Stranger Things (Review)
Jul. 20th, 2016 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAnd I've finished the marathon now. Overall, I still love the series as a whole (miniseries? first season?), with some tiny nitpicks, which, however, fit with the very conscious 1980s atmosphere.
The King namedropping happened in the last but one episode or so. No Steven Spielberg verbal acknowledgment, but till the end, it was hard to say which Steve's influence was heavier (I'm still going with King though the very end was more Spielbergian). There was a lot to enjoy about the show besides the 1980s atmophere and tropes, btw: the acting was universally good, for starters, and given that half of the main characters are kids, this is by no means a given. Kudos to the young actors.
Speaking of main characters: Winona Ryder gets top billing in the credits, but I wouldn't call her the main character. Or even the "heart of the story" character. Granted, this being an ensemble movie, it's hard to single out one, but if pressed, I'd say that would be either Mike (one of the kids) or Sheriff Hopper, with Nancy in some episodes edging in. Nancy, Mike's teenage sister, also saves the show from a certain gender essentialism, which is this: Joyce, Winona Ryder's character, is the horror story's desperate mother archetype - and it's a raw, very powerful performance by Ryder, unafraid to make the audience uncomfortable with her intensity - and she figures out a) that her son is alive and b) how to communicate with him (at least for a time), but she's not driving the story forward in the sense that she's conducting investigations. That's for the kids and Sheriff Hopper to do. She stays cooped up in her house (for good plot reason, as she believes correctly that's where her son is, I hasten to add) for a great deal of the show, while everyone else is gallivanting all over the place, creating the impression of being more active.
Then there's Eleven, aka El, as Mike nicknames her, one of the most King-ian characters, since she's a little girl with superpowers who has been experimented on all her life before she escaped. A very few minor instances aside, Eleven nearly always uses her powers post escape to save Mike from something. Mike and the other boys are the ones asking questions, trying to figure out things, driving the action forwards. Again, there are perfectly fine in story reasons for this, and it makes total character sense - Eleven has been forced to use her powers by the countless experiments the Doctor who raised her, one of the story's villains, put her through, she associates them with pain and fear, and she's on the run and hiding, so of course she tries not to use them!
But the Hopper investigating, Joyce cooped up, Eleven hiding, Mike investigating combinations it still makes me very glad that the show went the way it did with Nancy. At first, you think Nancy is simply the elder teenage sibling of one of our heroes, as ET's Michael is to Elliot, and will be no more than a minor supporting character, but no, she's a main, and while she also starts covering out some tropes of 1980s female teenage heroine movies (she's in love with the popular boy! But wait! the nerdy outsider boy is also interested! She's having sex in a house where the monster hangs out and where other horny teenagers are as well! etc.), the show takes a sharp turn to the left and smartly either twists the clichés or avoids them. The teenage victim in the aforementioned house & monster scenario is Nancy's best friend Barbara, the only one who wasn't busy making out, and Nancy's guilty (since Barbara was only there because Nancy had asked her to) desperation to find out what happened to Barb drives her into investigating the central mystery herself. Her original love interest, the popular boy, is neither Prince Charming nor Evil Revealed - he's not a jerk post sex, he doesn't get eaten, either, and while he later on in the series does something awful, he repents (figuring out on his own that it had been awful, not because someone else has to point it out to him), and actively tries to make up for it. While Nancy does bond with Jonathan the outsider (older brother to Will, whose disappearance in the pilot kickstarts the entire plot), they don't become lovers. And it's Nancy who drives their particular subplot and their investigation, not the other way around.
Gender stuff aside, the show made me care for all the characters. The three boys on their bikes - and at one point, when they were on the run with Eleven, the forces of evil behind them, I bet the scriptwriters and directors were seriously tempted to recreate flying bikes scenes from E.T., given El's powers, but went another, more King-like way for her to save them - and with their geeky discussions, fitting 80s books and movies kids, with an occasional twist. (The heavier kid not being comic relief but the sensible, cool-headed one would be a welcome one.) Sheriff Hopper, like many a Stephen King hero drinking a bit too much due to backstory trauma, but a decent cop regardless (King also did evil cops, like the one in Rose Madder, but the majority of police officers in his novels, especially the 80s ones, are good and sympathetic) and the backstory trauma being the loss of his daughter makes him empathize with Joyce in a completely unpatronizing way. (BTW, I automatically assumed the daughter had died through an accident, but the last episode reveals via flashbacks she did of cancer, died a lengthy death, which makes Hopper's backstory trauma even worse.) The teenagers I already talked about.
