This show hasn't finished yet. Instead, it has been split into two parts of unequal length. The final two parts are in July i.e. the show has the big climactic fight and then bittersweet aftermath to go but the essential plot of the story is done. Having sent off various characters in different directions, the key revelations have been revealed and now the gravity of the story will pull the characters all back together again.
The earlier episodes are the strongest. With this being the fourth occasion that monstrous goings-on have imperilled the town of Hawkins, the core characters are quite reasonably ready for supernatural occurrences. To get around that, the initial peril involves new characters but then shifts towards Max (Sadie Sink). Max has been part of the central group since Stranger Things 2, but there is still a sense of her being the "new" character. She is still dealing with the trauma of events from the last season of the show which makes her a target for a psychic killer haunting the subconscious of the older teens of Hawkins.
If that sounds vaguely like Nightmare on Elm Street, the showrunners will be happy. Stranger Things has always played with two worlds: the real 1980s and the pop-cultural 1980s. We've had Ghostbusters, Spielberg, Stephen King movies and for season 4 we get Nightmare on Elm Street and satanic panics. For good measure, Freddy Kruger actor Robert Englund has a cameo.
To stop the plot being resolved too quickly, other key characters are scattered on their own side plots. Eleven, Will, Jonathan and their mum are now living in California where Eleven is not coping with high school bullies. When Mike comes to visit, things only get worse and matters are further complicated when government agents take a renewed interest in her (currently absent) powers.
Meanwhile, meanwhile, Hopper is in a Russian prison camp — a fact revealed at the end of Stranger Things 3 but which never made much sense. The whole Russian gulag plotline makes very little sense and appears mainly to exist to give Winona Ryder and David Harbour something to do while the main story carries on elsewhere. It also exposes the problems with Stranger Things as a concept. The Russian plotline needs to be both brutal and comedic and the tension between a show that is an 80's pastiche but somehow also set in the real 1980's doesn't work. The show lands in absurdity.
There's a longer piece that somebody should write about whatever the show is trying to say about fathers also. Fathers of various kinds are a recurring theme, including the sinister "Papa" (Matthew Modine) who ran the original child experiments that created the Eleven's powers. Absent fathers, abusive fathers, sad fathers — it doesn't really all add up to anything but they are positioned as if the show has a point to make but has forgotten what the point is.
The arc from episodes 1 to 4 is probably the strongest, leading up to Max's confrontation with some personal and literal demons. For those who weren't aware, that's also why you might be hearing Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill a lot recently. Cleverly done and with some real emotional punch, it has the side effect of making the other threads look more under-powered.
Overall entertaining but definitely the right call for this to be the last season of Stranger Things.
No comments:
Post a Comment