It’s amazing when done well, and terrible when done badly.
There’s a stark difference between people all interjecting at the same time with their own thoughts and opinions, and people saying one sentence, but with different people saying each part just so that each character can talk in the scene.
It’s one of the few pieces of media where the characters will talk at the same time and sometimes over each other.
It’s what I think sets Sunny apart from most shows out there and why it has a cult following. There’s tons of shows about dumpster fires (shameless) but IASIP continues to be a crowd favorite.
This probably sounds petty but I just could not enjoy Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, chiefly because so many scenes were just people talking turns finishing each others’ sentences to deliver ominous exposition
Negative. They dropped the ball with part 1. The Final Reckoning is fantastic. My favorite part is the 15 minute prologue that rapid-fire wraps up all the bullshit from part 1 and stops just short of looking into the lens and apologizing to the audience for it.
eh... While I absolutely enjoyed Dead Reckoning , the whole plot felt like a Dead End (due to the previous film)
Fantastic action but... not much substance apart from some payoffs
One of the worst offenders I've ever seen for this. I hate to say it, 'cause I massively respect the effort Cruise put into the action sequences for those two movies, but the writing was shockingly bad. All that money spent on great actors and crazy effects & stunts, and nobody thought to keep more than $5 on hand for hiring a writer.
I still enjoyed dead reckoning. It has the classic and characteristic fun and whimsy of the MI series. Final reckoning was a slog fest for me. I think Tom cruise has been sniffing his own farts for too long and thinks he's now Jesus, suffering for the sins of the world. It was painful to watch really. I've rewatched the older MI movies so many times because they were so much fun but I have no interest of ever revisiting this one.
Four? Where they abandoned the entire thing that made it likeable (small people banding together and doing whatever they could for each other) and just had the small town sheriff get into a machine gun battle with the monster that had JUST taken down an entire group of similarly armed trained soldiers and become the most laughable action movie for no goddamn reason?
You make a good point, and four definitely has its share of problems, but it’s also fairly competent. Definitely a damn sight better than season three. Season five isn’t quite as bad as that; it’s a lot more mixed, but it’s still really bad. Decent character work in places, but also a lot of contrived bullshit, out of character nonsense, and plainly visible hand of the author
All seasons are really good, although S2 is the least innovative.
It’s a universally acclaimed all time classic, it’s for some reason insanely hated on reddit. Everywhere else this show is discussed, people actually discuss it. Only on here people bring it up to shit on it
I suspect it’s because dumb people feel like smart special snowflakes for hating on what’s popular.
Edit: now with source for all the mouth breathers offended that their shit tastes aren’t reflective of reality
It’s definitely not BUUUT I will go watch it in the theater because it looks fucking good. Then I’ll watch it again at home because all my lights sync up and that looks pretty cool after some magic chocolate.
I feel like people who say that haven’t actually watched Dances with Wolves.
Edit: After thinking about it, it makes me wonder if saying “it’s just like…” started out as a concerted effort to delegitimize the intended message and modern commentary. By looking at it through the lens of it being a copy of a previous work of fiction (that includes some pretty strong historical commentary), it blocks new conversations based on current themes.
Lmao rotten tomatoes is the most disingenuous barometer of quality there is. Its rating system basically is just asking if something is passable to watch or not, not if it’s actually quality. I can find plenty of reviews critical of the current season of stranger things because it’s not very good sorry.
As someone who's always enjoyed pretty much all of Stranger Things but only really thought small parts of it were great, I always find it odd how much Reddit hates it. The whole show is built around regurgitating cliche's from 80s movies, and they've always done that. But at some point everyone got bored of it because it's been going on for so long and that translates to the whole show being fucking awful now apparently.
the amount of love it gefs from people who never saw a decent show before like the guy you replied to leads to a proportionate reaction by the people who are annoyed by the hype.
i fell off somewhere after S1. I can see why people like the show and if it brings you enjoyment all the way through, good for you. But acting as if it were an "universally acclaimed" master piece is at best eye rolley and at worst kind of an attack on people that didn't love it. it's not enough to like the show (like you did), everyone else must like it too, or they are objectively wrong. and since people don't like to be told they are objectively wrong, they get defensive and start over proportionately attacking the show.
Nah it’s a good show. Not flawless but well executed plot wise with good characters despite the occasional formulaic conversation, and I have to give them credit for recognizing that after 5 seasons it was time to wrap it up cohesively.
The writers for stranger things should have kept with the original plan and made it an anthology series. There's been nothing but diminishing returns since season 1
American Horror Story really cracked the code on this one. Do your Anthology series, just use the same actors every season. The writers get their creative freedom, and the audience gets to keep seeing the actors they fell in love with in season 1
Plus it keeps the show feeling fresh. Each season of AHS is a different sub-genre of horror/suspense thriller, so if one season isn’t as good it won’t alienate the viewer because next season will be different anyway.
Hard agree, and I really like some of the later added characters. But... honestly, would have preferred the continuation to s1 be a spin off, so we still could've gotten the anthology series with new spooks every season.
Yep, this is my stance too. And I think that S2 and S3 are fine but nothing special.
I never really understand why S4 gets the ridiculous amount of hate here that it does. If that had been the finale to the show I would have said it went out on a very high note.
I don't dislike S5, but it's clearly a big step down on all fronts.
Yeah 4 was definitely an improvement. 4 felt very bloated though and they kept their best actor behind bars for nearly the whole thing. They kept trying to give Robin “funny” lines despite the fact that she’s just not funny, meanwhile the funniest character on the show is in a death camp.
With the sheer number of retcons this season alone, the only way it could be true it was always planned is if they went WAY off script and are desperately trying to get back to where it was supposed to end originally.
