Review Stranger Things (2016)

[Hux]

So I finally watched all eight and thoroughly enjoyed it. The hype around this show probably isn't justified (is it ever) but it is very good. I love the 80s feel and the soundtrack is amazing. Looking forward to the second season but I have feeling this show can't live up to expectations. It will probably go down the "Lost" road of making it up as it goes along until everyone loses interest.

But until then, I'm hooked.

Season two trailer.

 

[chainsaw_metal1]

Great series. It captured the feel of the early 80s, and had the same look and atmosphere of many a Stephen King movie. I eagerly await season 2, because I need to know how they deal with what happened, and what happens next.

 

[Gavin]

I'm up to about episode 5 and enjoying it immensely so far (although struggling to find time to watch it).

 

[TheSowIsMine]

This show is awesome. So much nostalgia.

 

[Doctor Omega]

Filming Wraps On “Stranger Things” S2





Filming has wrapped on the second season of Netflix’s hit original series “Stranger Things”. Members of the cast posted photos celebrating the end of filming which began back in November last year.

The first season premiered last summer and became a massive hit on the streaming service. The first footage from the second season aired back in February with a Super Bowl TV spot which confirmed a Halloween 2017 premiere date for the new season.

The second season has been the subject of much secrecy, with creators and showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer revealing very little about what’s next for the kids. Fans are eagerly anticipating the next trailer which hopefully will be coming sometime in the next month or two.

 

[Doctor Omega]

“Stranger Things” S2 More Sparing With Monsters





With production on the second season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” having just wrapped, the show’s cast and creative team have been doing Emmy campaigning at the Netflix FYSee Space in Los Angeles.

Series creators/executive producers Matt and Ross Duffer and executive producer Shawn Levy, who directed two episodes in the first season, talked about the slightly different and more horror-heavy tone of the new season, and how it won’t change the focus on the core characters. Levy says:

“There is a lot of talk – and I’ve contributed to it – about the move to darker threats and a larger cinematic scale, but here is the thing: ‘Stranger Things’ works because we root for these kids and we root for these damaged characters who live on the margins. Everyone is struggling with that feeling of being a bit on the outside looking in. But we know that what really brought us here are the characters that people connect to and that feel authentic … so Season 2 is every bit as loyal to characters first, and spooky second.”

The Duffers add that while the Demogorgon creature got a lot of screentime in the first season, the monsters of the second season will be kept more in the shadows. Ross Duffer days:

“The point is not to give everyone what they think they want. Because I don’t think they really know what they want. Hiding the monsters can be more effective than seeing them, so restraint can be a good thing. I can’t talk too much about them, but they’re cool.”

Spoiler

Finally, Matt Duffer confirmed that fan favorite character Barb is definitely not coming back for the new episode run:

“There’s no resurrecting Barb. It was really surprising how much she took off. I related to her, so I think other people did as well.”

“Stranger Things” returns to Netflix at Halloween with nine new episodes.

 

[Gavin]

Looking forward to season 2.

 

[Doctor Omega]

 

[Doctor Omega]

“Stranger Things” Already Has An Ending In Mind





The second season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” is still months away, but the show’s creators say they’re already thinking about the popular show’s potential end when the time comes.

Creators and executive producers Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, and Shawn Levy appeared at Comic Con on the weekend and, chatting with Collider, Ross Duffer revealed that they’re in the midst of working out what the ultimate story arc for the series will be:

“I think the important thing for us was to really start to lay the groundwork this season for what would be the arc for the rest of the show. In terms of exact number of seasons we’re not sure, but I know that Matt and I wanna stick with it and just sort of finish it out.

But again we don’t want to linger too long, we just want to tell the story that we want to tell and get out. Hopefully, people are like, ‘I want more!’ and that’s great, but that’s sort of how we want to leave it. In terms of spinoffs, I don’t think we’ve gotten that far. Because for us it’s really just about focusing on this story and just getting it done.”

The duo again said they envision the series going for around four to five seasons and they’ll know a lot more when they start planning out the third season in detail which they say will begin soon.

The two also want to remain the showrunners and principal creative force of the series for its entire run, and have been turning down major show and film offers in the process in order to do that.

“Stranger Things” will return to screens this October, with a third season likely to arrive very early in 2019 if they stick to a similar fifteen months between season schedule (which they’ve indicated they intend to).

 

[Doctor Omega]

“Stranger Things” Producer Talks ‘Thriller’





The most talked about TV trailer (and trailer overall) of San Diego Comic-Con the other weekend was that for the second season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things”.

A big part of that talk was its use of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” song with its Vincent Price dialogue and iconic beat. It’s a song rarely used in trailers due to the insane difficulty and cost of licensing the music to use.

At Comic Con the other weekend, executive producer Shawn Levy was on hand for the panel and has now revealed that the song almost didn’t make it into the clip. In fact, they’d cut a whole other trailer and were set to use that until permission came through at the last minute. He tells io9:

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to pull off as a producer. It’s very, very hard, for reasons I won’t go into. We were rejected repeatedly – for months – and a month ago, it was over. And we had another trailer that was being shipped to San Diego [Comic-Con], and it did not have that song.

And the [Duffer] Brothers and I would watch it, and it just really ate away at us, ’cause we knew it was a good trailer, but with ‘Thriller,’ it’s next level. And, so, I basically decided to be a massive pain in the a–, and I went back into bull-headed producer mode.

And I figured out a way to work out a deal to license ‘Thriller.’ So that was a really happy day – the day we pulled off that licensing arrangement.”

“Stranger Things” returns to Netflix on October 27th.

