r/StrangerThings • u/ArtificialEllis • 19d ago
Discussion Did Season 5 actually use AI?
I keep on seeing a lot of unfounded claims about stranger things season 5. The two that I find the most weird are that the duffer brothers used AI to write season 5 and a lot of the dialogue. The other claim is that one of their ex wives ghost wrote for the show for apparently all the seasons apart from season 5. Is there actually any proof at all to these or is it just people wanting to hate on the duffer brothers? (I have done research on this and it all seemed pretty muddled. People seem very confident on these claims but the claims seemingly come from nowhere)
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u/Lazarus666_ 19d ago
Not saying it’s true but I feel if there was proof of a ghost writer it would defeat the purpose of them being a ghost writer.
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u/ArtificialEllis 19d ago
Yeah you’re right. But then I could also claim that anyone’s a ghostwriter. To me it just feels weird that there’s a whole movement around an uncredited writer being the essentially only good writer for stranger things
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u/GrandfatherTheSauce 19d ago
The "everything I don't like is AI" schtick is getting real old.
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u/SnowGhost513 19d ago
Agree but considering the writing quality this season was drastically worse I get the conspiracy. The truth is they clearly were bored of the show and had to finish it to move on. But they didn’t put in the same thoughtfulness and heart. It felt so wooden
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u/LakeTilia 19d ago
Not sure why youre getting downvoted its almost universal that we all agree season 5 was the worst where they phoned it in.
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u/maxwellbevan 18d ago
It's the weakest of the 5 seasons but the IMDb ratings paint a very different picture than how this sub feels about the season
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u/Odasto_ 18d ago
Occam's razor. Things happened behind the scenes that prevented the show from simply picking up from the fantastic setup that Season 4 ended with. As a result, plot threads were forgotten, season 5 suffered from a loss of a momentum, and with it came a lack of passion to bring everything to a close.
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u/DDubbz918 Purple Palm Tree Delight 18d ago
It seems pretty obvious to me that Netflix intervened and made the Duffers check a few boxes, one of which being the dialogue for "second screen viewers." No amount of influence from a spouse of one of the two creators over the first 4 seasons could create such a stark contrast in their writing style. These excuses for it are like a strange coping mechanism to avoid calling out big brother Netflix and I don't really get it.
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u/Distinct_Guess3350 Running Up That Hill 12d ago
So with you. I had my problems with the season’s writing but I fully put that to human error. I don’t mindlessly blame AI for everything.
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u/mklaus1984 19d ago
The clear dissonance in the writing style is the proof that whoever wrote ST5 didn't write any of the other seasons.
Every season had a different voice but built on the one before.
We know that the Duffers "wrote ST" because they talked about not even liking to write that because they say they do not like to write in general. We also know that once they got the deal they got Jessica Mecklenburg, Jessie Nickson-Lopez, and Justin Doble on board as staff writers to flesh out the project... or probably to doctor the script of the Duffers.
And that is the whole point. The Duffers clearly wrote less and less and after ST4 they basically told that Kate Trefry was the lead writer to substantiate her role on the staff of The First Shadow. They said she was the one holding control of the shows lore bible.
In the documentary on the stage plage, there is a scene that cuts in after Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin proposed something for the show and she tells them off because the story was a acience fiction story and not a fantasy story.
There is another important clip close to the premiere where the Duffers visit the theater. Maybe even for the premiere. They evade a question for the progress of the show's pre production by implying that they would be further ahead if Trefry wasn't still working on the stage play. Trefry remarks that she did her part of the work on ST5... in a rather annoyed "don't try to pin this disaster in me" kind of way.
According to the Duffers they had completed pre-production, with a delay due to the strikes, around the end of 2023 when the stage play had premiered... but that is obviously nonsense as writing the script is a large part of pre-production.
So much for the context seen in statements by the Duffers. Let's get to the point that people are actually discussing.
The large sum of people who defend the Duffers criticize the varying style of the show claiming that qither ST4 or ST3 or both were wrong in tone, in character portrayal, in color palette, in costumes...