I’ve been saying the same thing since season 2. Season 1 ended with enough cliff hangers that season 2 was justifiable in terms of wrapping up the story, but everything after that felt completely unnecessary and they should’ve just made a new story and characters for season 3
I mean... High-key I feel this way about pretty much every modern TV series. Any halfway-decent series coming out of America these days is 1 season of high quality supporting 3-5 seasons of dogshit.
I knew S2 of Andor wasn't gonna be worth shit as soon as S1 ended. I don't think theres a single modern show that improves in S2.
I say these days, but what I really mean is TV is disposable. This has been true for decades. It was just as true in 2005 when Supernatural came out. Fuck it was true in 1997 with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At least back then we got 2-3 good seasons.
I knew S2 of Andor wasn't gonna be worth shit as soon as S1 ended.
Hold up, HUH? Andor S2 is just as good if not better than S1, IMO.
For most of the "mainstream" shows I can agree with your point but there are exceptions. Andor was quality throughout. Better Call Saul was a slow burn that was consistent quality throughout if not improved throughout its run. Succession ramped up from S1-S2 but started to decline/get tired later on. Arrested Development had 2-3 banger seasons before the abomination of the reboot.
Most shows don't make it past one season, so when it happens the creators and writers are often scrambling to tell more story. Especially when it's driven by an overarching narrative. X of the week shows with little else going on between episodes have a much easier time of maintaining quality over time.
"it was never their plan, it was just what they told Netflix their idea was".... so.... it was their plan. and Netflix demanded something else or the show wouldn't get produced at all...
Don't they do that every time? Like the Demogorgon was the big bad of season 1 but it wasn't anything like the actual giant snake-armed baboon demon lord from D&D.
I think the Stranger Thing writers just knew about D&D as a vague idea that was popular with nerds in the 80's and just pulled random names from its bestiary as references.
To be fair, it's a bunch of kids naming the monster after the scariest/strongest monster they encountered in D&D. It was never about their resemblance to the D&D monster. After that the name just stuck. They tried a little harder with the Mind Flayer (mind control and tentacles) and unintentionally were pretty spot on for Vecna (former human with powers that turned evil and is now immortal).
"okay guys we gotta bring back every character, nobody can die, everyone is super cool, and also several teenagers are noticeably almost 30 now."
Literally the only interesting aspect has been Steve and henderson. Everyone else feels so "look guys it's your favorite characters back for one more season!"
Add to this that Steve and Henderson have been MUCH better in the past. They chose this season to be the one where they get into overly dramatic fights at nonsensical times and overly bicker while steve pines for an ex (again) which, frankly, all undercuts his brilliant growth post season 1.
I mean the fights they had were fair. A bad time? Sure, but how much abuse is Steve supposed to take before he finally holds his ground. They're clearly stressed out.
I getchu, but for me, too much of it seemed out of character for the sake of separating them so that team A could fail and make a cliffhanger ending.
Like, we’ve seen them through worse at that point, and Steve knows what that death meant to Dustin. So, Steve diminishing the death, Dustin full-on fist fighting him like he did the bullies, then Steve getting up and leaving Dustin on the floor with an “im done” felt overly cold for Steve and Dustin. It felt like we’re manufacturing drama there and stretching it out for sake of plot convenience instead of honest character development and growth.
I might be too critical, but i do think they’ve been some of the best written characters on the show. So, it really stands out if their writing feels temporarily weak in service of creating drama or so that plot can happen
That huge fight at the worst possible time, just to facilitate the walkie talkie breaking, there’s so many times this season where I can clearly see the hand of the writer.
It's not just last season syndrome. That's underselling it imo. It legitimately is terrible and suffers from many of the same pitfalls as S8 of GoT. But ya, it's not that level of bad. It's still very notably bad though.
No it doesn't. For all it's drawbacks it doesn't have series-ruining character assassination and mindnumbingly blatant plot holes. The writing getting a bit tired and contrived does not equate to the disaster of GoT S7/S8.
It really isn't. It's all just feeling a bit tired and contrived at this point, pacing is off, the show's worst excesses dialled up, etc. But people comparing it to GOT S8 are out of their minds; it's still perfectly watchable and, dare I say, enjoyable television.
I don't think so. Personally it feels like its just re-hashing things from older seasons, but its not nearly as big of a drop in quality as game of thrones did.
It absolutely isn’t people are just realizing it’s their last chance to hate on “popular thing” and they’ve gotta get it out of their system. Same people that cannot wait to tell you how uninvested they became (and therefore the world) when the seasons took too long, despite higher and higher viewership every single time.
Is it going to end up being the best season? I really doubt it. Is it internally inconsistent and committing to characters acting completely contradictory to prior characterization for plot expediency like the end of GoT? Also no.
I do think splitting the season up in chunks the way they have is harmful though, and if past seasons had released this way I think you’d have seen a lot of similar complaints. Go back and watch the first half of season 2 then pretend you need to wait like a month for the back half of it, you probably wouldn’t bother since jack shit had so far gone on. Everything comes together for the last 2 episodes and usually ends up being pretty satisfying. Remember, except for 2 episodes of season 4, this show never strayed from the all-at-once drop binge-watch method Netflix was known for. If you could get all the way to the end all at once the stuff that’s bothering a lot of viewers wouldn’t be so bothersome weighed against the whole, but you can’t get that whole as fast this time.
Stranger Things seasons are always pretty backloaded, and frankly, aren’t too structurally dissimilar from how LOTR got split up. It takes you 2 movies just to get halfway there, then the 3rd one packs the rest in. Like how long does it take Shelob to show up in the movie compared to how it’s paced in the books? Go ahead and watch any prior season, cut it in half, and see how you feel about the narrative momentum when it makes you wait for it. If season 1 came to a dead stop when they “find” the “body” in a quarry and you had to come back weeks later, only for you to find out it’s all a dodge, it would be pretty annoying and would feel pointless. When there’s no gap and you’re moving episode to episode though you wouldn’t have time to get hung up on it.
