“Stranger Things: Tales From ’85” premieres Thursday. Image courtesy of Netflix
The new animated adventure, Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, revisits the beloved characters of Netflix’s five-season, live-action, sci-fi series, Stranger Things, at a stage of their lives when they don’t have the weight of the world on their shoulders.
Executive produced by Matt and Ross Duffer, and Shawn Levy, the show premieres on Thursday.
Set in 1985 between the events of Seasons 2 and 3 of the flagship series, it follows a group of tween friends as they try to figure out the connection between the monsters in their Indiana town and a shadowy government lab.
“The Duffer brothers were really excited about just going back to the time where the kids were just kids. They weren’t worrying about saving the world. They were just worried about saving Hawkins,” show-runner Eric Robles told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
“There’s something kind of just nice and clean about that and one of the things that we talk about is kids riding bikes, solving mysteries with walkie-talkies and flashlights and that’s as simple as we can start with and knowing that the kids are at that age where everything is still new. Everything’s still curious. They’re still trying to make sense of this world.”
Longtime fans know that, at this point of the mythology, the Demogorgons have been sent scurrying back to their realm and the portal leading to their dimension has been sealed up.
However, there are still supernatural events rocking the town.
“The gate’s supposed to be closed. There should be nothing from the Upside Down to live in Hawkins. How is all this happening? And that builds mystery. That builds intrigue,” Robles explained.
“The Duffer brothers wanted to make sure that we didn’t really interfere with the main focus of what was happening with Vecna and all the dangers that come down the line in Seasons 3, 4 and 5. Part of the marching orders was: ‘Try to figure out your own science. Try to figure out how this is all working.'”
Robles went back and looked at the old movies and cartoons he grew up watching in the 1980s for inspiration.
“I remember seeing Reanimator and [being amazed by] the idea of bringing matter back to life, a scientist that would bring matter back to life. And I was like: ‘Well, what if you had Hawkins lab science meets Upside Down matter? What would happen if that’s the case?'” the filmmaker recalled.
“That’s how we were able to really kind of carve our own path in the world of Stranger Things, while creating new monsters that are still technically related to the Upside Down,” he added. “There’s an evolution of these creatures that are starting to form in Hawkins because of this reason.”
The show features a voice cast that includes Brooklyn Davey Norstedt as Eleven, Jolie Hoang-Rappaport as Max, Luca Diaz as Mike, Elisha “EJ” Williams as Lucas, Braxton Quinney as Dustin, Ben Plessala as Will, Brett Gipson as Hopper and Jeremy Jordan as Steve.
Robles said he wanted the voice cast to capture the essence of the characters, not attempt impressions of the stars from the live-action show, who are now in their 20s.
“All these kids are just bringing their own kind of understanding of who they think these characters are,” Robles noted. “They’re just kind of bringing them to life in their own unique way.”
New characters are voiced by Marty Supreme actress Odessa A’zion, Reality Bites alum Janeane Garofalo and Longmire icon Lou Diamond Phillips.
“One of the things I love so much about art is that it’s organic. You don’t have all the answers, all the time,” Robles said.
“Part of the journey is the discovery of it all. So, as we started thinking about characters and we start designing them and, in the writers room, talking about them, we just started saying: ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if it was this actor? Wouldn’t it be cool if it was Janeane, right?'” he added.
“We’ll put up what are called mood boards and then once we kind of start thinking about voices, we’ll put up the images of the actors around us and then we start just thinking about their voices and how they can fit with the characters that we’re creating.”
‘Stranger Things’: The cast through the years
Left to right, “Stranger Things” cast members Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas), Noah Schnapp (Will), Winona Ryder (Joyce), Matthew Modine (Dr. Martin Brenner), Millie Brown (Eleven) and Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin) attend the show’s Season 1 premiere in Los Angeles on July 11, 2016. The series turned into a pop culture phenomenon. A fifth and final season is coming. Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo
