I’ve been perpetually frustrated with the latest season of Stranger Things.

[securitywriter@infosec.exchange]

I’ve been perpetually frustrated with the latest season of Stranger Things. I have some thoughts, and they’re not good… however, it is a rare specimen that deserves to be studied!

They had this huge budget and comparatively near unlimited resources and spent it all ensuring that they had all of the period accurate props and wardrobe, and then making everything as bad as humanly possible.

Starting from the first scene, CGI where there didn’t need to be any, green screen compositing when straight filming would have been easier (and look better), some of the laziest colour grading I’ve ever clapped eyes on (in lieu of correct lighting in many cases), cheap muzzle flares added in post, badly lit CG models, with low accuracy motion vectors.

And that’s just visually, it’s sonically poor, too. Flat dynamic range, poor stereo separation, dubs lack believable spatial qualities, foley seems to be sourced on Temu.

And then in terms of actual production, the acting is largely fine, but more than one major cast member seems to have forgotten how to act (or got worse in one case). The dialogue is poorly written, lacks emotion, and the pacing is terrible. Eyelines are off, multi-cam shots lack continuity, and it just feels amateurish. Even the plot holes have plot holes, and the consequential story beats get forgotten as quickly as they were made up on the spot.

It’s easy to pick holes in the things we watch, but rarely do we see such so many errors or lack of polish or effort in one place. Truly a thing to behold.

I started to lose interest when S3 started, but the idea was still fun. So much lost potential.

[swelljoe@mas.to]

@SecurityWriter yeah, I was pretty much immediately thinking, "so, Stranger Things is just really bad now, huh?" Even the charming characters are annoying this season. Jonathan was always a whiny little bitch that I never wanted to see or hear, but now I don't even really like Steve or Robin, and they're historically a joy on screen.