Everyones clowning on Will for coming out like it was pointless, but he pretty clearly says why he needs to tell everyone lol. Henry uses his secrets against him so now his biggest secret isnt a weapon to be used.
Yeah I get the whole aspect of coming to terms with who you are / coming of age tropes, but the main evil villain’s biggest trump card being “You can’t stop me or I’ll tell everyone you have the big gay” is objectively really, really silly, especially since it’s played as seriously as a car crash. This is 1987, not 1947.
I mean I know nothing about Indiana but he’s surrounded by incredibly supportive close friends and family who have been to literal hell and back with him and the world’s about to end. With that perspective, Vecna banking on any of them giving a shit that he’s gay is kinda ridiculous.
I can completely understand that almost 40 years ago, coming out was scary and dangerous, particularly in certain places, but the context of the show and the framing of this as Vecna’s trump card makes it absolutely absurd.
I’m from Indiana. Small town Indiana is incredibly conservative I’m not gay, but I know coming out is sometimes terrifying, no matter where and when you do it and who you tell. So I do not agree at all.
They are in the process of literally saving the world, and their friends and family group is established as being supportive and progressive and already includes an out and accepted lesbian couple.
It’s easy to think that someone in that position should just know that of course their family will be on their side of it, look how progressive they are!
But psychologically it’s not that simple, especially when the larger culture and society around you are visibly hostile. The smallest seed of doubt can make you pause every time you are about to come out. For individuals it’s going to vary on how safe they feel, even with progressive supportive family and friends around them. There’s no magic place where suddenly every single person’s doubt will logically vanish, because this is complex deeply-felt shit that doesn’t play by the rules of pure external logic.
It’s entirely believable to me, a queer xennial woman raised in a progressive household by a new age mum, that a guy in Indiana in the 80s would still be uncertain about coming out even to progressive friends and family. It took me years to find the courage to come out to my mum, even though she had never given me logical reason to think she would be against it. And even then, after some years where she supported me, when her reaction to telling her about my latest SO and I dating was “good, I think you should!” because we are so well-suited to each other, it was still an odd relief. Because this shit is complicated emotionally. It’s not logical.
Shit like this can be scary even for people who are well-placed to come out with support. Some people manage to come out without hesitation, great. That doesn’t mean it does or can be expected to work that way for everyone in that position.
Cool. It’s a fantasy show and they have problems that are, at the time of his coming out, much more pressing than his sexuality, and the notion that Vecna could use it as a weapon against him given the current stakes is completely absurd. This isn’t some other, human bad guy using it as blackmail / leverage. The context is what makes this silly.
So I don’t ask this to be condemning or judgmental: are you gay or do you have any close gay friends? Because your rationale implies a lot of ignorance (and I use that term not maliciously, but in the literal sense of “not knowing”).
I’ve had two very close friends come out to me. One was literally my best friend in the world. We’d been friends for almost a decade before he was comfortable telling me. And I’d never expressed anything but support for the LGBTQ community. And this was in the late 2010s when we were in our late 20s. He had every reason to be comfortable telling his close friends this part of himself l, yet was still nervous that it would change these great relationships he’d developed and he’d need to start over. He wouldn’t even tell his family until a few years later.
I have a lot of friends in the LGBTQ Community and their stories are often similar; there’s a legitimate fear that somehow- despite having friends there for you through thick and thin- finding out you’re gay will be a step too far.
So as a viewer, a high school kid in small town Indiana 40 years ago to be terrified of his close friends finding out he’s gay… yeah that tracks.
The big plan scene combined with the Will scene was giving off Council of Elrond vibes, but rushed and disjointed. This should have been an iconic scene with all of the characters finally together.
There has been so much world building and character development with each season trying to take it to the next level, but too many threads were created and there's not enough time to properly weave them into a tapestry that is satisfying.
Oh so that is what the fellowship was trying to do! Thank you for this succinct break down of the stakes of lord of the rings. If only Tolkien had more knowledge of 80s culture I would be able to understand the Silmarillion.
Feanor with his slicked back Gordon Gekko hair and coked out anger went to Tyrion (basically the LA of Valinor) to confront his brother Fingolfin who had the Muscles of Schwarzenegger! <- See it just makes so much more sense
Vol 2 of final season dropped on Christmas. And.... Let's just say it wasn't as good as everyone hoped. Latest episode is 6.7 on IMDb currently and it's constantly dropping.
So only 1 episode remains and people are afraid it might be like many other good series whose ending was terrible.
There was already a level of hype backlash happening in season one, when it become the biggest thing in the world just for being a "pretty good" Stephen King homage.
Season two was pretty much just more of the same, but sloppier and less compelling, featuring a miserable, ham-handed attempt at a backdoor pilot for a spinoff no one wanted.
By season three, the show was seeing more and more criticism for seasons taking too long to come out, the actors aging out of the roles, every episode being an overproduced three-hour "movie" instead of just being episodes, plots going nowhere, any sense of actual, meaningful progression just dying on the vine as they aimlessly tack on more and more convoluted "lore" that no one could possibly care about, half the characters being completely underwritten and underused, the remaining half getting less and less likable...
Season four doubled down on all of that.
Season five continues the pattern.
Along the way, Noah Schnapp came out as a hardcore Zionist, and Millie Bobbie Brown revealed that she doesn't watch movies and doesn't care about acting as an art form at all.
Meanwhile, the production design's gotten more and more hate, mostly for things like hair and costumes. The continuity is a mess.
And, yes, there's a reasonable amount of homophia happening with this latest "volume" dump of episodes because the one kid came out. Let's be real.
To be fair, I don't think not liking movies is necessarily objectionable as an actor. I didn't like or care about McDonald's when I was serving food for them, but the food was still good (or at least at the quality you'd expect from McDonald's). If her performance was good, it's not really relevant.
That said I haven't seen the show, so I don't know if she's any good as an actor.
