More than two years since filming and it was well worth the wait. Stranger Thingsat last fulfilled its mash-up pop culture promise in its fourth season. Hidden inside a mix of a B-movie style homage to low-budget horror and Steven Spielberg movies of the E.T. and Goonies vintage, the story finally came full circle in nine big hours over seven episodes. What do you get when you take 1980s pop culture, a haunted house, a superman lab, more Upside Down, more D&D, not-rabid mynocks, a monster to rival Freddy Kruger, and a huge cast of characters you’ve grown to love (and watch grow up)? The best season of one of the streaming era’s best series.
It’s been a long road, getting from there to here–that is, getting from Stranger Things′ third season to a final trailer and a fourth season beginning a long six weeks from now. It may not seem like it, but it’s been more than two years since we first saw a glimpse at what lies ahead on Stranger Things. At last the breakout hit retro-sci-fi-horror series finally has a full trailer and a coming go-live date for part of the next season.
Dungeons & Dragons fans may notice the new oogy threat to be Vecna, an undead sorcerer last seen in your weekly D&D game or the 5th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide (discussed here). With Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund joining the show, and the Creepshow vibe in its new creepy baddie, Stranger Things Season 4 looks to lean more on darker monster horror than previous seasons.
At last here’s the trailer for the fourth season of Stranger Things:
It may not seem like it, but it’s been an entire year and a half since we last saw a glimpse at what lies ahead on Stranger Things. Check it out here if you need a refresher. It seems a little… strange… but here we are again and the best that Netflix has for fans of its breakout hit retro-sci-fi-horror series is… another teaser. It’s so brief that you probably can’t recall how much of it you’ve seen before, and how much is actually new. So we pulled some images so you don’t have to. In the meantime, you could travel to Kansas City to get your Stranger Things fix later this month for Planet Comicon to meet Gaten Matarazzo, who plays Dustin on the show, and Gabriella Pizzolo, who played Dustin’s friend Suzie, introduced in season 3.
Check out the new teaser for Stranger Things, season 4, below. And the bad news: it’s not arriving until sometime in 2022.
This week two brief videos will leave most people scratching their heads and asking, “Why bother?” The first, for The Batman, released by writer-director Matt Reeves (who we hold out hope for because he wrote and directed the great vampire love story Let Me In), is a “camera test,” which appears more like an early lighting and costume test where you can glimpse new bat actor Robert Pattinson in his batsuit. The second is from Netflix, and it’s an overly long scene of a Russian prison work detail resulting in the appearance of David Harbour as a thinner, gaunt, exhausted Jim Hopper, spoiling any surprise that the character was really killed in the final episode of the last season of Stranger Things. (C’mon, you knew he wasn’t going to be dead for long). Some will applaud one or both. Others will sneer. Where will you land? (Psst. There’s no wrong answer).
What are these things anyway? Barely teasers, the purported “camera test” for The Batman is more “trial balloon,” an intentional vehicle for starting buzz, good or bad, so potential audiences get accustomed to yet another revamp of the batsuit and actor. Literally thousands of podcasters have already manipulated the image of Pattinson in many ways to try to glean something worth discussing (not surprisingly with little to say). We already knew it takes some effort to find an artist that has drawn Bruce Wayne that in any way resembles the co-star of The Lighthouse,Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and the Twilight vampire movies. And–big surprise–David Crossman and Glyn Dillon′s new costume design looks like another batsuit of the sharp-angled, action figure toy variety (toys = sales = more $) instead of something out of the comics pages. And current movie go-to composer Michael Giacchino offers another repeated bass line with drum set in the background to back it all up. Our wish? We just want Warner Bros. to finally get the voice of Batman right and skip that goofy, dry, smoker voice and coughed-out dialogue. Let’s hear him say, “I’m Batman.”
The Stranger Things video is out there to whet appetites of fans who won’t see the series return for another year. But did the fans need to know Hopper wasn’t dead before the fourth season was ready to go? Here’s an idea: If you’re going to cast against type, as they’ve done for The Batman, why not really have some fun and give us David Harbour as Batman? Sure, Harbour is playing a Russian superhero in the summer Black Widow movie from Marvel Comics, but audiences won’t care. Let’s really have some fun. Or give Pattinson the role of a superhero he really looks like: Wolverine. They need a new younger actor for the role in the new Marvel Cinematic Universe, right?
Oh, well. Watch–or don’t–you’re not missing much! Here are the two brief, too-brief videos for The Batman and Stranger Things:
