July 4th
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEG3bmU_WaI
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Holy cow the aesthetic! The new cast! Looks super Stand by Me/Sandlot, as if they could rope more nostalgia-gasms out of people than they already have.
Eleven/Max and Steve/Dustin friendships are the combos we need.
Anyone notice The Guest shot / rip off / err homage? The Under the Skin rip off / homage was noticeable in the first season. I also don't think they will ever recapture the cozy self-contained atmosphere of the first season again.
That said, who am I kidding, I will watch the shit out of this.
Do you mean gun dude coming out of the mirrors?
That's the one. Around the 1:42 mark. Of course, I swear The Guest swiped that from some 80s or 90s action or maybe horror movie (I can't think of which one right now), which in turn swiped it from The Lady From Shanghai.
EDIT -- Enter the Dragon and Manhattan Murder Mystery both had The Lady From Shanghai ending homages, but I still think I've seen it done in other genre films from the 80s and 90s.
Also John Wick 2 definitely cribbed it, but knowingly, probably.
I prefer S2 over S1.
WTF was this new trailer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3L1qrisKFE
Blasted through this with the wife this weekend. It's much dumber than the previous two seasons but I somehow felt more entertained overall. (doesn't help that I barely remember season 1 and there's very little season 2 references) I get a Return of the Jedi vibe where the entire group doesn't reunite until the end of the second to last episode. I love that. Everyone is off doing their thing, and they end up together (again).
The after credits scene was unnecessary. Of course []
I started watching Refn's Too Old to Die Young the other week, but stopped after feeling like "am I really going to watch all 20 hours or whatever of this thing?"... but after watching Stranger Things 3, I kinda wish I stuck with it instead of jumping into this.
This is safe and formulaic almost to the point of mediocrity. I mean, I still like parts intermittently, but more so than even Season 2, does this increasingly feel like fan service going through the motions.
I'm on the third episode. I don't care about the Nancy-Jonathan subplot. El and Max are adorable together, and Steve and Dustin make for great bros. So far so good.
Oh yeh. That's one thing I forgot to mention. This is Steve's coming out party. By far the best character in S3.
This season was AWESOME. Best season by far. Zero filler.
This was my wife's reaction too. I also got the most enjoyment out of this season, but it becomes a little ridiculous towards the latter half of the season.
Also, did they even explain []
I'm not sure if they did or not, but I think it goes []
This part I do remember...[]
Some spoilers ahoy:
Some of this season is noticeably weaker. It falls victim to tropes this time instead of doing something more interesting with them (just as a small example, there's not one, not two, but three moments, maybe more, where people are having an argument and a character has "had it" and bursts in with a fusillade of "cutting thru the bs," leaving everyone speechless with clarity and a "yikes don't piss that one off" silliness). The "girlfriend who lives in another town" doesn't really work except for the climactic payoff, which is smashingly good juxtaposed against the danger--so good, in fact, it makes you realize how much of the rest isn't quite matching that level. Otherwise there is sinew here that doesn't really work, or maybe only really works for people who haven't experienced these elements much before? There are times when it feels like it's become a little too full of itself. Poor Noah Schnapp's Will was such a standout presence in S2 but here is reduced to feeling the back of his neck in 90% of his scenes and maybe being gay. The writing/directing/acting choices for Hopper continue to send some, ah, mixed messages regarding his parenting--I'm pretty sure in S2 he teetered back and forth along the line of being outright abusive to El, but it's barely identified as much more than him being gruff/lost his daughter/loses his temper/can't deal with his feelings. The Russians are.....well, they're certainly '80s Russians.
And yet for all that there's still a lot to enjoy. I like that the Duffers' response to all the whispy shadows of Seasons 1 and 2 is to go waaaaay in the opposite direction with the Big Bad this time. Jesus Christ for a TV-14 show this has some gnarly shit in it. I loved it, with all its obvious inspiration from The Blob and The Thing, the latter of which is sorta painfully danced around in one awkward moment. Similarly, the [] is probably too on-the-nose cheesy to work, but fuck it, it still did, at least for me. I liked most of Season 2 quite a bit, probably about as much as Season 1, though in different ways and for different reasons. This is a small backslide, but when it's working, it's really cookin'. The horror elements come back in a big, gooey, effective way. It needs to find a better groove vis-a-vis the kids growing up if the show is to continue.
Parts of the final episode are great, and genuinely emotional, even if [] isn't really dead. I think they leave it ambiguous enough just in case there isn't a 4th season for some reason, you can pretend they're still dead. I'm a huge Neverending Story fan, so the best part of the entire season was the reveal of Dustin's girlfriend in SLC and their duet. I hope that girl comes back in the next season (if there is one). She's adorkable. I know its become a running gag, but I wish the writers didn't always dunk on Steve. I don't think Ethan-Uma character mentioned she's a full blown lesbian, just that she had a crush on the one girl in class, so I still think there's a chance for those two.
I think Priah Ferguson's expanded role is a nice metaphor-in-miniature for what didn't work this season. They took something that worked well in small doses in the second season and blew it up way too big--giving her approximately one note and letting her hammer away at it over and over again--almost entirely because her sassy-child routine got fan buzz and clicks in the second season. They figured, "People liked this, so they'll like it even more if we turn her up to 11 [ahem] the next time." Often that doesn't really work unless it's handled with some care. And there was quite a bit not really handled with care this season. Granted, I don't think anything in S3 was as purely, flatly dead-on-arrival as the runaways nonsense in S2, but still...
EDIT: I realized I didn't say anything at all about the Thurman-Hawke kid. She was good. I liked her....Oh shit and also I liked that Cara Buono got more substantial stuff to work with! That was handled well.
And good work everyone.
This season sucked.