Nah, this season is wildly over produced, all the actors look like 30 year old and not teens, and the writing and pacing just is lackluster for only one episode remaining.
The penultimate episode, which is often the best and outperforms the finale, was awful.
Yeah, I really liked the first season of Stranger Things, and I still plan to watch all of the final season, just in case they pull a great ending off, but the last 3 seasons have been pretty terrible in my opinion. Season 4 was fine, but I honestly think Vecna is a lame and nonsensical villain. His design feels to over the top for me. I sort of like that they are going back to Henry with season 5, but it feels disjointed now.
And I'm really starting to dislike both Hopper and Eleven.
I really wish I had watched the new episodes before reading this, because as I was watching them, I couldn’t stop laughing while thinking about this meme.
There is a scene in Black Dynamite where they are FIGURING OUT THE CONSPIRACY (It's on youtube) and that's basically how the hellfire crew has rolled in Season 5.
Who upvoted this? Nothing in this comment makes sense. Systems retaining source code? You think the PS5 copies the source code of the games it play into memory somehow?
The writers of Stranger Things did the same thing with D&D. Literally every scene is being played wrong. Spells, terminology, when and why they're making dice rolls. Yet it's a critical element of how they frame their understanding of The Upside-down.
So them not knowing how an Atari works is perfect.
Atari is a company who made a game system, I guarantee you they had hard drives in the HQ with the code for their games they published and distributed (in this case E.T.). This was not saying that the Atari 2600 retained the code of games played on it
That interrupting each other thing drives me nuts in every show/movie haha
It’s amazing when done well, and terrible when done badly.
There’s a stark difference between people all interjecting at the same time with their own thoughts and opinions, and people saying one sentence, but with different people saying each part just so that each character can talk in the scene.
Reminds me of them all talking over each other in IASIP.
"Can I offer you a nice Eggo in this trying time?"
That is done masterfully however
It’s one of the few pieces of media where the characters will talk at the same time and sometimes over each other.
It’s what I think sets Sunny apart from most shows out there and why it has a cult following. There’s tons of shows about dumpster fires (shameless) but IASIP continues to be a crowd favorite.
IASIP does it fantastically because it’s very accurate to how a bunch of hyped up drinks shout over each other to hear themselves talk.
This probably sounds petty but I just could not enjoy Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, chiefly because so many scenes were just people talking turns finishing each others’ sentences to deliver ominous exposition
Yeah the dropped the ball hard on the last 2... They should be called Mission Impossible Dead Exposition...
What a shame. Especially after Fallout was pretty amazing
Negative. They dropped the ball with part 1. The Final Reckoning is fantastic. My favorite part is the 15 minute prologue that rapid-fire wraps up all the bullshit from part 1 and stops just short of looking into the lens and apologizing to the audience for it.
eh... While I absolutely enjoyed Dead Reckoning , the whole plot felt like a Dead End (due to the previous film)
Fantastic action but... not much substance apart from some payoffs
But the peak story was Fallout
One of the worst offenders I've ever seen for this. I hate to say it, 'cause I massively respect the effort Cruise put into the action sequences for those two movies, but the writing was shockingly bad. All that money spent on great actors and crazy effects & stunts, and nobody thought to keep more than $5 on hand for hiring a writer.
This was exactly the movie I thought of. Rarely seen it so blatant and lazy.
I still enjoyed dead reckoning. It has the classic and characteristic fun and whimsy of the MI series. Final reckoning was a slog fest for me. I think Tom cruise has been sniffing his own farts for too long and thinks he's now Jesus, suffering for the sins of the world. It was painful to watch really. I've rewatched the older MI movies so many times because they were so much fun but I have no interest of ever revisiting this one.
It's called finishing each other's sentences and it's a token of love!
That's how my family always talked to me throughout my life.
Needless to say I've developed quite a stammer.
Thanks, I hate it.
All this is telling me is I should not watch Stranger Things.
Season one was really good
Season 1 was excellent and then season 2 it's like "All that to save the worst character on here?"
Benching Mike for Will in S2 immediately ruined the series for me
Season 4 was the best one. Apart from that I don’t really like it, there are thousands of other and better shows, why is this one so popular…
I really like 1 and 2 if you skip the episodes about 11 since they are completely irrelevant and not well done.
Apparently it's relevant now
"irrelelevent" some might say
Seasons one and four. Everything else? Not so much.
Four? Where they abandoned the entire thing that made it likeable (small people banding together and doing whatever they could for each other) and just had the small town sheriff get into a machine gun battle with the monster that had JUST taken down an entire group of similarly armed trained soldiers and become the most laughable action movie for no goddamn reason?
Season one was amazing...
You make a good point, and four definitely has its share of problems, but it’s also fairly competent. Definitely a damn sight better than season three. Season five isn’t quite as bad as that; it’s a lot more mixed, but it’s still really bad. Decent character work in places, but also a lot of contrived bullshit, out of character nonsense, and plainly visible hand of the author
Season 1 is fine
All seasons are really good, although S2 is the least innovative.
It’s a universally acclaimed all time classic, it’s for some reason insanely hated on reddit. Everywhere else this show is discussed, people actually discuss it. Only on here people bring it up to shit on it
I suspect it’s because dumb people feel like smart special snowflakes for hating on what’s popular.
Edit: now with source for all the mouth breathers offended that their shit tastes aren’t reflective of reality
Ok, let's calm down a bit lol
Edit: little punk slammed me with some new curse words he just learned and then pissed off into the bushes lol
It literally is a fact. Your shit taste isn’t reflected in any of the critical reception
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/stranger_things
Out here swearing at people because they don’t dickride your special little show the way you do is UNHINGED behavior lmao touch grass
Season one was the best season, the rest are pretty shit.
Now defend Avatar. Tell us why Avatar is the best movie of all time.
It’s definitely not BUUUT I will go watch it in the theater because it looks fucking good. Then I’ll watch it again at home because all my lights sync up and that looks pretty cool after some magic chocolate.
