this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 53 points 5 months ago (3 children)

They're not kids anymore. Eleven just got married. No way they can pass them off as younger now.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You say that like TV series producers don't have a history of casting adults to play teenagers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Oof, I mean, CGI can go a long way, but still... some actors stay young-looking (Johnny Depp did, for a long time), but it's a large cast and not all of them will. And they have to do it for an entire season, which gets expensive.

But, we'll see. My money's on a fast-forward into the 90's, like someone else suggested.

[–] CleoTheWizard 1 points 5 months ago

Honestly it’s not that hard, they just use clothing and makeup to disguise their height and age. Works really well for the most part.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They could do a time jump.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

How so? Like the ones they've done before? The season jumps ahead a few years? That's what I'm expecting; I guess I'm saying it's not quite right still calling them "kids."

They could do something like X-Men: Days of Future Past, where the Earth has become a sort out Vecna hellish nightmare and they go back in time to fix it, maybe run into their younger selves, or around themselves, like the DS-9 episode Trials and Tribble-ations. It'd be a pretty sad knock-off plot device, and it'd be expensive for them to run an entire season like that.

Anyway, all I was saying that they're not kids anymore. I think it was the recent announcement of Millie Bobby Brown's marriage that really made me aware of how much time has passed. Season 1 first aired 8 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I always thought they'd do an I.T style band gets back together in the 90s

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

That's probably wise. 90's nostalgia seems to be "in" these days.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do they mean a classic DnD foe, or a foe with the name of an entirely unrelated DnD monster tacked on?

[–] Ibaudia 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

In season 4 it's """""""Vecna"""""""" (a kid named Henry who got experimented on by some scientists) so probably

[–] Archpawn 6 points 5 months ago

That's what all of it is. They just started naming everything after D&D monsters because they play D&D.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (3 children)

OMG how can they survive such a vociferous beast!? :-P

Though I stopped watching after the abysmal season 2 - is the rest of it worthwhile?

[–] Mozingo 30 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Season 2 was the worst in my opinion, with the most recent season being about on par with the first.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I liked season 4, but season 1 just can't be topped for me because of how grounded it was. Just normal characters from a small town experiencing supernatural things in a way that's believable. The rest of the show is good as long as you let go of any wishes that it stayed grounded like season 1.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Season 1 is also great because it did a great job having the kids be basically doing ET, the teens doing a camp horror and the parents doing a cold war conspiracy thriller.

Every season since of course needs to alter the group compositions, so we rarely get this again, although the elements are still there, they're now shaken up enough that the show is often more focused on riffing on its own formula then emulating the media that inspired it. And that's fine, it should probably be a good thing that it's not in the shadow of it's inspirations, but man do I miss that specific vibe.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Fun fact: season 4 was filmed in Lithuania, some Lithuanian actors played minor roles.

[–] TheBat 5 points 5 months ago

Both season 2 and 3 sucked because they just kept going back to the portal, but without any substance. Felt like running in circles.

I think season 4 should have been the second season with elements from season 2 and 3 added in.

[–] Aganim 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

For me it was season 3 that I found the worst, too much slapstick and I disliked how they turned Hopper into a walking bastion of juvenile insecure comic relief. Season 4 on the other hand rocked again, much darker and a better balance between seriousness and humour.

[–] stufkes 1 points 5 months ago

No way, how can you rate 2 higher than 3? I skip the entire third season on rewatch

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The show was started with a pair of guys - I forget if they were brothers but they were at least reputedly friends - who had a vision of what they wanted to do. They broke apart as the show was renewed after the first seasons though, hence that immediate drop in quality from this magical wonderland to "grrr, watch beast go smash into goo".

From what I read, they told themselves they would have (at least) two rules: (1) never use CGI - only puppets - for the purity of what seeing them, and more importantly not seeing them, conveys; and (2) do not "sell out" the show merely for reasons of profit. Money is fine but don't continue it unless there is a real story that wants to be told.

