Stranger Things remains Netflix’s most iconic series, despite not having released any new content in nearly three years. The drought is about to end, though, with the first half of Season 4 set to arrive next month. The new season is said to take place in the spring of 1986, meaning the in-universe time difference from Season Three is a mere nine months at best. (The sudden growth spurt for the numerous adolescent characters will probably not be explained.)
Netflix began teasing this season a whole year ago, but now that it’s so close, their promotional machine is kicking into gear. One of the most recent efforts is “Stranger Morning Cartoons,” an anthology of six animated shorts based on the series. Despite its name, it does not use a deliberate retro style, instead letting the creators use their own.
None of the shorts contain new content beyond the visuals; they are simply recreations of scenes from Stranger Things in various art styles, and the same audio is used for most of the dialogue. You can think of this as like one of those “Re-Animated” projects that get passed around YouTube, except it’s an official release, and the original source wasn’t animated to begin with.
The first short is simply a salad of two to three second scenes from Season One, animated by Blind Pig. The art style is kind of ugly and it doesn’t leave much of an impression. The second, a 45-second recreation of that cool moment when Eleven flips a car upside-down with her mind, was animated by Smog as paper-cut 2D characters on a 3D background. It’s much better.
After that, Will Barras and Hush London recreate a climactic moment from Season 2, Hush and Claudia Brugnaletti do Will flipping out at the arcade, and Humouring The Fates covers Hopper’s letter from the end of Season 3. The best piece of animation is by Pedro Allevato, who chooses to spice up a rather uneventful scene (Steve and Dustin meeting up at the Scoops Ahoy) with some wild visuals (Dustin actually has a lightsaber this time, somehow).
Other than that, most of the shorts lack the punch of most Re-Animated projects we’ve seen. It’s possible this one had a tight deadline that forced a lot of still images and cheating to be used, but still. Considering the potential here, it could’ve looked a lot cooler than this. El deserves better.
