After Spending Half a Billion Dollars, Why Do Strangers Look Cheap and Bad?

By Chris Snellgrove | Published 40 seconds ago

The final Stranger Things season proved to be a disappointment, with internet fans bemoaning issues ranging from bad behavior and bad programming to Millie Bobby Brown’s unmoving forehead (Botox may ultimately be the weirdest of them all). However, I have a basic question about this season, which concerns the beauty of the show for everyone to stream.

After spending nearly half a billion dollars Stranger Things Season 5, why does this show look bad for every single episode?

The Budget Turned Downward

If you didn’t know, Unknown Things‘ The fifth and final season has a reported budget of $50-$60 million per episode. At eight episodes long, that means the budget for the latest season ranges anywhere between $400-$480 million, a budget that seemed reasonable at first because Netflix advertised that each episode would be like a movie in itself. While we can argue whether or not this was successful (many movies are longer, better paced, and provide better benefits than these episodes), one thing’s for sure: this season doesn’t look like it took nearly half a billion to produce.

The basic problem about Stranger Things The visuals of season 5 are that the background is always blurry. Part of the charm of Season 1 was that it had the cozy feel of a real ’80s setting, and you could easily make out all the little details that were amazing. Now, everything looks like a cutscene from a mid-2000s video game, with blurry backgrounds (and all the creepy soft focus) obscuring detail and making the show feel as distinctly closed off as Hawkins himself.

From Amateur CGI to Fake-Looking Sets

Additionally, Season 5 relies on a lot of CGI effects, and it looks awful. Like, it’s bad it’s bad: things like the “strange news” blob in the Upside Down, for example, look like a generic screensaver effect, and the Demogorgons look so fake that I expected to see health bars on top of their heads. This includes flat lighting and bad green screen effects to create a false visual as it is boring. Look at almost every scene in the Upside Down and ask yourself, does this look like the budget of two standard Hollywood blockbusters combined?

On a related note, sets of Stranger Things season 5 is brutal…the cave where Max is hiding looks very artificial, and some of the sets in the Upside Down look like they were put together quickly before shooting. When Dustin, Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan are looking for a “force point” to take down, they wander through rooms where every wall seems to come out of a cold, oversized pound. That’s why they filled these scenes with white slime, which brings me to a small gripe: are the producers indeed Should you have a big emotional moment with characters surrounded by white slime that looks like sperm?

Stranger Things Looks Filtered and Fake

In the end, everything seems to be filtered within an inch of its life, emphasizing how the show looks like the artificial antithesis of Season 1. That is why this show has what many fans have contemptuously called “the look of Netflix,” since the broadcaster has a house style that is always a little less inspired than a Marvel film. Now, the house’s style has infected the broadcaster’s biggest show, with the Duffer Brothers burning nearly half a billion dollars to create something with the sinister aesthetic of a forgettable Netflix rom-com.

As of this writing, Stranger Things is yet to air its series finale, and it’s likely to be so spectacular that fans forget how bad the entire season looked. However, so far, there is no real reason to believe that the final episode will be any better than the previous one. This led to the last thing Netflix wanted: a Stranger Things love as steady as Millie Bobby Brown’s eyebrows, despite all the piles of money thrown at literally every episode of Season 5!

---