The Duffer brothers were facing several challenges when they planned the third season of Stranger Things. The first was to live to the hype the first two seasons have created. The second was repeating the tricks that worked to good in the previous seasons, while trying not to repeat themselves. And the third, to deal with the fact that their children actors are growing. It was certainly not easy task to deal with, but unfortunately they failed in every aspect.
The third season is a big disappointment, it even feels like a betrayal to the things we loved from the first two seasons. The main issue are the characters. We knew that kids grow and the show had to evolve. But it looks like all characters have lost their interest: some of the characters have become jerks (Mike), some are completely flat (Dustin, Eleven, Johnathan, Nancy...) and others have become simply clowns (Hopper, Joyce, Steve...). Will's experiences in the first two seasons justify that we can not expect him to act normally, but the rest of the cast have all become unidimensional entities. Mike has become a selfish, disrespectful spoiled teenager, but the rest of the kids are not much better. Dustin is lost in his adventures with Steve, but the funny interaction between them is missing. Steve has become a parody of himself. Lucas is the only one who seems to have grown as a normal teenager, and his alleged "know-how" about men-women interactions are one of the only funny moments of the season. And his sister, who had her previous reasonably funny sporadic appearances, now has become an annoying supporting part. With her Die Hard (1989) moment being another ridiculous moment. The whole Dustin-Steve-Robin-Erica adventure in the russian base is tedious and childish. And Nancy and Johnatan's relation is just boring, once lost the sexual tension.
But the plot is not doing better than the characters. Stranger Things was never the most original show (clearly inspired by JJ Abrams' Super 8 (2011), with elements from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Goonies (1985), Gremlins (1984), Ghostbusters (1984), Stephen King's It (1986), Aliens (1986) and others), but what before was an skillful mixture of borrowed elements, now feels like a pastiche of topics. What in the previous two seasons was an additional enternteinment (trying find the reference) becomes in the third season the main interest of the series.
Something that exemplifies what the series has lost is the fact that there is no "Christmas lights communication", nor a "giant tunnel map" or anything similar on the walls of the Byers house... There is no mistery to solve, and the closest thing to it is the russian radio message, what brings me to the complete failure of the "russian plot", that I will discuss later. And don't forget the mistery of the falling magnets, another boring sub-plot: Joyce and the demagnetized magnets...
For some reason, the Duffer brothers also decided to the mysterious dark corridors of the school or the menacing shape of the Hawkins National Laboratory for the kitsch Starcourt mall or the laughable russian underground base.
There is nothing for adults in the third season: it feels like it has been written for teenagers with the screenplay combining comedy moments with a-milion-times-seen horror scenes. Although clearly inspired by The Thing (1982), the development looks more like The Faculty (1998), which was not a bad film, but very far from the Stranger Things of the first two seasons when talking about quality.
Even the idea of the mall is wasted. What could have been a great metaphor of the lost innocence both of the children and of the US as a nation, becomes just a part of some unbelievable conspiracy. One of the keys of some of the great science-fiction is to build an initial environment as close to reality as you can and then introduce the destabilizing element*, but even then, after introducing that element, everything has to be as credible as possible. Dozens of russians in a secret base under a small town in Indiana is exactly the opposite of that.
It seems like Stranger Things has stopped to take inspiration from the 80s classics and it is looking at movies that took inspiration from them (Cloverfield (2008), The Cabin in the Woods (2011)). If somebody related to the production of Stranger Things ever reads this... I would advise them to look for inspiration for the next season(s) in The Lost Boys (1987) and not in Rocky IV (1985).
Now, if you have already seen the third season and you are not afraid of some spoilers, here you can find some of the things that didn't make sense in the third season.
v01 1.08.2019
UPDATE Feb 8, 2022
They certainly forgotten a key law in science-fiction, the Wells’ Law, "which asks that only one plot element require the audience to suspend their disbelief. Once subjected to familiar constraints and settings, these singular, outlandish elements—e.g. time travel, alien invasion, or invisibiity—seemed much more immediate, and worth consideration." [earlybirdbooks]
The third season is a big disappointment, it even feels like a betrayal to the things we loved from the first two seasons. The main issue are the characters. We knew that kids grow and the show had to evolve. But it looks like all characters have lost their interest: some of the characters have become jerks (Mike), some are completely flat (Dustin, Eleven, Johnathan, Nancy...) and others have become simply clowns (Hopper, Joyce, Steve...). Will's experiences in the first two seasons justify that we can not expect him to act normally, but the rest of the cast have all become unidimensional entities. Mike has become a selfish, disrespectful spoiled teenager, but the rest of the kids are not much better. Dustin is lost in his adventures with Steve, but the funny interaction between them is missing. Steve has become a parody of himself. Lucas is the only one who seems to have grown as a normal teenager, and his alleged "know-how" about men-women interactions are one of the only funny moments of the season. And his sister, who had her previous reasonably funny sporadic appearances, now has become an annoying supporting part. With her Die Hard (1989) moment being another ridiculous moment. The whole Dustin-Steve-Robin-Erica adventure in the russian base is tedious and childish. And Nancy and Johnatan's relation is just boring, once lost the sexual tension.
But the plot is not doing better than the characters. Stranger Things was never the most original show (clearly inspired by JJ Abrams' Super 8 (2011), with elements from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Goonies (1985), Gremlins (1984), Ghostbusters (1984), Stephen King's It (1986), Aliens (1986) and others), but what before was an skillful mixture of borrowed elements, now feels like a pastiche of topics. What in the previous two seasons was an additional enternteinment (trying find the reference) becomes in the third season the main interest of the series.
Something that exemplifies what the series has lost is the fact that there is no "Christmas lights communication", nor a "giant tunnel map" or anything similar on the walls of the Byers house... There is no mistery to solve, and the closest thing to it is the russian radio message, what brings me to the complete failure of the "russian plot", that I will discuss later. And don't forget the mistery of the falling magnets, another boring sub-plot: Joyce and the demagnetized magnets...
For some reason, the Duffer brothers also decided to the mysterious dark corridors of the school or the menacing shape of the Hawkins National Laboratory for the kitsch Starcourt mall or the laughable russian underground base.
There is nothing for adults in the third season: it feels like it has been written for teenagers with the screenplay combining comedy moments with a-milion-times-seen horror scenes. Although clearly inspired by The Thing (1982), the development looks more like The Faculty (1998), which was not a bad film, but very far from the Stranger Things of the first two seasons when talking about quality.
Even the idea of the mall is wasted. What could have been a great metaphor of the lost innocence both of the children and of the US as a nation, becomes just a part of some unbelievable conspiracy. One of the keys of some of the great science-fiction is to build an initial environment as close to reality as you can and then introduce the destabilizing element*, but even then, after introducing that element, everything has to be as credible as possible. Dozens of russians in a secret base under a small town in Indiana is exactly the opposite of that.
It seems like Stranger Things has stopped to take inspiration from the 80s classics and it is looking at movies that took inspiration from them (Cloverfield (2008), The Cabin in the Woods (2011)). If somebody related to the production of Stranger Things ever reads this... I would advise them to look for inspiration for the next season(s) in The Lost Boys (1987) and not in Rocky IV (1985).
Now, if you have already seen the third season and you are not afraid of some spoilers, here you can find some of the things that didn't make sense in the third season.
v01 1.08.2019
UPDATE Feb 8, 2022
They certainly forgotten a key law in science-fiction, the Wells’ Law, "which asks that only one plot element require the audience to suspend their disbelief. Once subjected to familiar constraints and settings, these singular, outlandish elements—e.g. time travel, alien invasion, or invisibiity—seemed much more immediate, and worth consideration." [earlybirdbooks]
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