I'm not completely content with the big denouement - not because of who dies, because I could see that coming, and not because of the Lando Calrissian factor (btw: given good old Lando often gets neglected in SW discussions and fandom, the multiple references to what he did and why in the finale were a geeky joy), because it makes sense for that character to make that choice, too, but I don't think the show completely resolved its set up of two villainous forces for me. On the one hand, you have the creature from the Upside Down dimension who falls into the Cujo category of King villain rather than into the It one - i.e. it's lethal and no good for our heroes and humanity at large, but it also seems to be an animal operating on instinct, not a malevolent sentient entity. On the other hand, you have Dr. Brenner the evil experimentor and his various minions, by all indications still government employees, and they qualify as the Firestarter type of King villains, sentient and very much knowing what they're doing and not caring. It's not that they don't get their comeuppance, but I wanted Brenner to get his from Eleven; narrative justice, for me, demanded as much. Also, while both the hints that the happy ending isn't unqualified work - one of the characters is physically altered, the other has made a Lando Calrissian deal -, cynical me thought it would have been more likely than the faceless governmental forces would kill the lot, so either everyone going on the run or trying to save themselves by going public via the media (i.e. what Charlie does at the end of Firestarter) would have been more my instinct.
But those a quibbles. Overall, as I said, I loved the series, each episode left me eager for the next one, and no character felt redundant as opposed to real. Well done, Duffer Brothers! Now let's see what else you've created.
The King namedropping happened in the last but one episode or so. No Steven Spielberg verbal acknowledgment, but till the end, it was hard to say which Steve's influence was heavier (I'm still going with King though the very end was more Spielbergian). There was a lot to enjoy about the show besides the 1980s atmophere and tropes, btw: the acting was universally good, for starters, and given that half of the main characters are kids, this is by no means a given. Kudos to the young actors.
Speaking of main characters: Winona Ryder gets top billing in the credits, but I wouldn't call her the main character. Or even the "heart of the story" character. Granted, this being an ensemble movie, it's hard to single out one, but if pressed, I'd say that would be either Mike (one of the kids) or Sheriff Hopper, with Nancy in some episodes edging in. Nancy, Mike's teenage sister, also saves the show from a certain gender essentialism, which is this: Joyce, Winona Ryder's character, is the horror story's desperate mother archetype - and it's a raw, very powerful performance by Ryder, unafraid to make the audience uncomfortable with her intensity - and she figures out a) that her son is alive and b) how to communicate with him (at least for a time), but she's not driving the story forward in the sense that she's conducting investigations. That's for the kids and Sheriff Hopper to do. She stays cooped up in her house (for good plot reason, as she believes correctly that's where her son is, I hasten to add) for a great deal of the show, while everyone else is gallivanting all over the place, creating the impression of being more active.
Then there's Eleven, aka El, as Mike nicknames her, one of the most King-ian characters, since she's a little girl with superpowers who has been experimented on all her life before she escaped. A very few minor instances aside, Eleven nearly always uses her powers post escape to save Mike from something. Mike and the other boys are the ones asking questions, trying to figure out things, driving the action forwards. Again, there are perfectly fine in story reasons for this, and it makes total character sense - Eleven has been forced to use her powers by the countless experiments the Doctor who raised her, one of the story's villains, put her through, she associates them with pain and fear, and she's on the run and hiding, so of course she tries not to use them!
But the Hopper investigating, Joyce cooped up, Eleven hiding, Mike investigating combinations it still makes me very glad that the show went the way it did with Nancy. At first, you think Nancy is simply the elder teenage sibling of one of our heroes, as ET's Michael is to Elliot, and will be no more than a minor supporting character, but no, she's a main, and while she also starts covering out some tropes of 1980s female teenage heroine movies (she's in love with the popular boy! But wait! the nerdy outsider boy is also interested! She's having sex in a house where the monster hangs out and where other horny teenagers are as well! etc.), the show takes a sharp turn to the left and smartly either twists the clichés or avoids them. The teenage victim in the aforementioned house & monster scenario is Nancy's best friend Barbara, the only one who wasn't busy making out, and Nancy's guilty (since Barbara was only there because Nancy had asked her to) desperation to find out what happened to Barb drives her into investigating the central mystery herself. Her original love interest, the popular boy, is neither Prince Charming nor Evil Revealed - he's not a jerk post sex, he doesn't get eaten, either, and while he later on in the series does something awful, he repents (figuring out on his own that it had been awful, not because someone else has to point it out to him), and actively tries to make up for it. While Nancy does bond with Jonathan the outsider (older brother to Will, whose disappearance in the pilot kickstarts the entire plot), they don't become lovers. And it's Nancy who drives their particular subplot and their investigation, not the other way around.
