When the first season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” debuted in 2016, it seemed out of the blue. Managing to perfectly encapsulate retro sci-fi horror films and series from years gone by, it also had the distinctive atmosphere emblematic of the 1980s. There are now numerous shows with a “Stranger Things” vibe, and while it may seem like the success of the series was unprecedented, its creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, actually drew a degree of inspiration from a certain film released just five years prior.
In a 2022 appearance on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast with Josh Horowitz, the Duffer Brothers spoke about the kind of storytelling they wanted to accomplish with “Stranger Things,” and specifically cited the 2011 J.J. Abrams film “Super 8” as one of their chief inspirations. Despite being a film rather than a series, “Super 8” does seem to share a lot of creative energy with “Stranger Things,” from its late 70s time period to its cast of plucky pre-teens plunged over their heads into a world of science-fiction mystery.
More than that, though, “Super 8” had an emphasis on young people fostering strong friendships in hard times. Just like the fire-forged friendships the main characters of “Stranger Things” would build over the show’s five seasons.
Super 8 is a similar story of pre-teens in a sci-fi mystery
“Super 8” is a sci-fi action thriller film written and directed by J.J. Abrams with Stephen Spielberg serving as producer. The film, named after the Super 8mm film format released by Kodak in the 1960s, follows a group of six pre-teens who are attempting to make their own Super 8 film for a competition. While filming B-roll at a train depot, the group witnesses a major derailment, and spots an unknown creature fleeing from the wreckage on their camera.
Mysterious occurrences begin to plague their town, prompting the group to begin their own investigation and rescue their families, friends, and neighbors from both the creature and the military. While not exactly a modern classic, “Super 8” has a fairly healthy reputation as an enjoyable film. At the time of writing, the film has a 7.0 rating on IMDB and an 81% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Even if “Super 8” didn’t set the world ablaze, it seemed to touch exactly the right hearts it needed to in order to put “Stranger Things” in motion.
The Duffer Brothers wanted the same kind of storytelling as Super 8
In their interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, the Duffer Brothers said that they felt a distinctive kind of storytelling energy from “Super 8,” and were disappointed that the film came and went with relatively little fanfare and that nothing else came along capturing the same vibe. As part of the creative process that eventually resulted in five seasons of “Stranger Things,” the Duffer Brothers wanted to capture that energy themselves. Not just of “Super 8,” but of similar kinds of family adventure films that were more popular in previous eras.
Those with a sincere emphasis on friendship rather than the overreliance on irony they believed had become emblematic of filmmaking at the time. “We wanted to bring back that more not ironic, sincere, adventure, family storytelling that just seemed to have gone [away] – with the exception of ‘Super 8’, nobody was doing [it]. And ‘Super 8’ was kind of a one-off. I loved ‘Super 8’ but then it was just gone. No one else did it. And I do think there was an appetite – or that’s what I hoped – for this type of storytelling, so that really more than anything is what it is, is trying to stay in that zone.”
If the success of “Stranger Things” and its major cast members like Winona Ryder proves anything, it’s that the Duffer Brothers were right about people wanting a return to more genuine stories and characters.
