![]() It'd be easy to simply hand the kids this technology without addressing the apparent magic at work, but the Duffer brothers fold the gadgets into the characters themselves. Walkie-talkies are pivotal to the season's pacing, allowing the kids to easily communicate with one another and giving them the power to drive the story. This is in a time when pagers were just catching on - and here's this 13-year-old dweeb standing at the edge of the forest, having a crystal-clear, hands-free conversation with one of his best friends who's miles away. In a modern-day version of Stranger Things 2, those bulky bricks would be Windows Phones (and at one point, the camera would linger just a second too long on one of the screens, Microsoft's logo in clear view).ĭustin even connects his walkie-talkie to a headset, running around the city of Hawkins and talking to his friends hands-free. Take the first time we see the kids, for example: Dustin is running around his house, collecting quarters for the arcade and scheming with the gang on their walkie-talkies. The main characters essentially end up using cellphones in every episode. The Duffer brothers aren't the only directors to use walkie-talkies and other '80s gadgets as rudimentary mobile phones, but Stranger Things 2 leans heavily on these tools. New habits die hard.Ĭellphones are also brilliant for storytelling purposes, at least when it comes to connecting characters and pushing the plot forward. Modern cellphone technology didn't exist in 1984, but subconsciously, we still want the people of that time period to behave as if they had supercomputers in their pockets. Cellphones are so ingrained in our daily routines (often the first thing we look at in the morning and the last thing we see at night) that it's easy to think it's always been like this. It's possible that the ubiquity of cellphones in our lives has altered the way we - and the Duffer brothers - think about the past. For the past decade or so, they've lived with the rest of us in a post-cellphone world, with instant, constant access to reliable voice, text and visual communication tools. They were 16 when the Nokia 3310 hit the market and 20 when the Motorola Razr came out. Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer were born in 1984, meaning their formative years were spent on the cusp of the cellphone boom. While we've tried to avoid any spoilers in this story, the following article does refer to scenes and themes throughout the season. They're necessary.Īnd, taken together, the walkie-talkies, radio and camcorder serve as a handy stand-in for a contemporary mode of communication: the cellphone. These pieces of technology drive the story and shape the main characters on a fundamental level. The communication gadgets in Stranger Things 2 - walkie-talkies, a police radio and a video camera, specifically - aren't simply clever nods to a bygone 8-bit time. However, some of these details serve a purpose beyond world-building. The clothes are right, the hair is right (yet so, so wrong), and Stranger Things 2's universe works perfectly as a 1980s nostalgia bomb. Pick any scene, study it closely, and the obsessive attention to detail becomes clear: Yard signs proudly read, "Reagan/Bush '84 " Family Feud plays on a bulbous TV screen beneath rabbit-ear antennae soda cans are scrawled with the era-appropriate logos. This brand new storyline, developed exclusively with the Duffer Brothers, propels guests into a parallel universe where they must unlock their secret powers to help save the town.The second season of Stranger Things takes place in 1984, in a carefully curated world of mullets, muscle cars and arcades. The experience launches guests on an adventure through the darker side of Hawkins, including the infamous Hawkins Lab and the Upside Down. The experience opened in New York in May, San Francisco in June, London in August, with other cities around the world slated for later this year. ![]() “We know our Stranger Things fans will embrace the chance to be the heroes of the story, working alongside Eleven, Mike and the rest of the gang to fight the evil threatening to consume Hawkins,” says Greg Lombardo, head of experiences at Netflix. Netflix and Fever, an experience discovery platform, have teamed up to deliver the all new Stranger Things: The Experience in Atlanta. If you can’t get enough of the Netflix hit series Stranger Things, then a multimedia experience coming to Pullman Yards in Kirkwood will turn your world upside down starting Oct.
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