Definitely, some unimaginable animation got here out throughout the Eighties, movies similar to Akira and The Little Mermaid and all of us nonetheless love DuckTales and The Actual Ghostbusters. However the overwhelming majority of the cartoons of the period the place low cost and janky-looking—particularly people who would have been watched by children in a small Midwestern city (this author, a 40-something Michigander, assures you).
And the teaser appears to know that this isn’t an ’80s cartoon. “With the animation there’s actually no limits. Eric and his workforce can simply go wild” observes Ross Duffer. Robles concurs, including, “What we’ve been capable of seize is the magic of Hawkins in a brand new method.”
That phrase “a brand new method” significantly stands out. The few clips we see do embody signifiers of the last decade, together with Dustin’s blue and orange jacket and a Jaws poster on Mike’s wall. However they’re little greater than signifiers, they usually don’t really feel like half of the particular day after day life of somebody who lived within the ’80s. The clear digital animation solely exacerbates the issue, heightening the distinction between a fantasy world and lived expertise.
Such issues have all the time plagued Stranger Issues, which makes use of its ’80s trappings—the mall, the Chilly Struggle, numerous report drops—as tone setting greater than realism. The present needs to evoke the texture of studying a yellowed King paperback, not the precise expertise of choosing up a brand new copy of Pet Sematary from Ok-Mart in 1983. There’s nothing inherently unsuitable with mixing timeframes and signifiers for a selected impact, and clearly it’s labored for Stranger Issues.
However when the Duffers begin evaluating Tales from ’85 to precise ’80s cartoons, the attachment to the period sounds, frankly, determined. It sounds nearly as in the event that they’re clinging to an concept long gone its level of viability, sticking to it not as a result of it’s a good suggestion, however as a result of it’s the factor to do… and that sense of empty desperation in all probability isn’t one thing Netflix needs to focus on because it begins milking its prime franchise previous its pure finish level.
Stranger Issues: Tales From ’85 involves Netflix in 2026.
