Still cool, but no longer awesome…
Hi fellow film lovers! So, I know I’ve been absent for quite a while and I’m really sorry about that. The thing is, I’ve been super busy and still am, but as I binge watched Stranger Things season 3 on the weekend, my fingers were eager to type out my thoughts about it and share them with you!
When you read the headline, you’ll probably look like Steve, Dustin and Robin in this picture. “No longer awesome?”, you’ll ask, “Have you lost it? YOU’RE no longer awesome, Sarah!”
Yeah, we’ll see about that. Let me just explain why I’m making such very mean allegations…
Stranger Things is a Netflix original series of the genre science fiction/horror/mystery. It’s written and directed by the Duffer brothers and stars Winona Ryder, Millie Bobby Brown, David Harbour, Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp as the original main cast. The show was released in July 2016 and is set in the fictional town of Hawinks in Indiana, during the 1980s. While secretly conducting experiments into the supernatural, scientists of the Hawkins National Laboratory open a portal to another dimension, the so-called “Upside Down”. Monstrous creatures find their way from the Upside Down into the town of Hawkins and terrorize the town’s inhabitants. Mike Wheeler and his friends join forces with one of the test subjects from the experiments, who possesses telekinetic powers. She calls herself “Eleven” and she’s the only one who can both fight the creatures with her abilities and close the portal. But there wouldn’t be a story, if the goddamned portal would just stay closed…
This review won’t contain any major spoilers (however I am talking about new characters a bit). Still, you’ll probably get my point better, if you’ve watched the season already.
Ok, so I’ll just get right to it: one iconic thing about Stranger Things has always been its incredible atmosphere. You could feel it in every single shot, you weren’t just sitting there on your sofa, you were right THERE, experiencing the 80s yourself. This isn’t all gone in season 3, the quality of each and every image is still stunning, the costume and set design still perfect. Why then are you complaining, Sarah?
What kinda spoiled the atmosphere a bit for me, was the constant action. Don’t get me wrong, I know this show is about suspense and mystery and yeah, also monsters and running away and screaming and fighting and stuff. And I don’t mind, I like that. It’s just… in season 3 it seems to be almost all we get. This season is so much darker and so much more thrilling than its predecessors and they were very suspensful indeed! There’s two kinds of suspense though: there’s this creeping, mysterious, lurking-somewhere-in-your-mind-suspense. It’s this one that chills you to the bone and it’s this one that was present during season one and season two. The other one, the one present in season three, is dominated by jump-scares. In this kind of suspense, you’re literally being “jump-scared” and it’s not a kind of suspense that’s there all the time, making you ever so frightened and alert. You’re only alert when the monster is in action and you see it coming for the protagonists. The rest of the time you’re interested in the action, but you’re not scared. You just wait for the next jump, when the monster attacks again and you’re being startled. As soon as it’s gone, you relax.
If you’re always creeped out, it’s due to the atmosphere created in the season and I’m sorry but… I wasn’t. Moving away from the suspense part, it’ still 80s through and through, but…
…this time it’s too much and seems forced at times. Sometimes you feel like you’re simply watching a very good commercial – especially for coke (the “new coke” you see all the time was actually Coca Cola’s biggest fail) and Burger King. Throwing stuff the 80s produced (like the “new coke”) in our faces in almost every frame (please let me follow my passion of exaggerating things!) doesn’t make the show MORE 80s. It’s great the way it was, don’t overdo it!
Another thing that made me look like the boys in this picture, was the omnipresent teenage and adult love drama this season had in store. Again, don’t get me wrong: I did think it was cute with the teenagers being in love and having their first couple fights and stuff. And of course you want to see how the children you got to know develop into pubescent teenagers. But it was only cute like, the first three times, then it changed to annoying. The same goes for the older teenagers and adults (I’m not saying which ones, but if you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about). It felt like half of the show was dominated by endless love-talk and, most annoyingly, nobody could have a proper conversation without getting into some incredibly stupid discussion at least once in the meantime. This, again, is something that really kills the atmosphere in a scene and it’s not even funny, it’s simply a pain in the ass to watch.
Yet another (character) development of the new season I found a bit disappointing, was that of Joyce Byers. I always liked her drive, her force, her stubbornness. She wouldn’t rest until her boy was safe and that is something I always admired and loved about her. This season however, her boy wasn’t the monster’s main target and I’m sorry to say it this plainly, but it made her useless. All she babbled about the whole season were her stupid magnets and she didn’t do one single useful thing until the very end, but even then she took ages to do it and got knocked out first and whatnot… I’d have wished for her character to do a bit more than talk about magnets and fight with Hopper as if they were six year old girls arguing about a doll.
But let’s not keep talking about the few things that sucked. It’s time to talk about the new characters that ruled! First off we got…
…Robin. Played by the gorgeous daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke joins the cast and you cannot NOT love her character. She’s funny, down-to-earth and badass and makes a very dynamic and fun-to-watch team with Steve.
Moving on, there’s…
…Erica Sinclair, Lucas’ younger sister. Actress Priah Ferguson does an amazing job at portraying this super annoying little smart-ass.
And last but not least, the true hero and probably most-beloved new character of season three…
…Alexei. He’s funny, authentic, childlike and tremendously loveable! He’s played by Alec Utgoff.
So, to put this all in a nutshell: it might have sounded like I didn’t enjoy watching Stranger Things season 3, which is not true! I did enjoy it, I was scared, I laughed, I cried, I shared all the excitement. This article is just my very critical and close analysis of a show that set viewers’ expectations at a pretty high level from the beginning. Everything that I criticized here, doesn’t make the show bad or less interesting. For me it just seemed forced and over-the-top at times and I think it suffered the loss of part of its atmosphere and charm. With all the love-drama, useless discussions and jump-scares it got just a bit closer to “Hollywood mainstream”, which, at least in my opinion, doesn’t suit the show. It doesn’t need to be like that to please the masses. Stranger Things already proved that audiences from all over the world love it – without the typical “Hollywood elements” that are a mass-pleaser, but not at all unique or high-class. So, all in all, it was still fun to watch and I’d watch it again. I just wish season 4 will be “Stranger Thing’s old self” again, as I liked that even more. What do you think of the new season? Did you enjoy it? Do you agree with my critique? I’m looking forward to your comments! 🙂
All pictures used in this post are copyrighted by Netflix and Warner Home Video!
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