The Duffers admit to Stranger Things’ biggest mistake: “I rewatch Season 1 and I cringe”
The creators of the hit Netflix series admit that “we didn’t know what we were doing.”
Following the premiere of the first four episodes of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things—and while awaiting the second volume with the next three episodes, scheduled for December 27— we want to pause for a moment to consider some recent and surprising statements made by the Duffer brothers about one of the biggest—if not the biggest—mistakes they made with the Netflix series, claiming that “we didn’t know what we were doing.” And it has to do with the limited budget for the first season.
Demogorgons are on the loose
Many ‘Stranger Things’ fans have expressed their disagreement with the obvious differences between the Demogorgon in the first season and the one in the latest season, with the latter being much more realistic, if we can apply such an adjective to a demonic beast that seems to have been born in hell itself. The Duffers have admitted the reality, assuring fans that they did not have the means in the first season to do anything better.
Matt Duffer himself has admitted the visual difference between the two seasons: “I rewatch Season 1 and I cringe. It looks so much worse. We’ve certainly learnt a lot about visual effects [since then].” Not surprisingly, given the success of the different seasons of Stranger Things, the budget for the fifth and final season is up to ten times higher than that of the first. And that shows in the quality of the production and its visual effects.
However, Ross Duffer points out another problem besides the lack of budget: with the first season of Stranger Things, they lacked experience. In this regard, Ross says that at the time, “we didn’t know what we were doing.” Although many fans believe that the first season is the best of all and that it could even have been left as a miniseries with just that first season.
Let’s remember that with the premiere of the fourth season, they already tried to make the Demogorgon with practical effects, that is, a guy dressed up as a monster, although as production progressed, they realized that it wasn’t working: “In the first season, we wanted to be able to film a man in a suit. We wanted to do it practically. We tried it practically, and thank goodness no one could see it,” Ross confirmed at the time.
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Be that as it may, we are left wondering which scenes specifically cause the Duffers embarrassment, although if we rewatch the first season, it won’t be hard to guess which ones they are talking about. That said, perhaps they should have worked a little harder on the full shots of Vecna, as in many moments the suit they hated so much from the early Demogorgon is all too noticeable...
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