15) Firestarter
There are many shades of Carrie White in the shy yet occasionally barbarous (if pushed to the edge) Eleven, but a much closer comparison can be found in another Stephen King adaptation. Firestarter is the story of a young girl (aged nine, so closer to the age of Eleven than Carrie‘s lead is) with telekinetic powers. Like Eleven, Firestarter‘s Charlie McGee is borne of parents given hallucinogens in a government experiment.
Unfortunately for mom and dad, Charlie is eventually abducted by government scientists in their effort to make a psychic weapon out of her. Almost beat for beat, that reflects El’s own journey in Stranger Things (in Firestarter, as in Stranger Things, telekineses also causes the user’s nose to bleed). Firestarter also features a score by Tangerine Dream, an influence on Stranger Things‘ synth-y soundtrack.
14) The Mist
More Stephen King (this isn’t the last one on the list, either). The Mist, written in 1980 and adapted into a film by Frank Darabont in 2007, is along with ET another key touchstone for Stranger Things. In the King story, shady government figures accidentally open up a portal to another dimension, unleashing terror from the other side – the exact same thing happens in Stranger Things.
It’s the icy Dr. Brenner (played by Matthew Modine) opening up an inter-dimensional can of worms that kicks off the whole story in Stranger Things. One difference is that, in King’s tale, all manner of beasts come crawling through the cracked space/time portal, whereas in Stranger Things we only get one murderous monster.
The Duffer brothers are already talking about exploring what else is lurking in the other dimension in season two, though…
13) 80s Cop Movies
There doesn’t appear to be one single source of inspiration for Chief Jim Hopper, police chief of sleepy suburban Hawkins, but you can see him in a number of good/bad policemen from a slew of 80s cop movies. He’s cynical, a womanizer, an alcoholic. Things have gotten so terrible in Hopper’s life that he doesn’t even bother to shave or comb his hair anymore.
Of course, we slowly come to learn how Hop got to be this way. He was once a great cop, a golden boy working in the city, but took to the bottle when hit by tragedy. Now he’s a loner, a maverick demoted to walking a shitty beat in Nowheresville. His redemption story will sound just as familiar as his character set-up: it takes learning to trust people and believing in something again for Hopper to get back to being a good cop.
Aww.
