A lot pulled me out of this season5 unfortunately.
The color scheme of the show seems fake, like they are in The Matrix or in the last Harry Potter movies where it’s suffocatingly fake dark and distracting with no depth of field. Everything is dark, why is the hospital dark? that’s so fake, hospitals have bright lights on always..why is Dr. Kay examining and cutting open a creature in such dim low lighting. stuff that’s moronic and pulls me out of the show and puts me into the directors chair critiquing the episodes as I watch it and not being engulfed in the story telling which was boring and came off like Ai writing with everyone explaining everything in the background for kids at home who have no attention spans constantly on there phone.
It pulls me right out of the show, like Will is spazing out and no one is spotting him for when he snaps out of it and falls, it’s not like their first rodeo with him spazing out. His own mother should have had her arms around him ready to catch him but he just thuds to the ground around her and his friends as they just gawk.
The backgrounds being blurry like iPhone cinematic mode to save on budget, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Duffer Brothers pulled an Adam Sandler requesting a fat paycheck for the show just to hand it out behind the studios back to everyone who worked on the show because this does not look like 450 million dollars so far, but hey that’s there call to hook their friends up with the cash, if they did.
The cinematographer did a horrible job. The blocking is terrible and makes the scenes look flat and claustrophobic like a YouTube fan films making sets look obviously fake like when Lucas is with Max.
I expected season 5 to be three years later to match the kids growing up not only over a year later, the kids look to grown up and their personas changed as they grew up during that time from all the other acting jobs they had over the years they didn’t groove back into their character portrayals on this season and felt like they were going through the motions of a job. Maybe they didn’t like the script? The actor who plays Will isn’t very convincing, he needed an acting coach.
The Duffer brothers regressed with the characters development and didn’t progress then, Steve fighting with Jonathan over Nancy and fighting with Dustin, wasn’t enjoyable to watch friends who been through life and death hating to be around each other and willing to be stop talking to each other over petty things.
Makes me not care who gets killed in the next episodes, because no one is enjoyable to each other or sympathetic to each other while looking for Holly, and did everyone else but Lucas forget about Max. That’s cold…
11 and Hopper being against each other wasn’t enjoyable and annoying.
Hopper came off weak this time around in his tone and him gaslighting her with blowing himself up by being a sacrifice is ridiculous, how many times he going to do that traumatizing nonsense to her?
Nancy was mean, why can’t Jonathan talk to Murray? They have to walk in silence like her lapdogs holding the potato sacks. It’s not funny to me it’s like watching a controlling abusive person squeak at people.
Everything seemed rushed and more spectacle but wasn’t really exciting and kinda hoaky. Like 11’s obstacle course or when she snaps the guards neck. Couldn’t she just have knocked him out against the wall since she is in more control of her powers now. Deaths hold no meaning and are so casual it’s like a video game.
The cgi atmosphere was claustrophobic and always felt like a green screen set. I wasn’t emersed in this final season as I was with the previous ones because of how fake season 5 looked, how the characters became less sympathetic towards each other that I kept wanting to pause it and take a moment away from it.
I found myself BORED and going on my phone to see if other fans felt what I was feeling. And everything I was feeling watching season 5 others were pointing out word for word. Like how fake the tower scene looked and how ridiculous the two boys are fighting over Nancy, she’s not a likable character toward the boys, she’s mean spirited and not above average in looks to pine over so hard.
Season 5 shifted away from what Stranger Things was and felt to me and many others, I was reading online in people’s reviews and comments, people who wrote even more in depth reviews than mine.
CGI monsters in full light, Venca now completely CGI. It’s boring it doesn’t feel like a film with people interacting with each other it’s people reacting to something that isn’t there. Theirs no feeling of presence by the villain when it’s an animated video game cut scene character.
Robin was extremely annoying and her exposition scene was strange, time has passed why is she telling people of Hawkins what they already know, it’s lazy writing. The writing felt like they experimented with ai writing, even the cgi of young Will and young Winona Ryder looked like bad Ai and took me out of the show. The Duffer brothers said they had this all planned out from the start so why not film Wills Scenes and Max’s scenes when they were younger?
I liked Lucas’s scenes defending Dustin and comforting Max, he felt like the original seasons and Max as well I enjoyed her scenes but her costume design looked like she was in a bad stage play and there wasn’t enough of Lucas, he was the only character not fighting with everyone, that I can remember. I was intrigued by Holly’s journey but there wasn’t enough fear or paranoia going on for her character, everything seemed so rushed.
The rest of the cast felt like they didn’t want to be there and were over it and over each other that they became caricatures of there characters or were just abiding by the script, yelling at each other and being antagonistic towards each other as each episode went on they trudged on to be done with it .
Murray actor brought what he always brings but came off as a wimp to Nancy.
Winona Ryder with her ptsd eyes was so over the top and distracting. She brought nothing new but to Just mime out her character with lunatic eyes.
They replaced the twins Holly wheeler with a new actress, she’s supposed to 8 or 9 but looks and is 14.
Her acting is wooden and not very engaging or fearful enough of what’s going on in the other world.
The danger doesn’t seem there. The underworld isn’t scary or threatening anymore. People walk around joke smoke cigarettes pee on things not scared of the environment around them. Have long conversations in that world like they are talking to each other in their living room not paranoid of what may be around them. It even looked fake and stagnant, no atmosphere, like when 11 and Hooper are talking in Church or the building whatever they are in. With vines everywhere. Was so flat and none threatening looking.
All the insanity going on all those years and Mike isn’t concerned about his sister Holly talking to an imaginary person? When Venca was talking to his best friend Will in Will’s mind. Makes no sense Mike wouldn’t question it and confront her about it in a more serious tone or tell his friends something weird up with his sister. It’s like bad Ai writing.
With 450 million dollars and three years time how can they deliver this?