Gender stuff aside, the show made me care for all the characters. The three boys on their bikes - and at one point, when they were on the run with Eleven, the forces of evil behind them, I bet the scriptwriters and directors were seriously tempted to recreate flying bikes scenes from E.T., given El's powers, but went another, more King-like way for her to save them - and with their geeky discussions, fitting 80s books and movies kids, with an occasional twist. (The heavier kid not being comic relief but the sensible, cool-headed one would be a welcome one.) Sheriff Hopper, like many a Stephen King hero drinking a bit too much due to backstory trauma, but a decent cop regardless (King also did evil cops, like the one in Rose Madder, but the majority of police officers in his novels, especially the 80s ones, are good and sympathetic) and the backstory trauma being the loss of his daughter makes him empathize with Joyce in a completely unpatronizing way. (BTW, I automatically assumed the daughter had died through an accident, but the last episode reveals via flashbacks she did of cancer, died a lengthy death, which makes Hopper's backstory trauma even worse.) The teenagers I already talked about.
I'm not completely content with the big denouement - not because of who dies, because I could see that coming, and not because of the Lando Calrissian factor (btw: given good old Lando often gets neglected in SW discussions and fandom, the multiple references to what he did and why in the finale were a geeky joy), because it makes sense for that character to make that choice, too, but I don't think the show completely resolved its set up of two villainous forces for me. On the one hand, you have the creature from the Upside Down dimension who falls into the Cujo category of King villain rather than into the It one - i.e. it's lethal and no good for our heroes and humanity at large, but it also seems to be an animal operating on instinct, not a malevolent sentient entity. On the other hand, you have Dr. Brenner the evil experimentor and his various minions, by all indications still government employees, and they qualify as the Firestarter type of King villains, sentient and very much knowing what they're doing and not caring. It's not that they don't get their comeuppance, but I wanted Brenner to get his from Eleven; narrative justice, for me, demanded as much. Also, while both the hints that the happy ending isn't unqualified work - one of the characters is physically altered, the other has made a Lando Calrissian deal -, cynical me thought it would have been more likely than the faceless governmental forces would kill the lot, so either everyone going on the run or trying to save themselves by going public via the media (i.e. what Charlie does at the end of Firestarter) would have been more my instinct.
But those a quibbles. Overall, as I said, I loved the series, each episode left me eager for the next one, and no character felt redundant as opposed to real. Well done, Duffer Brothers! Now let's see what else you've created.
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Date: 2016-07-20 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-21 09:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-07-20 07:21 pm (UTC)I was also extremely impressed about how it only took one scene, and more specifically one line ("It was a seven"), to make me care about Will /o\
Also, I've seen A TON of people complaining about Nancy's boyfriend, but I really liked what they did with his character, and I'll take a dickhead realizing he's a dickhead and making up for it over a boring and flat completely good or completely bad character any time :P
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Date: 2016-07-21 09:11 am (UTC)I'll take a dickhead realizing he's a dickhead and making up for it over a boring and flat completely good or completely bad character any time.
Absolutely. And I really appreciated he comes to that conclusion on his own, not because he suddenly discovers Nancy hasn't had sex with Jonathan, or because someone lectures him about slut shaming and sexism. He did something stupid and mean in a rage, realised he was at fault and also that it fit into a pattern with the people he's been hanging out with, and changed his behavior. Not supervillain redemption, but a very realistic teenage boy growing up miniarc.
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Date: 2016-07-20 08:42 pm (UTC)I agree with you about Nancy -- she became one of my favorite characters, and I liked that she was so proactive, and that Barbara wasn't forgotten in the rush to save Mike, even if she was doomed. I wasn't a huge fan of Steve, but I liked that he was not trapped in the stereotype and I especially liked the ending with his/Nancy's gift to Jonathan -- can we call him a recovering jerk? (I kept thinking this was just like Pretty in Pink, where Molly Ringwald ended up with Andrew McCarthy instead of her obvious soulmate Ducky, except Ducky was actually annoying and Jonathan wasn't.)
I also agree about Winona Ryder - she was willing to make the viewer uncomfortable and that says something about what a strong performer she is.
The little nerdy boys were so adorable. I read they deliberately chose child actors who were less polished and felt more real.
I do hope if there is a second series that we will find that Elle somehow survived and is able to find her way back. I so wanted her to have a chance to have a normal life, go to that dance with Mike. I thought her learning mundane life would have been so adorable, and bonding with Nancy and trying out the things she'd never been able to do. Yes, it seemed pretty obvious that yes she was going to have to make the big move. But I wondered when the sheriff left that food if it was a sign that maybe she was out there. I hope so.
no subject
Date: 2016-07-21 09:17 am (UTC)But I wondered when the sheriff left that food if it was a sign that maybe she was out there. I hope so.
Given they made a repeated point out of El's food preferences, I think that was definitely meant to be a hint of her survival. Also, no body. If there is a second series, maybe she went Dr. Manhattan?