After the financial success of the first season, one of the co-creators left, and the second season was literally a different show, yet Netflix lied to us all and heavily pushed it as if it were the same as the first, for profits. It backfired, and revealed all the more how Shitflix just pushes forward purely for profits at the expense of offering much that is actually worth watching.

But if it got better after that, I might push through, one day. :-|

Edit: oops, I meant this in reply to [email protected]'s comment.

[–] Mozingo 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Where are you getting this information? I see that the Duffer Brothers were still on as producers and writers for season 2.

What I am reading is that they originally intended for the show to be a one-off or an anthology, but once they realized that they had a massive success, one that relied heavily on the likability of the kids, they changed their mind and started working on a sequel. Season 2 sucks because they were never intending on making it, and had a time crunch. With the later seasons though, they've known they were going to make them for years, and they had time to write better interconnected stories, so they've been improving with season 4 and hopefully 5.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Really? I recalled reading an article about season 2, when I tried to look up wtf happened bc season 2 was just so shockingly bad, and incongruously so seeing at how great season 1 was. Their relationship must have just been strained but not broken, or the article could have been making shit up, or perhaps over time I've misremembered things. But I definitely recalled how one or more likely both of them wanted to use puppets (in season 1) but then had to make that mess of a CGI crap monster in season 2 - as you say for the sake of the deadline (aka profits over the integrity of the storytelling process, if they could have taken the time to have done it right).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

S3 was the worst one in my opinion, but everybody is different. I just feel like the massacred Hopper’s character to pay homage to the “loose cannon cop” of the 80’s.

[–] Spider2013 2 points 5 months ago

I am on the same boat, and from the replies, i am not going to watch it

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (3 children)

TBH I never got into Stranger Things. All of these critically acclaimed TV shows are always like "OH TRUST ME IT GETS GOOD AFTER THE FIRST 3 HOURS" like nah I'm good, mate.

[–] stufkes 47 points 5 months ago (1 children)

ST is immediately good. You just don't like it, and that's fine. Season 1 was critically acclaimed for good reasons.

[–] Telodzrum 25 points 5 months ago

ST is good out of the gate. I found it just fell off hard after S1. Hat’s off to the marketing team though. They saturated the internet with gifs and image macros and even managed to get a meme template generated.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What is your favourite TV series?

Would you recommend it to others?

Would you recommend it if the first 3 hours weren't very entertaining, but were necessary for plot development?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Not the guy you're talking to, but my opinion is the only good shows spend time building their world like that. It shows the world is complex and matters. If you blow past that then your world must either be identical to ours or it isn't interesting.

My favorite show I think is Battlestar: Galactica. You have to watch a entire miniseries before it gets into the swing of things; when the episodes start. The viewer needs to be immersed in the world to be able to understand the stakes and actually care about what's happening, for any world anyone creates that isn't our own.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Idk if I have a favorite TV series but I guess some recent picks would be The Midnight Club and Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, both of which are pretty gripping from early on tbh. If both of them took multiple episodes for stuff to start happening and multiple seasons to resolve any plotlines then I would never recommend them to anybody: at that point reading books is more thrilling.

A series serves better as a collection of stories whose whole is more meaningful than their parts.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Depends on the person I suppose.

I thought Game of Thrones was dull to start, but I was glad to have stuck with it while it was airing. It's a shame it turned into shit though.

[–] psycho_driver 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

All you had to do in GoT was make it to the end of the first episode and then you're like "whoa wait aren't those two brother and sister?!?"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

I can arrive at the same amazement with a random selection on PornHub

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

I think Game of Thrones had lots of intrigue in the first few episodes but I also didn't like that one because I'm not a big fan of incest, murdering children, discussion of if prostitutes do or do not constitute skill in getting laid, and rape by the ocean. Also, sociopolitical landscapes of medieval Europe in grimdark lack of proper succession contexts.

But I won't judge people who do like it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

at that point reading books is more thrilling.

Tell me you don't read without telling me.

[–] Telodzrum 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] Butterpaderp 6 points 5 months ago

Yes, but these last couple seasons have been taking a while to come out

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Ain't that the truth

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Meh, how many of you want a DM but never got a chance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

A classic D&D foe - like, a Duergar?