Many years ago my brother and I used to watch the original black and white TV series from the 1960s and find the professor, Dr. Zachary Smith, very amusing. Then there was the dull, forgettable 1998 film with William Hurt, Matt LeBlanc and Gary Oldman. Now comes – and I feel like I've been bombarded with ads about it online, on the radio, in print and on billboards – the Netflix 2018 reboot. And you know what? It's so bad it's unwatchable. We couldn't get through episode two.
– 1/5
Stranger Things
What's so risible about Charlie Kessler suing the Doobie Brothers, I mean the Dust Brothers, no – I mean the Duffer Brothers for plagiarising his idea for Stranger Things is that's there's not more people doing the same thing. Such as John Carpenter, Steven King and Steven Spielberg (and that's just for the credit sequence!). Oh, I get it – it's a homage, not a rip off. Nevertheless, if you're of a certain age, i.e. you were a child of the 1970s/80s, it's hard not to feel like you've seen Stranger Things many times before, from the typeface of the titles, to the music, the characters and the plot. I'm thinking, like, The Goonies, Stand by Me, E.T., Carrie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones, The Evil Dead, Poltergeist and even Pretty in Pink, to name just a few (here's an entire A-Z of films referenced in the series). It's not even just films from that era: I thought the sequences where Eleven ('El') goes into the black 'void' were uncannily similar to scenes from Jonathan Glazer's extraordinary Under the Skin (2013).
Now, I don't mind film or TV directors being influenced by previous films or filmmakers: from the French New Wave directors affection for Hitchcock and Hawks, to the ultimate film geek Quentin Tarentino being influenced by, erm, virtually all cinema, there's a fine tradition of directors wearing their influences on their sleeves; doffing their caps, if you will. But when every frame of the series is a mash-up of Spielberg, Carpenter, De Palma, John Hughes et al, and drenched in clichéd, retro nostalgia for the 1980s, it's quite hard to take anything else from it.
It's like the difference between recent films Super 8 (2011) and It Follows (2014). Like with Stranger Things, Super 8 is set in the same period (1979 to be exact), is a mash up between films such as The Goonies, Stand By Me and E.T., but adds absolutely nothing to them or the genre. On the other hand, It Follows, whilst quite obviously influenced by John Carpenter, only takes his films as a starting point, and ends up with something stunningly original, and terrifying. Another 1980s-set film, Donnie Darko (2011), uses the trope of the American high school and music of the time, but to original effect, exploring diverse themes such as time travel and mental illness.
If you're a child, however, watching Stranger Things for the first time and thinking it's great, scary and original, that's fine. But if the first time you hear The Clash, Joy Division or New Order is on the soundtrack, I don't know, there's something wrong about that (Guardians of the Galaxy is another one retreading old retro ground with a mixtape of 1970s songs – featured previously in other films such as Reservoir Dogs and Boogie Nights – and storylines out of Star Wars). It's like – and this is just a shot-in-the-dark theory – they're purposely trying to hook in both children and adults alike. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it's the clichéd, unoriginal, cynical way they go about it that gets my goat.
– 3/5
Now, I don't mind film or TV directors being influenced by previous films or filmmakers: from the French New Wave directors affection for Hitchcock and Hawks, to the ultimate film geek Quentin Tarentino being influenced by, erm, virtually all cinema, there's a fine tradition of directors wearing their influences on their sleeves; doffing their caps, if you will. But when every frame of the series is a mash-up of Spielberg, Carpenter, De Palma, John Hughes et al, and drenched in clichéd, retro nostalgia for the 1980s, it's quite hard to take anything else from it.
It's like the difference between recent films Super 8 (2011) and It Follows (2014). Like with Stranger Things, Super 8 is set in the same period (1979 to be exact), is a mash up between films such as The Goonies, Stand By Me and E.T., but adds absolutely nothing to them or the genre. On the other hand, It Follows, whilst quite obviously influenced by John Carpenter, only takes his films as a starting point, and ends up with something stunningly original, and terrifying. Another 1980s-set film, Donnie Darko (2011), uses the trope of the American high school and music of the time, but to original effect, exploring diverse themes such as time travel and mental illness.
If you're a child, however, watching Stranger Things for the first time and thinking it's great, scary and original, that's fine. But if the first time you hear The Clash, Joy Division or New Order is on the soundtrack, I don't know, there's something wrong about that (Guardians of the Galaxy is another one retreading old retro ground with a mixtape of 1970s songs – featured previously in other films such as Reservoir Dogs and Boogie Nights – and storylines out of Star Wars). It's like – and this is just a shot-in-the-dark theory – they're purposely trying to hook in both children and adults alike. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it's the clichéd, unoriginal, cynical way they go about it that gets my goat.
– 3/5
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