Anyway, how about all that 80s goodness? I guess I should admit up top here that I'm actually kind of nuts for stuff from that decade - I've recently been looking (not always successfully) for action movies from the 80s on Netflix, after having caught Rambo II and III in close succession, and watched The Running Man not long after that. Also, Back to the Future is one of the few movies I own, and it's hard to get more 80s than that.
So it was fun to see something that looked a lot like my childhood, and did so without (to my mind) being excessive. Sure, I did think when they introduced Sheriff Hopper that they were taking the Stephen King references a little too far by casting someone for the role who looked way too much like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, but David Harbour actually managed to do so much with the role that by the end of Day One of my viewing (when I was wrapping up the fourth episode) I'd forgotten about that association.
It's also true that sometimes the visual references back to other shows or movies could be distracting - when Mike and the gang are walking along the tracks looking for the gate, I want to be thinking about what's happening, rather than thinking, "Oh, right, Stand By Me." But I suppose that's the danger in creating something that unashamedly parades its influences for the audience.
In my opinion, that's why the show was so successful - people will usually respond favorably to things that are a melange of stuff they know, as long as the mixing is done well and doesn't follow the source material too slavishly. It's why Super 8, JJ Abrams's attempt at a similar homage to the 80s and to Steven Spielberg, was less successful - Abrams made everything look and feel too much like The Goonies mixed with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and didn't end up having the space to make the audience care about the characters.
Another reason is that Stranger Things also feels like an artifact of its time. Much like Drive, which felt like a lost 80s Michael Mann film of the type you might find randomly channel-surfing on a Sunday afternoon, Stranger Things looks and sounds and feels like a story that's been sitting around since 1984, which we've only just noticed now.
No matter the fact that they hired the super-recognizable Winona Ryder as the put-upon single mom (another 80s sci-fi archetype, btw), or that most of the cast hadn't been born yet - the kids' faces are of the type that you'd have seen back then, and they're engaging in behaviors that would get modern-day parents sent up the river by child services (like, you know, swearing and riding bikes on their own).
That casting is extremely important, incidentally. I noticed it while I was watching (and it's one of the things that Super 8 got mostly right too), but the changes in casting policy for kids didn't hit home for me until just a few days later, when I watched The Amazing Spiderman, the 2012 reboot featuring Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker.
Andrew Garfield doesn't look or sound 17 in Spiderman, and the reason for that is that he was 29 when it came out. Even Emma Stone was 24 despite playing Peter's classmate Gwen Stacy. There are probably advantages to casting older actors, but I found myself being pulled out of the movie at times when Peter smiled and looked like a guy well past drinking age.
Although that's the nature of film-making now, isn't it? Verisimilitude isn't as important as getting butts in seats, and if it takes name stars who are 12 years older than the characters they play, then studios are probably happy to do it.
But I'm getting off topic. The casting was one of things that the Duffer Brothers got so, so right, along with the music and dialogue and references, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens in Season 2.
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