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Stranger Things

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Just getting into it, pretty good so far. This is obviously about where I work. Same County, same place of work, they just changed states.
 
Finally got around to watching this (gave up on waiting for my wife to "have time")
Binged watched all of it yesterday. LOVED it. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED it.
 
Binge watched season 1 yesterday in 4k. Close to perfect. Felt a lot like watching an extended ET - especially when they dressed up Elle, as I half expected her to be handed Reese's Pieces after that 😀 - meets Fringe, with a lot of 70s/80s cultural influences, tropes, and nods (e.g. Star Wars, John Carpenter) without it being cheesy. Exactly my kind of show. Even the title animation sequence is amazing. Quality of both the 4k streaming and the period setting made me feel like I was looking at window back into the 80s. Casting was excellent, too, especially considering the cast was mainly child actors and mostly unknown actors (which I usually prefer, anyway, to typecast A-listers, with the notable exception of Winona Ryder).
 
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Watched the first episode and started the second and I'm already bored. It may be due to the fact that most shows that people say are great are boring to me which is why I rarely watch TV shows.

More watching and Jesus Christ every person is basically a cliché. No interesting characters at all so far two episodes in.

Finished the third episode and everything is pretty easy to figure out so far. I'll let my gf finish watching it and just ask her how it ends. Very predictable and boring for me.
 
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zerocool84 said:
Watched the first episode and started the second and I'm already bored. It may be due to the fact that most shows that people say are great are boring to me which is why I rarely watch TV shows.

More watching and Jesus Christ every person is basically a cliché. No interesting characters at all so far two episodes in.

Finished the third episode and everything is pretty easy to figure out so far. I'll let my gf finish watching it and just ask her how it ends. Very predictable and boring for me.
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They do start off as cliched characters, but they evolve rather nicely IMHO. Steve the douche probably has the largest turn around but they all evolve. In retrospect I'd say the show is fairly predictable, but when you borrow so heavily from other works, that's hard to avoid. The journey though, I thought, was amazing.
 
I really think this show is overrated by how much everyone talked about it.

It's been mildly fun, but it was never 'gripping' or sucked me in to watch the next episode asap. After the initial novelty of 80's setting wears off, the central plot is pretty much nothing special.

I think I stopped watching just before the final episode. Haven't even thought about going back.
 
Zeze said:
Yea it has the formula to please the mass audience- 80's flashback, ET-like setting, and the always fun superhero powers (telekinesis).
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I think it goes beyond "mass audience" but it still comes back to individual tastes. Not all media is for everyone.

I generally dislike a lot of shows that seem to make "mass audiences" foam at the mouth. But this show just tickled me right. 😀
 
Binged through this and loved it. I'm a kid of the 80's and did a ton of D&D growing up and rode around on my bike all time. This was like a sci-horror version of Goonies to me. Tons of cliches, sure. But really was very fun and hit all the nostalgia boxes for me.

I was basically "Mike" growing up 😛
 
vi edit said:
Binged through this and loved it. I'm a kid of the 80's and did a ton of D&D growing up and rode around on my bike all time. This was like a sci-horror version of Goonies to me. Tons of cliches, sure. But really was very fun and hit all the nostalgia boxes for me.

I was basically "Mike" growing up 😛
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Yeah I too was like Mike growing up... hey waitaminute I am Mike! hahaha
Maybe a dash of Dustin thrown in, but a lot of Mike.

As for the show, there were absolutely a ton of cliches, but intentionally. And that's what helped make it such a great show. So excited for next season!
 
KeithTalent said:
It's extremely overrated. I still liked it though.

KT
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I wouldn't necessarily call it overrated as much as I'd say people act like it has no flaws, or act like it is liked purely due to nostalgia (which is not true). I have ignored most of the real discussion about the show because it seems like discussions of pop culture now either is clickbait bullshit or basically insane rambling conspiracy theory level crap, but I think a comparison that would be interesting would be to the movie Super 8, which I think tried to trade on a lot of the same aspects, and despite it actually being superior in some regards, I think ultimately it fell a little flat. I'll have to watch it again to see what makes Stranger Things work better. Off the top of my head, I'd say it was the characters, especially the young group (both focus on a young group of nerdy-ish kids). They weren't bad in Super 8 (most memorable part actually), but they stole the show in Stranger Things (Eleven especially).

It is probably the show I've liked most in...quite a while. Halt and Catch Fire was close (and I think it too had a lot of nostalgia but was more than nostalgia that made it great).

My main issue is that the monster was just bad. Not just the medicore CGI (which at least it was not quite Pennywise turns out to be a hilariously laughably bad spider), but it was so generic and not well realized, in that it was just a stupid monster that wanted to feed (which hell they could've made it want to feed on "childlike wonder" or some nonsense, not the weird "blood attracts it" angle that ended up just being contrivance to suit the story when they needed it to; yes I realize they likely did it to keep it somewhat grounded, but the blood angle ended up pretty wonky) but had the potential to be something so much more and seemed like it was being setup to be but then just fizzled out. Like it was an X-Files "monster of the week" level monster that got dragged into an entire season worth of episodes. I get a strong impression that it was either intended to be more of a minor aspect and the focus was more on Matthew Modine and the evil government entity, or different in way that made it being such a focus work better and that got changed when they saw it would be a hit and realized the potential for much more.
 
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darkswordsman17 said:
I wouldn't necessarily call it overrated as much as I'd say people act like it has no flaws, or act like it is liked purely due to nostalgia (which is not true). I have ignored most of the real discussion about the show because it seems like discussions of pop culture now either is clickbait bullshit or basically insane rambling conspiracy theory level crap, but I think a comparison that would be interesting would be to the movie Super 8, which I think tried to trade on a lot of the same aspects, and despite it actually being superior in some regards, I think ultimately it fell a little flat. I'll have to watch it again to see what makes Stranger Things work better. Off the top of my head, I'd say it was the characters, especially the young group (both focus on a young group of nerdy-ish kids). They weren't bad in Super 8 (most memorable part actually), but they stole the show in Stranger Things (Eleven especially).

It is probably the show I've liked most in...quite a while. Halt and Catch Fire was close (and I think it too had a lot of nostalgia but was more than nostalgia that made it great).

My main issue is that the monster was just bad. Not just the medicore CGI (which at least it was not quite Pennywise turns out to be a hilariously laughably bad spider), but it was so generic and not well realized, in that it was just a stupid monster that wanted to feed (which hell they could've made it want to feed on "childlike wonder" or some nonsense, not the weird "blood attracts it" angle that ended up just being contrivance to suit the story when they needed it to; yes I realize they likely did it to keep it somewhat grounded, but the blood angle ended up pretty wonky) but had the potential to be something so much more and seemed like it was being setup to be but then just fizzled out. Like it was an X-Files "monster of the week" level monster that got dragged into an entire season worth of episodes. I get a strong impression that it was either intended to be more of a minor aspect and the focus was more on Matthew Modine and the evil government entity, or different in way that made it being such a focus work better and that got changed when they saw it would be a hit and realized the potential for much more.
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I remember really disliking the children actors in Super 8, so that might be the difference (at least for me). That said there's still plenty of things in Stranger Things that could have been improved, but I was more interested in that show than I ever was in Super 8.
 
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