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Whhhhaaaaat? I couldn’t have been more disappointed. It was a more sterile, uninspired, cgi repeat of the season 3 Mall fight with the MF. Vecna was just Billy except without an actual personality or complexity. Instead of an interesting set it was a boring CGI desert.
Stranger Things was a barely above garbage show from seasons 2-4; and an exercise is bloated nothing in season 5
Yeah I'm definitely speaking relative to expectations. Seasons 2-4 were barely above garbage, so this finale "was better than expected" for me, but my expectations were low.
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There's the large complaints about the CGI and horrible dialogue.
But over the last couple days the people pointing out little nitpicky things has really ruined it for me, because the nitpicks show that the writers don't even care about their own show and keep ignoring/forgetting little important details.
One of the ones that occurred to me: in the big final battle, they started unloading firepower on the mindflayer/spider, setting it ablaze. WHILE the abducted children were inside it. And this is utterly glossed over.
On top of that, the squad of Demogorgons which had, a few episodes ago, demolished a small military base, were nowhere to be found.
Clearly the Duffers didn't feel up to the task of writing a way for the main gang to fight the final boss and deal with all his minions running around in support too.
The show's handling of the Demogorgon post-S1 has been so dumb that this would probably be the least of my criticisms. Remember when Hopper literally beheads one with a sword?
I'd blocked almost all memories of the Hopper-in-Russia plotline. But yeah.
I also criticized how they immediately undid his death from Season 3. The fakeout, especially with how implausible it was, just ruined the weight of that moment.
Hopper spends the ENTIRE FREAKING SHOW sort of wanting to die, and his arc of eventually wanting to go on living (and desperately trying to protect El) was one of the few things that buoyed it through the rough times.
Another valid criticism is unwillingness to impose permanent consequences on ANY of the main cast. I can almost understand not wanting to kill them. But they didn't even want to give, say, Max, any permanent disabilities for being in a coma for what, a year and a half?
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Imagine that there is a crackhead armed with a knife trying to kill you. You are armed with a garden hose. You try to fend him off by spraying him with your little 10 psi water stream, which of course does nothing and he stabs you to death. You probably would have been better off trying to take the hose and beat him with it or strangle him or fend him off somehow.
This is about the relationship between government troops and demogorgons in ST. The troops are all armed with garden hoses, they do zero damage, and they all die. They would be orders of magnitude better off taking their M16s and swinging them like clubs. Drunk Karen Wheeler armed with a broken wine bottle is more effective vs demogorgons than entire squads of elite troops.
Now imagine that you had to fight that same crackhead, except now you have a flamethrower. You win this fight every time.
You are the US government. You are going to fight demogorgons. Do you give your soldiers the garden hose or the flamethrower? It has been 6 years, since the first scene in the first episode of the show, that the US government has been fighting demogorgons and they still have not figured out they need to give everyone flamethrowers and not garden hoses.
Also note that they figured out a perfect counter to the psychic kids in the meantime. They just didn't bother to adapt to the other creatures.
Also also note that based on Brenner's notes (loved that asspull) they could close the portal at any time.
That was another 'hilarious' nitpick. "Oh, so Vecna is going to combine our world and his, creating a literal hellscape on earth, probably killing most or all humans... and we just figured out how to instantly sever the connection so he can't do that. Problem solved."
"No, you see there's like 12 kids we have to save first."
"Yes yes very heroic, but did you miss the part where everyone dies if he does this? And we have an easy solution? We'll just tell their parents the kids were already dead if that helps."
Blowing up the exotic matter solves the entirety of the problem, and the only reason the kidnapping was really part of the plot was to give them something to actually fight. It wasn't even explained how the kids helped him with this plan.
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