The story is pretty forgettable though.
The story is literally just Dances with Wolves
I feel like people who say that haven’t actually watched Dances with Wolves.
Edit: After thinking about it, it makes me wonder if saying “it’s just like…” started out as a concerted effort to delegitimize the intended message and modern commentary. By looking at it through the lens of it being a copy of a previous work of fiction (that includes some pretty strong historical commentary), it blocks new conversations based on current themes.
Lmao rotten tomatoes is the most disingenuous barometer of quality there is. Its rating system basically is just asking if something is passable to watch or not, not if it’s actually quality. I can find plenty of reviews critical of the current season of stranger things because it’s not very good sorry.
Why are you all booing him? He’s right.
Edit: nvm, just read the follow up comments. My downvotes are now also locked and loaded to send this guy to the upside down
As someone who's always enjoyed pretty much all of Stranger Things but only really thought small parts of it were great, I always find it odd how much Reddit hates it. The whole show is built around regurgitating cliche's from 80s movies, and they've always done that. But at some point everyone got bored of it because it's been going on for so long and that translates to the whole show being fucking awful now apparently.
the amount of love it gefs from people who never saw a decent show before like the guy you replied to leads to a proportionate reaction by the people who are annoyed by the hype.
i fell off somewhere after S1. I can see why people like the show and if it brings you enjoyment all the way through, good for you. But acting as if it were an "universally acclaimed" master piece is at best eye rolley and at worst kind of an attack on people that didn't love it. it's not enough to like the show (like you did), everyone else must like it too, or they are objectively wrong. and since people don't like to be told they are objectively wrong, they get defensive and start over proportionately attacking the show.
Watch season 1, honestly.
When that show came out I really hoped they did an anthology thing where each season could be a new story in a different town/time period.
Oh silly me.
Nah it’s a good show. Not flawless but well executed plot wise with good characters despite the occasional formulaic conversation, and I have to give them credit for recognizing that after 5 seasons it was time to wrap it up cohesively.
Actually, this level of infatuation with a snack is quite common among teens.
And me.
Legolas doing fingers guns is what sells it to me.
The writers for stranger things should have kept with the original plan and made it an anthology series. There's been nothing but diminishing returns since season 1
American Horror Story really cracked the code on this one. Do your Anthology series, just use the same actors every season. The writers get their creative freedom, and the audience gets to keep seeing the actors they fell in love with in season 1
Plus it keeps the show feeling fresh. Each season of AHS is a different sub-genre of horror/suspense thriller, so if one season isn’t as good it won’t alienate the viewer because next season will be different anyway.
Loads of different universe versions of Hawkins with slightly older main characters each time? Could have been sick.
AHS fell off hard last few sessions tbh
Yeah I agree. Stranger Things had arch fatigue, but AHS had 'Ryan Murphy has been out of ideas for years' fatigue
Hard agree, and I really like some of the later added characters. But... honestly, would have preferred the continuation to s1 be a spin off, so we still could've gotten the anthology series with new spooks every season.
I enjoyed season 2, season 3 was alright but yeah season 4 lost me.
lol and to me season 1 and season 4 are the best by far.
I just love how different people are
Yep, this is my stance too. And I think that S2 and S3 are fine but nothing special.
I never really understand why S4 gets the ridiculous amount of hate here that it does. If that had been the finale to the show I would have said it went out on a very high note.
I don't dislike S5, but it's clearly a big step down on all fronts.
I think ST has finally reached the life cycle where its become cool to hate. I dont get it. Its a very fun show
Oh definitely, but I think that happened when S4 started breaking all those viewership records.
I think by season 4 I was just kinda over the show, I didn’t hate it necessarily but I wasn’t hyped for it either like I once was
Season 3 was a clown show
Hated 3 but 4 brought me back. It’s not the best show ever but it’s unique with a likeable cast of characters. It’s goofy but it owns it.
Yeah 4 was definitely an improvement. 4 felt very bloated though and they kept their best actor behind bars for nearly the whole thing. They kept trying to give Robin “funny” lines despite the fact that she’s just not funny, meanwhile the funniest character on the show is in a death camp.
Robin is great
She’s not really supposed to be funny, she’s meant to be socially awkward and telling bad jokes.
[deleted]
No
She’s meant to be socially awkward
I remember somewhat enjoying it at the time. Only saw it once though
Season one was the best one for sure.
I read there was a series bible and they planned this whole thing from the beginning. There’s no way that’s true, lol.
With the sheer number of retcons this season alone, the only way it could be true it was always planned is if they went WAY off script and are desperately trying to get back to where it was supposed to end originally.
Like HIMYM
I’ve been saying the same thing since season 2. Season 1 ended with enough cliff hangers that season 2 was justifiable in terms of wrapping up the story, but everything after that felt completely unnecessary and they should’ve just made a new story and characters for season 3
Season 4 was mostly good imo
That would've been fantastic, I'm sad that so few series are in the anthology format anymore.
What do you mean by anthology series? Like separate stories?
Similar to American Horror Story, where each season is different.
I mean... High-key I feel this way about pretty much every modern TV series. Any halfway-decent series coming out of America these days is 1 season of high quality supporting 3-5 seasons of dogshit.
I knew S2 of Andor wasn't gonna be worth shit as soon as S1 ended. I don't think theres a single modern show that improves in S2.
I say these days, but what I really mean is TV is disposable. This has been true for decades. It was just as true in 2005 when Supernatural came out. Fuck it was true in 1997 with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At least back then we got 2-3 good seasons.
Hold up, HUH? Andor S2 is just as good if not better than S1, IMO.
For most of the "mainstream" shows I can agree with your point but there are exceptions. Andor was quality throughout. Better Call Saul was a slow burn that was consistent quality throughout if not improved throughout its run. Succession ramped up from S1-S2 but started to decline/get tired later on. Arrested Development had 2-3 banger seasons before the abomination of the reboot.
