matrix
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I've watched the whole season and I'm struggling to think of a spoiler that would actually have spoiled the experience. This season felt like a thriller/horror/adventure and it didn't rely on a trick to make it compelling. You mention Goonies and I remember thinking exactly that a few episodes in. I enjoyed it and my wife was literally on the edge of her seat for a lot of it.
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I'm of the opinion that the second season is the problematic one. It felt like the same formula as the first season, but with a new BBEG. Third season changed things up, but brought the same BBEG back and nothing interesting happened *there*.
Seasons two and three could have stood being rewritten and consolidated into a single season.
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It is disingenuous to argue that represents equal scale, stakes and spectacle as later seasons.
If you are arguing about suspension of disbelief, then it is easier for me to believe that the events of S1 could be covered up. There is a bit of effort devoted to flesh that out, including Murray's "curtain" speech and related events in S2. But by S3, between the hospital and mall, the daylight weirdness, and the helicopter cavalry charge at the end, it is far harder to imagine it swept under the carpet.
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And it wasn't, given the very end of the last episode is a "tonight at 10" ad for in-universe news exposé.
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But the "tonight at 10" ad also had a "D&D causes Satanism!" bit. Which I think adds to the idea that it's noticed that people died, but that most people have no idea what actually happened.
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