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Film<\/strong>: Near-Perfect<\/p>\n Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n Extras<\/strong>: n\/a<\/p>\n Label:\u00a0<\/strong> n\/a<\/p>\n Region:<\/strong> n\/a<\/p>\n Released:<\/strong>\u00a0 n\/a<\/p>\n Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0TV \/\u00a0Science-Fiction<\/p>\n Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0Will is taunted by lapses into the Upside-Down World, while Eleven breaks from her soft prison in search of answers to her past. Oh yes: and monsters threaten the safety of Hawkins!<\/p>\n Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 (none)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n Note: this review contains selective blatant spoilers!<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Netflix\u2019s hit series returned a week prior to Halloween with 9 episodes that offered a tonally different set of further adventures of the Byers family & Eleven (Elle), as two storylines head off in different directions until a sense of friendship brings them and everyone else together for a resolution that\u2019s both satisfying for the characters and<\/em> the series; should Stranger Things <\/strong>not be renewed for further seasons \u2013 highly unlikely<\/em>, given its popularity \u2013 Season 2\u2019s finale is just fine.<\/p>\n All the core characters from Season 1<\/a> are back, with Episode 1 launching the two main strands: while Joyce (Winona Ryder) is dating the town\u2019s Radio Shack manager Bob Newby (Sean Astin), elder son Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) is getting the cold shoulder from supposed-to-be girlfriend Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer), and younger son Will (Noah Schnapp) is experiencing increasing intense plummets into the Upside-Down World [USDW], and sees a massive tentacled smoke creature rising from the distance and heading his way; meanwhile, Sheriff Jim Hopper (David Harbour) is keeping Elle (Millie Bobby Brown) in his family\u2019s old cabin, safe from the feds who snatched her, and would undoubtedly want her back for further testing and possible military usage.<\/p>\n As Will\u2019s flashes into the USDW intensify, he\u2019s ultimately possessed by the black smoke, and undergoes a transformation that puts everyone in grave danger. His best buddies have additional stressors when not trying to solve Will\u2019s dilemma: Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) have romantic eyes on new schoolmate Maxine \u2018Mad Max\u2019 Maxine Mayfield (Sadie Sink), while her wretched stepbrother Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery) forbids Max from any fraternizing, and seeks to unseat Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) as the school\u2019s top jock, basketball star, and biggest \/ weirdest hair stylist.<\/p>\n Showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer transform the USDW\u2019s smoke monster into a virus-like thing, whose tentacles are reaching towards the town where Will lives, and using a kind of Venus Flytrap hounds as protectors and mutilators of anything it perceives as kind of immune system response to its burrowing.<\/p>\n Elle\u2019s late involvement does subjugate the character\u2019s importance in Season 2, and although she gets her own standalone episode (No. 7) where she meets a \u2018sister\u2019 equally traumatized by Season 1\u2019s Poppa (Matthew Modine), she\u2019s the secret weapon that saves the township, using sage advice from Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), seen in S2\u2019s kinetic opening, and no doubt a character with her own special abilities prepped to return in a future season (although hopefully not in a daft spinoff ploy, as was attempted by NBC brass with Heroes: Season 2<\/strong>).<\/p>\n The Duffers\u2019 design also changes the makeup of the super-secret organization, with its new head honcho initially coming off as a cold-hearted ass, but redeeming himself quite swell in the wrap-up and finale, which has the \u2018smoke dogs\u2019 racing to the base and picking off first lines of defense in the base\u2019s own tunnel-like architecture, much like the mass of chest-busters swarming the stranded humans in James Cameron\u2019s Aliens<\/strong> (1986).<\/p>\n One scene blatantly riffs \/ pays homage to the radar that becomes peppered with dots of the evil smoke\u2019s dogs, and whether by design or a casting suggestion that proved perfect, Dr. Sam Owens, the new doc in charge of the base, is played by Paul Reiser, whose character in Aliens<\/strong> deservedly met an ignominious end because he never wavered from the corporation\u2019s needs to preserve the aliens for possible military use.