super 8

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

Remember how excited people were when the first season of Stranger Things came out? And how that excitement perhaps flared up again with one or two setpieces in every season (“Running Up the Hill”! “Enter Sandman”!), but somehow it never quite captured that initial feeling that we were watching something that was both familiar and new? In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Sam argues that, just perhaps, J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 was the better Stranger Things to begin with.

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness.

Reading Mege’s critical reappreciation of all Stranger Things from last week, I became aware of how much I had loved that show’s first season. It not only made me a first-time Netflix subscriber but also truly excited me and my friends, leading to numerous binge parties with all the hairs on our necks standing up for most of it. I found the little-boy-lost storyline heartbreaking, the unfolding monstrosities riveting and the bond between the group of friends heartwarming. The ’80s references seemed loving but not overdone and the show came to an almost perfect conclusion.

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