Sure, S2 wasn't dogshit. But it was just fine.
S1 was a masterpiece and S2 was okay. I don't got time in my life for just okay anymore.
I agree with your main point but Andor S2 is definitely amazing
Most shows don't make it past one season, so when it happens the creators and writers are often scrambling to tell more story. Especially when it's driven by an overarching narrative. X of the week shows with little else going on between episodes have a much easier time of maintaining quality over time.
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"it was never their plan, it was just what they told Netflix their idea was".... so.... it was their plan. and Netflix demanded something else or the show wouldn't get produced at all...
lol literally every scene after two minutes of season 5
kind of off topic but why do they have a hobbit sized pedestal in rivendell? that thing's like shin height on an elf.
Probably to place flower pots or something as part of the decor. Elrond would have had it cleared off for the sake of the Council though.
It basically survived a direct strike from an axe too though...
Is everything in Rivendell made that strong ha
Cobblers gotta cobble
The garden designer was in a mood and built this to destroy the shins of unsuspecting elves.
They'd also name Sauron after a dnd monster that doesn't represent him in the slightest..
Like a bugbear or something
Don't they do that every time? Like the Demogorgon was the big bad of season 1 but it wasn't anything like the actual giant snake-armed baboon demon lord from D&D.
I think the Stranger Thing writers just knew about D&D as a vague idea that was popular with nerds in the 80's and just pulled random names from its bestiary as references.
To be fair, it's a bunch of kids naming the monster after the scariest/strongest monster they encountered in D&D. It was never about their resemblance to the D&D monster. After that the name just stuck. They tried a little harder with the Mind Flayer (mind control and tentacles) and unintentionally were pretty spot on for Vecna (former human with powers that turned evil and is now immortal).
That's my point haha. They'd absolutely pick the worse name for Sauron instead of anything that would even resemble what he looks like
More like a beholder
As a big fan of stranger things, this latest season has been so bad lol, bringing game of thrones to mind
It CW-cannibalized itself
I haven't watched the new season, but surely there's not way it's as bad as Game of Thrones season 8... right?
It's not THAT bad. It's just suffering from last season syndrome with weird pacing all over the place.
"okay guys we gotta bring back every character, nobody can die, everyone is super cool, and also several teenagers are noticeably almost 30 now."
Literally the only interesting aspect has been Steve and henderson. Everyone else feels so "look guys it's your favorite characters back for one more season!"
Add to this that Steve and Henderson have been MUCH better in the past. They chose this season to be the one where they get into overly dramatic fights at nonsensical times and overly bicker while steve pines for an ex (again) which, frankly, all undercuts his brilliant growth post season 1.
I mean the fights they had were fair. A bad time? Sure, but how much abuse is Steve supposed to take before he finally holds his ground. They're clearly stressed out.
I getchu, but for me, too much of it seemed out of character for the sake of separating them so that team A could fail and make a cliffhanger ending.
Like, we’ve seen them through worse at that point, and Steve knows what that death meant to Dustin. So, Steve diminishing the death, Dustin full-on fist fighting him like he did the bullies, then Steve getting up and leaving Dustin on the floor with an “im done” felt overly cold for Steve and Dustin. It felt like we’re manufacturing drama there and stretching it out for sake of plot convenience instead of honest character development and growth.
I might be too critical, but i do think they’ve been some of the best written characters on the show. So, it really stands out if their writing feels temporarily weak in service of creating drama or so that plot can happen
That huge fight at the worst possible time, just to facilitate the walkie talkie breaking, there’s so many times this season where I can clearly see the hand of the writer.
Tons of contrivances, cliches, dumb nonsense
The Max-Holly plotline (spoilers for episode 4) has been the most interesting for me.
It's not just last season syndrome. That's underselling it imo. It legitimately is terrible and suffers from many of the same pitfalls as S8 of GoT. But ya, it's not that level of bad. It's still very notably bad though.
No it doesn't. For all it's drawbacks it doesn't have series-ruining character assassination and mindnumbingly blatant plot holes. The writing getting a bit tired and contrived does not equate to the disaster of GoT S7/S8.
I didn't say it equates; I said it suffers many of the same pitfalls. Nothing you say will change my opinion on that.
It really isn't. It's all just feeling a bit tired and contrived at this point, pacing is off, the show's worst excesses dialled up, etc. But people comparing it to GOT S8 are out of their minds; it's still perfectly watchable and, dare I say, enjoyable television.
I don't think so. Personally it feels like its just re-hashing things from older seasons, but its not nearly as big of a drop in quality as game of thrones did.
No it's definitely not. GOT ruins the entire show with that season. S1 stranger things was good but not on the same level as GOT s1 thru s4.
It absolutely isn’t people are just realizing it’s their last chance to hate on “popular thing” and they’ve gotta get it out of their system. Same people that cannot wait to tell you how uninvested they became (and therefore the world) when the seasons took too long, despite higher and higher viewership every single time.
Is it going to end up being the best season? I really doubt it. Is it internally inconsistent and committing to characters acting completely contradictory to prior characterization for plot expediency like the end of GoT? Also no.
I do think splitting the season up in chunks the way they have is harmful though, and if past seasons had released this way I think you’d have seen a lot of similar complaints. Go back and watch the first half of season 2 then pretend you need to wait like a month for the back half of it, you probably wouldn’t bother since jack shit had so far gone on. Everything comes together for the last 2 episodes and usually ends up being pretty satisfying. Remember, except for 2 episodes of season 4, this show never strayed from the all-at-once drop binge-watch method Netflix was known for. If you could get all the way to the end all at once the stuff that’s bothering a lot of viewers wouldn’t be so bothersome weighed against the whole, but you can’t get that whole as fast this time.