 

[Doctor Omega]

This brand new Stranger Things poster takes the show’s retro thing to a whole other level, with a tasty homage to Nightmare On Elm Street. Granted, it’s for Season One, but it’s still awesome.

You can read the very brief synopsis for Stranger Things Season 2 here:

It’s 1984 and the citizens of Hawkins, Indiana are still reeling from the horrors of the Demogorgon and the secrets of Hawkins Lab.

Will Byers has been rescued from the Upside Down but a bigger, sinister entity still threatens those who survived.

The show stars Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapps, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton and Joe Keery, with Sean Astin (The Goonies, The Lord Of The Rings), Linnea Berthelsen, Paul Reiser (Aliens, Whiplash), Sadie Sink (Odyssey) and Dacre Montgomery (Power Rangers) joining the cast for Season 2.

Stranger Things Season 2 premieres globally on Netflix on 27 October 2017.

 

[Doctor Omega]

 

[Doctor Omega]

“Stranger Things” Four Season Run Planned?





With the runaway success of “Stranger Things” last year and anticipation scorchingly high for the sci-fi drama’s second season this Halloween, the show’s creators Matt and Ross Duffer aren’t going to let the success spoil the quality of the product.

Speaking with Vulture this week, the pair confirms that a third season is already planned, and in fact they’ve set an end goal in mind. Ross Duffer says:

“We’re thinking it will be a four-season thing and then out. We just have to keep adjusting the story, though I don’t know if we can justify something bad happening to them once a year. They’re going to have to get the f–k out of this town.”

He also says with the second season the plan is to push things a bit and says it’s more like a movie sequel in that it’s a bit bigger and darker.

The second season of “Stranger Things” premieres on Netflix on October 27th.

 

[Doctor Omega]

“Stranger Things” Duo Want Fans To Adjust TVs





Matt and Ross Duffer, the creators of last year’s streaming sensation “Stranger Things,” have issued a request that they hope fans will honor when watching the upcoming second season.

That request? Adjust your TVs to turn the awful soap opera-like motion-smoothing effect off. A product of modern HD televisions mainly for use in live sport, the effect is often switched on by default and famously makes TV and film look like it was shot on video.

As a result, cinematic visuals are rendered as cheap looking as game shows. The effect is not seen by everyone, but for quite a few – notably cinema purists – it’s incredibly annoying. The pair tell Vulture:

Matt: “The key thing is to turn off anything that says ‘motion,’ ‘TruMotion,’ ‘Smooth motion.’ When I go to my friends’ places back home, I’m constantly fixing their TVs. Us and everyone in Hollywood puts so much time and effort and money into getting things to look just right. And when you see it in someone’s home, it looks like it was shot on an iPhone.”

Ross: “It’s shocking! We were just at Comic-Con, and we walk on the main floor and the settings on every single TV is wrong. I was like, ‘Didn’t a bunch of nerds put this together? What is wrong with them?'”

Whether you watch it with motionflow on or off, the second season of “Stranger Things” hits the streaming service on October 27th.

 

[skribb]

Cool.

Those motion settings are indeed ugly. I don't understand the point. They emulate a high frame rate pretty well but... they make it blurrier as well IIRC. I don't have a new TV so I don't remember exactly .

 

[Doctor Omega]

Yes, I have only ever seen it on one person's television, but the affect is appalling, making expensive, big budget movies look like they were filmed on a cheap video camera.

Just awful.

 

[TheSowIsMine]

That is very good advice. I hate the soap opera effect.
It also creates a lot if lag with gaming.
I do sometimes put it on while watching a basketball game.

 

[Doctor Omega]

Netflix Wanted Back-To-Back “Stranger Things”





While Netflix has some more acclaimed shows, in terms of a series capturing the zeitgeist both critically and with the public – there’s not much that can compare with “Stranger Things”.

Anticipation is incredibly high for the second season of the series ahead of its launch late next month, and those involved including creators Matt and Ross Duffer have suggested that the plan for now is to do around four seasons all up if they can.

Netflix seems keen for them to do so, so keen in fact its been revealed to The Live Feed by Matt Duffer that the streaming giant pitched the idea of shooting seasons three and four back-to-back.

Part of the motive is driven by the fact the cast are teenagers, and so will grow and change quickly. That request was not well met by either the Duffers or producer Shawn Levy as it would put too much strain on the writers’ room – their workload would be doubled to shoot two seasons straight.

Even the current season’s nine episode run, one longer than the first season, stretched the showrunners to maximum stress to the point they intend to go back to the eight episode run for the next one.

“Stranger Things” season 2 arrives on October 27th.

 

[Doctor Omega]

“Stranger Things” Could Get A Fifth Season






A few months back, “Stranger Things” series creators Matt and Ross Duffer suggested that the hit Netflix series wouldn’t go beyond a fourth season.

The series has only aired one season so far to strong reviews and a major cultural impact, with a second season scheduled to hit in a few weeks and a third pretty much guaranteed at this point.

Fellow executive producer Shawn Levy, however, tells EW that despite those comments, the number isn’t definitive and the show could go another year beyond that:

“Hearts were heard breaking in Netflix headquarters when the Brothers made four seasons sound like an official end, and I was suddenly getting phone calls from our actors’ agents. The truth is we’re definitely going four seasons and there’s very much the possibility of a fifth. Beyond that, it becomes I think very unlikely.”

Jeff Duffer also tells the mag that the gigantic spider-like ‘shadow monster’ seen in the promo posters and trailers they’re keeping deliberately vague:

“There’s an H.P. Lovecraft sort of approach, this inter-dimensional being that is sort of beyond human comprehension. We purposely don’t want to go too much into what it is or what it wants.”

 

[Doctor Omega]