Monday, August 26, 2019

Stranger Things 3 noted

Just finished Stranger Things 3.

I'm feeling a tad "over" the show.   If I recall correctly, my initial reaction to the first episodes of the first series was that it felt odd to have a show that was so transparent in the deliberate imitation of scenes from movies of the era.   Eventually, I was won over by the pretty charming characters, and the general good humour of the show.

The second series was continued harmless fun, I thought; but with the third series, the too obvious lifts from 1980's movies (and not just in passing:  the Terminator character was so important to the whole season) started to bother me again.   I was feeling too distracted by noticing which better movies they are copying.

The whole premise (and details) of this season was also pushing it too far into the ridiculous:  a secret underground Russian base is one thing, but the depth and extent of their lair was pretty silly.   And really - I know 1980's hair was bad, but honestly, the helmet hair of two of the guys really seems to be taking it to extremes that I do not recall.

That said, because I think the main characters are well acted, and still pretty charming, I would still watch the 4th series.  But if El gets her powers back, when will she start first putting a tissue up her nose to deal with the inevitable nosebleed?  


7 comments:

  1. what do you think of Mindhunter?

    second season not as great as first but still a fan

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  2. Oh. I am sure I posted here before that I watched all of the first episode of Mindhunter and did not like it at all - I thought it was badly acted and written, actually.

    I didn't try it again. I know it has a following, so maybe it improves, but the first episode of a series should hook you, but this one didn't.

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  3. Yeah this is what I wrote:

    The rest of the episode was, I thought, strangely bad in other ways. The acting and dialogue seemed remarkably stilted and unnatural - no one seemed quite real.

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  4. Mind you, if you want supremely bad dialogue, try watching Wu Assassins. I thought after the first episode that the well choreographed action might make the cheesiness of the Chinese faux mysticism forgiveable; but the second episode was terrible and I can't stick with it.

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  5. jesus you are like the David Stratton of Bizarro world, steve

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  6. I'm not sure how to interpret your comment - do you mean you find my tastes reliably unreliable? Part of my uncertainty is that I don't know what you thought of David Stratton..:)

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  7. By the way, I wasn't the only person put off by the first episode of Mindhunter for bad acting/dialogue.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/MindHunter/comments/7842g4/just_started_watching_episode_1_but_had_to_stop/

    They mostly say that they are glad they kept watching because it gets good - I might go back to it.

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