Stranger Things seasons are always pretty backloaded, and frankly, aren’t too structurally dissimilar from how LOTR got split up. It takes you 2 movies just to get halfway there, then the 3rd one packs the rest in. Like how long does it take Shelob to show up in the movie compared to how it’s paced in the books? Go ahead and watch any prior season, cut it in half, and see how you feel about the narrative momentum when it makes you wait for it. If season 1 came to a dead stop when they “find” the “body” in a quarry and you had to come back weeks later, only for you to find out it’s all a dodge, it would be pretty annoying and would feel pointless. When there’s no gap and you’re moving episode to episode though you wouldn’t have time to get hung up on it.
It’s not. It’s fine. It’s just… fine.
You mean seasons 1-4 game of thrones right? Right?
Everyones clowning on Will for coming out like it was pointless, but he pretty clearly says why he needs to tell everyone lol. Henry uses his secrets against him so now his biggest secret isnt a weapon to be used.
Yeah I get the whole aspect of coming to terms with who you are / coming of age tropes, but the main evil villain’s biggest trump card being “You can’t stop me or I’ll tell everyone you have the big gay” is objectively really, really silly, especially since it’s played as seriously as a car crash. This is 1987, not 1947.
Small town Indiana.
I mean I know nothing about Indiana but he’s surrounded by incredibly supportive close friends and family who have been to literal hell and back with him and the world’s about to end. With that perspective, Vecna banking on any of them giving a shit that he’s gay is kinda ridiculous.
Well, knowing some friends from small town Indiana, is was reputational suicide for them to come out in the mid 2010's, never mind in the 1980's.
This is shit kids end up shunned by their family and homeless at 18 over around there, even today.
Being gay in a small town in rural USA in 1987 was likely to get you beaten and possibly killed
By your supportive, progressive friends and family which already includes an out lesbian couple?
The lesbian couple is definitely not out. Only steve and will know, and robin was kinda freaking out when will found out.
I can completely understand that almost 40 years ago, coming out was scary and dangerous, particularly in certain places, but the context of the show and the framing of this as Vecna’s trump card makes it absolutely absurd.
I’m from Indiana. Small town Indiana is incredibly conservative I’m not gay, but I know coming out is sometimes terrifying, no matter where and when you do it and who you tell. So I do not agree at all.
They are in the process of literally saving the world, and their friends and family group is established as being supportive and progressive and already includes an out and accepted lesbian couple.
It’s easy to think that someone in that position should just know that of course their family will be on their side of it, look how progressive they are!
But psychologically it’s not that simple, especially when the larger culture and society around you are visibly hostile. The smallest seed of doubt can make you pause every time you are about to come out. For individuals it’s going to vary on how safe they feel, even with progressive supportive family and friends around them. There’s no magic place where suddenly every single person’s doubt will logically vanish, because this is complex deeply-felt shit that doesn’t play by the rules of pure external logic.
It’s entirely believable to me, a queer xennial woman raised in a progressive household by a new age mum, that a guy in Indiana in the 80s would still be uncertain about coming out even to progressive friends and family. It took me years to find the courage to come out to my mum, even though she had never given me logical reason to think she would be against it. And even then, after some years where she supported me, when her reaction to telling her about my latest SO and I dating was “good, I think you should!” because we are so well-suited to each other, it was still an odd relief. Because this shit is complicated emotionally. It’s not logical.
Shit like this can be scary even for people who are well-placed to come out with support. Some people manage to come out without hesitation, great. That doesn’t mean it does or can be expected to work that way for everyone in that position.
Cool. It’s a fantasy show and they have problems that are, at the time of his coming out, much more pressing than his sexuality, and the notion that Vecna could use it as a weapon against him given the current stakes is completely absurd. This isn’t some other, human bad guy using it as blackmail / leverage. The context is what makes this silly.
So I don’t ask this to be condemning or judgmental: are you gay or do you have any close gay friends? Because your rationale implies a lot of ignorance (and I use that term not maliciously, but in the literal sense of “not knowing”).
I’ve had two very close friends come out to me. One was literally my best friend in the world. We’d been friends for almost a decade before he was comfortable telling me. And I’d never expressed anything but support for the LGBTQ community. And this was in the late 2010s when we were in our late 20s. He had every reason to be comfortable telling his close friends this part of himself l, yet was still nervous that it would change these great relationships he’d developed and he’d need to start over. He wouldn’t even tell his family until a few years later.
I have a lot of friends in the LGBTQ Community and their stories are often similar; there’s a legitimate fear that somehow- despite having friends there for you through thick and thin- finding out you’re gay will be a step too far.
So as a viewer, a high school kid in small town Indiana 40 years ago to be terrified of his close friends finding out he’s gay… yeah that tracks.
Yeah I’m bi and so’s my girlfriend
Good for you. Doesn’t mean your experience dictates what it’s like for everyone else.
Love it when a straight person lectures me about my own sexuality and I get downvoted for it btw
You original argument was that coming out in 1987 was no big deal haha
Me when I can’t read
I’m not fucking straight, genius. Way to strike out on your assumptions.
I didn’t say anything about your experience of your sexuality, I said it doesn’t dictate what it’s like for the rest of us.
??? 1987 was prime time aids is a literal curse from god to the gays and gay bashing was a thing
"Guys, I'm gay."
"Yeah, so's Robin. Anyway..."
they’re going to beat vecna by shaming him for threatening to out will. fucking homophobe.
Yeah the idea was great. The execution sucked.
The big plan scene combined with the Will scene was giving off Council of Elrond vibes, but rushed and disjointed. This should have been an iconic scene with all of the characters finally together.
There has been so much world building and character development with each season trying to take it to the next level, but too many threads were created and there's not enough time to properly weave them into a tapestry that is satisfying.
Oh so that is what the fellowship was trying to do! Thank you for this succinct break down of the stakes of lord of the rings. If only Tolkien had more knowledge of 80s culture I would be able to understand the Silmarillion.
