A few years ago, I would have really liked a Stranger Things movie. I certainly would have loved a video game (a real one, not whatever that Netflix junk was), and personally requested one at the time. These days, my appetite for things that are stranger has cooled. Certainly, I don’t want eight Stranger Things movies. And yet, that’s what I’m getting.
Speaking at a Netflix showcase event, co-creator Ross Duffer said the series was like “eight blockbuster movies“, with over 650 hours being shot for the final season. To be blunt, this is too many. Stranger Things was a small stakes, big heart show that, sure, featured some looming cosmic threat, but was mostly about the children at its core. Now, those characters aren’t children, and the core is hollow.
Stranger Things Is Losing Fans With Its Drawn-Out Release Schedule
Here are some facts to put Stranger Things into perspective. Barack Obama was the President when Stranger Things arrived on TV. Riverdale and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina had not yet aired. It was six months before Star Wars: Rogue One hit cinemas. Timothee Chalamet had never had a lead role. Everyone loved Kanye & Kim and hated Taylor Swift, who was yet to record Reputation, never mind Lover, Folklore, Evermore, Midnights, four different Taylor’s Versions, or The Tortured Poets Department. Millie Bobby Brown, the show’s then-12 year old star, is now married and is the face of a lingerie line. And to date, they have done four seasons. Four!
I loved Stranger Things, and now I don’t care. This is the biggest casualty of the show taking so long. Never mind that these actors are clearly now full grown adults (and a couple don’t seem to suit post-child star life), that it’s harder to keep up with the story, or that they presumably have to pay Brown and David Harbour significantly more money after allowing their careers to explode into a new stratosphere instead of tying them down. The biggest problem is I simply don’t care.
This is not just about me. I know a lot of people in my shoes, who fell off during season three, or season four, and promised they would go back but just… never did. It will still pull in some impressive numbers, and Netflix will still say it was the most watched show in its history, even though that can’t possibly be true of every major product it puts out. Remember when Red One got more viewers than Avengers: Endgame? And if you said ‘yes’, you definitely don’t remember, because it wasn’t called Red One it was called Red Notice.
Stranger Things Never Needed To Be A Movie
I’m struggling to understand why this is a selling point, too. Netflix has eight (in fact, significantly more) blockbuster movies available already. Three of them even star Millie Bobby Brown, with one more coming around the time of Stranger Things season five and two more in the pipeline. Add in the Fear Street movies (Sadie Sink) and Concrete Cowboy (Caleb McLaughlin) and you can get to eight movies with just three of the six Stranger Things kids involved.
If I wanted to watch a movie, I would watch a movie. Movies are what Netflix (flicks over the ‘net, and originally called Love Film) is built on. I want my TV show to be a TV show, that is, reliably made with a longer narrative with distinct branches that support a wider range of characters. Why am I being sold season five of a TV show that I loved back in season one on the idea that it’s basically eight different movies? Not a lot of movies even make it to eight, and fewer of them still are any good by then.
This does not feel in the show’s, nor the viewers’, best interest. As far as the show goes, the name is the hit, and those lost fans are likely lost for good after taking so long to follow S3 with S4 (three years, up from two for S2 to S3 and one from S1 to S2) and then S4 with S5 (another three years). It feels like good money after bad to make eight movies, rather than a more character-driven wrap up, which would also be both significantly cheaper and faster to produce. As far as the fans go, they don’t want all sugar rush all the time. They might think they do, but a banana split doesn’t work without the banana.
I don’t know if Stranger Things season five will be any good. I can guess, from these comments, that episodes will be an expensive exercise in style over substance. Like so many of Netflix’s projects, it may be a massive bonfire fuelled by dollar bills in the hopes the flames look prettier this time than they did before. But it may be good. It may be great, as the first two seasons were. Unfortunately I won’t care, and so many others will be turned off by this incredibly lax and borderline disrespectful attitude towards building a TV show. I don’t want eight blockbuster movies unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I want my TV show back and I want it five years ago.
Stranger Things Upside Down
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