<\/p>\n Owens is more of a bureaucrat, and Reiser is great<\/em>, underplaying the character and keeping him morally grey until he realizes Will\u2019s condition demands some humane reactions and treatment. It\u2019s a clever maneuver to play against Reiser\u2019s Aliens<\/strong> type while shoring up Owens with intense Aliens<\/strong>-like action, and although he could turn subversive in S3, Owens\u2019 come-around to being a good guy adds to the finale\u2019s feel-good tone.<\/p>\n Many of the series regulars go through changes \u2013 as they should, since the actors are also a year older since S1 wrapped \u2013 and because of the show\u2019s strong casting choices, none of the teen characters are weak. Some romances blossom, others dry up; friendships strengthen, and the most villainous behaviour isn\u2019t a viral monster, but child and emotional abuse, neglect, post-traumatic stress, and manipulation from the federal to sibling level.<\/p>\n Sheriff Hopper, Joyce Byers, Bob, and science teacher Mr. Clarke (Randy Havens) are smart, but as is typical of vintage 1980s escapist tales, the kids are often smarter than the adults, and mother Byers & Bob excepted, all the other moms and dads are as dim as 10 watt bulbs.<\/p>\n The smoke monster upped the show\u2019s needs for greater effects, and in most of the scenes, the tentacled thing is utterly terrifying, especially the first time Will sees it rise from beyond the town\u2019s boundaries. The smoke dogs are nasty, but equally vivid is the base where the secret feds operate, like some cubic hybrid of 70s Brutalism and Soviet era government design, somewhat evoking the House of Soviets in Kaliningrad<\/a> \u2013 often dubbed \u2018the ugliest building in the world.\u2019<\/p>\n Tighter scenes, dialogue, more frenetic action montages, and a richer percussive score by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein make S2 an intense experience, especially after Ep. 5; there\u2019s little doubt the Duffers wanted to emulate the intensity of Aliens<\/strong>\u2019 \u2018massing\u2019 sequence, and each episode ends with an insane cliffhanger that will push hooked viewers into binging.<\/p>\n Most curious about S2 is the partial filming in B.C. and Quebec, so while the Georgia locations still dominate, one can guess some of the verdant wide shots and maybe Sheriff Hopper\u2019s cabin were shot in B.C., and Elle\u2019s one-off backstory with Kali was filmed in Quebec. (The secret organization\u2019s base, though, is the former Georgia Mental Health Institute<\/a>.)<\/p>\n With ST seemingly guaranteed another 1-2 seasons, the Duffer Bros.\u2019 challenges will including staying faithful to the characters, building on the USDW mythos without it collapsing from too much or contradictory info, and ending the series when it reaches its natural conclusion, not when the network<\/em> deems it\u2019s time.<\/p>\n An emerging conundrum for Netflix is how far it should maintain the exclusiveness of its wholly owned original series. The soundtrack albums for S1 have been released digitally and reissued twice on vinyl, and S2\u2019s music is also widely available, plus Netflix created a themed USDW for Toronto\u2019s 2017 Nuit Blanche<\/a> \u2013 teasers designed to get people to sign up as Netflix users \u2013 but like fans of the music, fans of the show want to own<\/em>, and the first foray into appeasing fans and enticing newcomers is releasing S1 as a U.S.-only, Target exclusive in a custom yet bare bones DVD-Blu-ray box (plus a 4K release); whether S1 will bleed out to regular online and physical merchants on DVD and Blu is unknown, but in creating a show that entices viewers hungry for legit and feigned nostalgia for an era rooted in physical media, Netflix really has no choice but to acquiesce. It\u2019s simply inevitable, and the likely merchandising revenues from video sales are too lucrative to restrict to one chain in one country.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a9 2017 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n External References:<\/strong> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a> \u00a0— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a> —Album Review — Composer Filmographies: Kyle Dixon<\/a> \/ Michael Stein<\/a>
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