Feanor with his slicked back Gordon Gekko hair and coked out anger went to Tyrion (basically the LA of Valinor) to confront his brother Fingolfin who had the Muscles of Schwarzenegger! <- See it just makes so much more sense
Gandalf dies to the balrog, comes back as Gandalf the gay in rainbow robes
Rainbow robes were Saruman of Many Colours's thing😄.
Well, JK Rowling did confirm that Gandalf was gay all along.
This season also had a ton of those cliche lines people don’t typically use outside of mockery. And every time, I was like “really? We’re doing this?”
I’m having trouble thinking of examples…
Definitely nailed the flow of half of the conversations on the show. 😆😆
I love Stranger Things by the way. Really enjoying the new season!
I feel like I've missed something; why does everyone seem to hate Stranger Things now?
Vol 2 of final season dropped on Christmas. And.... Let's just say it wasn't as good as everyone hoped. Latest episode is 6.7 on IMDb currently and it's constantly dropping.
So only 1 episode remains and people are afraid it might be like many other good series whose ending was terrible.
It's definitely been going on for a while.
There was already a level of hype backlash happening in season one, when it become the biggest thing in the world just for being a "pretty good" Stephen King homage.
Season two was pretty much just more of the same, but sloppier and less compelling, featuring a miserable, ham-handed attempt at a backdoor pilot for a spinoff no one wanted.
By season three, the show was seeing more and more criticism for seasons taking too long to come out, the actors aging out of the roles, every episode being an overproduced three-hour "movie" instead of just being episodes, plots going nowhere, any sense of actual, meaningful progression just dying on the vine as they aimlessly tack on more and more convoluted "lore" that no one could possibly care about, half the characters being completely underwritten and underused, the remaining half getting less and less likable...
Season four doubled down on all of that.
Season five continues the pattern.
Along the way, Noah Schnapp came out as a hardcore Zionist, and Millie Bobbie Brown revealed that she doesn't watch movies and doesn't care about acting as an art form at all.
Meanwhile, the production design's gotten more and more hate, mostly for things like hair and costumes. The continuity is a mess.
And, yes, there's a reasonable amount of homophia happening with this latest "volume" dump of episodes because the one kid came out. Let's be real.
To be fair, I don't think not liking movies is necessarily objectionable as an actor. I didn't like or care about McDonald's when I was serving food for them, but the food was still good (or at least at the quality you'd expect from McDonald's). If her performance was good, it's not really relevant.
That said I haven't seen the show, so I don't know if she's any good as an actor.
Because Reddit.
Nobody outside of a small, loud minority of mouth breathing redditors hate it. It’s universally acclaimed
I mean it’s fine but let’s be honest it peaked in season 1 and has been uneven ever since.
You should probably decouple your ego and sense of self from the TV show that's about to end, mate.
Nah, this season is wildly over produced, all the actors look like 30 year old and not teens, and the writing and pacing just is lackluster for only one episode remaining.
The penultimate episode, which is often the best and outperforms the finale, was awful.
Yeah, I really liked the first season of Stranger Things, and I still plan to watch all of the final season, just in case they pull a great ending off, but the last 3 seasons have been pretty terrible in my opinion. Season 4 was fine, but I honestly think Vecna is a lame and nonsensical villain. His design feels to over the top for me. I sort of like that they are going back to Henry with season 5, but it feels disjointed now.
And I'm really starting to dislike both Hopper and Eleven.
I really wish I had watched the new episodes before reading this, because as I was watching them, I couldn’t stop laughing while thinking about this meme.
Its so sad, but ye thats exactly how stranger things is written
Im sry, but Ill Never get the Hype around this Show
As someone who grew up with the Atari, this makes me never want to watch Stranger Things.
Boromir: But... what if I want to play it?
Thats exactly what its like
🤣🤣🤣
Man this series sounds wretched
https://preview.redd.it/tgnnzniljv9g1.png?width=1797&format=png&auto=webp&s=621ef00e22b262972454a9131036fbedfc83fc6d
There is a scene in Black Dynamite where they are FIGURING OUT THE CONSPIRACY (It's on youtube) and that's basically how the hellfire crew has rolled in Season 5.
My comment too: Best Alaska Vacation: 5 Reasons to Cruise with Hollander America
'Guys im gay' sent me. Although to be fair it did make some sense for Will to do it then.
The irony is that video game systems retaining source code is a modern thing. The Atari absolutely did not have that kind of capacity.
Sorcerers didn't exist in D&D at the time the show is set, the anachronism unintentionally makes the meme funnier because it's accurate
I was gonna say it's set in, what, 87? Sorcerers were introduced in 3rd Edition which was released in 2000.
Who upvoted this? Nothing in this comment makes sense. Systems retaining source code? You think the PS5 copies the source code of the games it play into memory somehow?
The writers of Stranger Things did the same thing with D&D. Literally every scene is being played wrong. Spells, terminology, when and why they're making dice rolls. Yet it's a critical element of how they frame their understanding of The Upside-down.
So them not knowing how an Atari works is perfect.
The data on game carts/discs/internal memory isn't source code. It's compiled code.
Atari is a company who made a game system, I guarantee you they had hard drives in the HQ with the code for their games they published and distributed (in this case E.T.). This was not saying that the Atari 2600 retained the code of games played on it
From what I'm hearing, anachronistic production errors are par for the course for Stranger Things S5
...Atari the company would retain the source code.
This was so good 🤣
And that's why stranger things is stranger things and not LOTR
This is beautiful 🤌
Never watched Stranger Things, but this is probably a good enough synopsis.
Not too much difference really. The movies are closer to The Stranger Things than to the Book.
If you write high fantasy in the style of a 80's style action show it sounds weird? Gee, who'd of thunk it??
Much better than the original you nerds.
I need my Duff bro’s Lord of the Rings now thanks.