i've been obsessed with the s4 epilogue for the last few days and i need to talk about this
the camerawork is CRAZY. the amount of tricks they use here is just not necessary for them simply looking through the car window. and remember this is the EPILOGUE. in stranger things the epilogues are packed full with foreshadowing, especially in s4. there is no dialogue, only the voiceover of the new reporter.
these are the first two shots we see, back to back. mike and el are fully visible together on screen, while will is fully by himself. the camera isn't moving much at first
then there are some shots of the destruction in hawkins and families packing up to leave.
then there's this shot of will, possible referencing the phineas gage analogy used in s2. mike and el's heads are barely visible in the back.
then there's another shot of families packing to leave hawkins.
it's interesting how el is at first hidden behind mike and slowly revealed.
then there's a shot of the high school.
this is the first shot of willelmike from inside the van, not outside the window looking in. el is not visible at all, only will and mike. and the focus is shifting from will to mike.
(i will also note that the music noticeably swells here. seriously go watch it gets very loud and even more emotional when the focus shifts from will to mike)
the next time we see the characters is this:
mike is not visible at all, only will and el.
we see mike and el again, but not at the same time. they are distinctly separated and obscured. we only see one at a time.
this is the last we see in the van. mike, again, is obscured. we still can't see mike and el as a unit like they were being shown as in the beginning. i can't stress enough how important it is that they were originally being shown together. this is also the first time we are seeing through el's pov, looking through her side of the van instead of mike's.
only after the shot that shifts from will to mike, we can no longer see mike and el on screen at the same time. only after the shot of mike and will. and it's only after the shot where mike and el are distinctly separated that we see el independent, looking through her own window instead of mike's while mike is the one obscured in the background, and we get a close up on her face.
we progressively see more of mike and will on screen together.
while every time we see mike and el, we see less of them.
this is storytelling through camerawork, quite obviously. don't forget that this is what we see immediately in the epilogue. mere moments before this, we saw el reviving max, where we hear many quotes such as:
"Not Hopper, not Mike, you."
"See? What'd I tell you? There's more to life than stupid boys!"
"Against the rules?" "We make our own rules."
maybe TWO MINUTES before these shots in the van.
and i'm not trying to get testy cause i know people get sensitive about this, but they chose to show us the love triangle looking on at the destruction and devastation in hawkins. the same love triangle who are inexplicably tied to the monologue, aka a massive act of forced conformity.
"It's forced conforming. That's what's killing the kids."
will mike and el were all struggling with this. el was deeply insecure and felt like a monster, and relationship with mike did nothing but fuel it. she pretended to be someone she wasn't in front of him and EXTENSIVELY lied to him. mike feels like a useless nerd loser who is also likely dealing with internalized homophobia, and his relationship with did nothing but fuel it. he felt like he had to pretend to be someone else in lenora, because his true self isn't enough. the only person to soothe these insecurities of mike's is will byers, who is also deeply in love with mike. will byers, who because of mike pushing him away in an attempt to be 'normal', thinks mike will never ever feel the same and thinks mike loves el. the one person who brings out mike's true self and naturally makes mike feel like his true self is enough, is also the one who pushed mike into saying i love you to el in the end. that's why they failed, and that's why they're the ones with an extended compilation looking on at the destruction. we needed to see them observe the damage that they inadvertently caused.
let me be clear, i'm not blaming them or calling them bad people or stupid or anything. it's all about the narrative and storytelling and themes of the show.
this gets even more interesting when you consider that mike will and el are the leads of season s5. this is how they're portraying the leads of s4 in the final foreshadowing portion of s4.
