Stranger Things 4 starts this Friday Netflix its fourth season, penultimate before the end. And it does so as the company’s great blockbuster, which lent its 2016 surprise success to the importance seen in the exorbitant length of the episodes, both in this first volume and in the second volume, which will be released in July (the last of them, two and a half hours) and extraordinary visual texture of his special effects, worthy or superior to those in films shown in cinemas.
A series that at the moment cannot be criticized for using hits from the past and using the trend of 80s pop culture nostalgia: weird things what it is, knows about it and about the work of the Duffer brothers, transformed into Game of Thrones from Netflix, this is already a deep dive into memory, and not into reality: in the series there is no one and nothing that tries to pretend to be different. From the Charles Band movies to Amblin, the clear inevitable Stephen King and now a Cold War thriller, all fitting into a series that, yes, as a result, suffers from some identity crisis, although the efforts of those in charge to give the plot a vested interest are obvious.
There’s a lot to be thankful for stranger things season 4 lies in the fact that an open commitment to the genre, fantasy, and not melodrama (despite the obvious richness of plots and characters) is preserved in its television aspect. Overall, this seven-episode volume one works in much the same way as the (hilarious) third season, like a kind of dynamo that starts slowly, maybe too slowly, and builds up to become the most ambitious television series ever. or appear on the screen. on a strictly visual plane. BUT series that dreams of becoming a movie and, by virtue of an exorbitant budget of more than $200 million, it almost does.
The first episode is all about returning characters (too many, definitely more than you need) while trying to figure out what the hell to do with them. What follows are several storylines with different motifs, atmospheres, and choral characters who make the mistake of “disconnecting” from each other excessively. Too many characters force all of them to do “something”, which ultimately affects the interest of each of them. All in all, the Duffers and their team of writers and directors can’t help but feel a little tired of them, although let’s always keep in mind that this is the first volume of the second season. The third season felt more alive and fresh in that sense.
However, the series manages to end that slow crescendo of almost all previous seasons and essentially let some of the situations and adventures of its characters speak for itself about the show’s DNA and the whole nostalgic recovery movement that has gone beyond mere “fan service”. There we have Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) forced to repeat the same memory over and over again due to circumstances we won’t explain here, or Vecna’s procedure, a kind of Freddy Krueger and Pennywise from Thingcreate and feed on their victims, literally sucking out their fear (which gives rise to a dirty but interesting metaphor about trauma and youth suicide, channeled through slasher)…. Stranger Things 4in general, is able to draw a parable about how entelechies, such as fantasy, memory or trauma, can take control of a person and literally destroy him, which is facilitated by the cultural climate of the moment.
But what remains important to fans is the amount of entertainment and tribute that the Duffer Brothers series delivers, adorned with an amazing soundtrack of synths by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein (conceived, as you know, in imitation of John Carpenter productions). : watch out for when Eleven first arrives at Project Nina), or that scene in which one of the main characters runs for a while through the Other Side to a Kate Bush beat that is as utterly manipulative as it is epic and haunting. The detriment of the long duration of his episodes, which reach or even exceed 80 minutes each in a new manifestation of the kind of fan service that we have been talking about, Stranger Things 4 it is still powerful and magical entertainment.