I went through Stranger Things.
It was bad.
It got me thinking though. I think you need to have a “fucked up” upbringing to have things to say creatively more and more. You need a fresh, different perspective and you can’t really have that if you had a perfectly boring and great childhood.
Apparently the Duffer brothers didn’t do anything else in their lives besides watching movies, learning how to make movies and making some. That’s not a good thing. You would think it is but it’s not. Stranger Things feels like it’s been created by an algorithm. Procedurally generated generic horror story.
Akira, which has the best story revolving around kids with psychic powers escaping a secret government lab of all time, has this development because the author lived something, being born right after the war and wondering about nuclear bombs effects on people. Which is why the kids in Akira look like they’re old, making them immediately fascinating. Katsuhiro Otomo had lived some shit and was putting it in its art.
Take someone like Jenji Kohan, TV writer born in a family working in television. You’d think she would be bland but she isn’t because she was a woman competing with her brother and dudes in the late 90s and that ultimately had an impact on her output. She went for unheard themes and stories like single mothers selling weed and women in prison. She added something. She brought something.
You need purposes and reasons to make long and lasting things and Stranger Things falls really short for me because it’s been made with a weird fetish/me-too/nostalgia-induced creativity and nothing else.