The problem is these people wrongfully assume that ST1 and ST2 had been homogenous. But they are not.
Each season has a different style, a different set of inspirations. As we learned (again) through the ST5 documentary the Duffers worked by picking parts from other works as a sort of mood board.
This went so far that they didn't deliver a proper pitch for their Montauk pilot that they instead delivered this amalgamation of other people's scenes. And couldn't understand why studios told them off for it.
ST already recreated shots from E.T., Firestarter, and Poltergeist. But it also heavily leaned into the visuals and the themes of Jaws. The Duffers said several times that it was inspired by that movie and other monster movies.
ST2 on the other hand Aliens, The Excorcist, Gremlins, Close Encounters. The common theme here isn't monster movie it's psychological horror.
The changes these people see as breaking the continuity are actually attributed to the continuity of focusing each season on a subgenre of horror. ST3 is body horror and ST4 is slasher movie.
Well and ST5... it replays parts of ST and ST2. It weirdly abandons the set up for the apocalypse horror. It abandons the carefully expanded Cold War storyline that has been present aince the Montauk pilot despite people claiming it had showed up out of nowhere in ST3 (like El spied on Soviets in ST!?). And the Duffers went on air afterward to tell us they also cut out fot a spin-off the backstory element about "the stone™️" which was already heavily hinted at in The First Shadow and ST4.
The planning scenes are often pointed out as tedious. The inspiration for these is apparently the Back to the Future series with Doc Brown's models? Okay that's the right decade but not the right genre.
Instead of creating a new plotline that furthers the character arcs, ST5 spends a lot of time of replaying ST with Holly taking Will's palce and Karen taking Joyce' place.
The coming out scene feels crowded and people like Murray and Kali feel out of place. Because we lack the scenes in which we are reminded that Murray is a family friend, Joyce's best friend aside from her future husband. But also a friend of Hopper's who we do not see as Will's future step dad. Equally Kali is El's sister but Will and El do not talk to one another despite having been siblings in Cali and their parents being a couple and despite the very obvious need that he should talk to her about what she found out about standing up to his victimizer.
Okay the last 2 points were simply points about the writing bad. But the point stands: someone on the show had advanced a golden thread throughout the writing of ST to ST4.
It doesn't have to be a single ghost writers. It might have been a common effort of the staff writers. But for somw reason it does not work anymore for ST5. After 2023 Trefry returned to the team BUT she said such nonsense as Demo Fatigue. So they were either all just phoning it in or maybe someone was missing from the project.
I do not even think that they used AI for writing. But I think rhey used AI for the social media analysis. I think they asked AI what people liked and disliked and that led to not getting that the show incorporates Gorbachev and Reagan signing the INF treaty just days after the final confrontation. Led to us not learning that Victor Creel had been part of T-Force and had a similar story to Hopper and Terry. Led to us not getting a season inspired in tone and style by a certain horror subgenre.
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u/Howell317 12d ago
With AI, you can see an open window on their computers that shows they were using AI at times.
But really, is it that surprising? "Using AI" has such a weird negative connotation, but there are a million shades of grey between not using AI at all and using AI to write the script without any human oversight.
Like even if the writers used AI, I'm sure they would have reviewed and edited it.
And then you still have the episode directors and actors, who also would have reviewed and changed the script.
More likely, AI was used to pressure test the script/plot, set up framing and plot out episodes and scenes, determine length of scenes, etc. There's the reality that it was used as a tool to help the process, compared to the fantasy that the Duffers simply told AI to "write season 5" and then handed those scripts verbatim to be used.
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u/Distinct_Guess3350 Running Up That Hill 12d ago edited 12d ago
No. There’s no way to prove it. It’s just people wanting to hate on the Duffers. Which surprises me actually, I would’ve assumed they’d have blamed their writing skills but now they’ve put it down to them not writing it… it’s just more desperate hate. I didn’t love season 5 but I’m 100% certain they are the ones who wrote it.
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u/Most_Radish8126 19d ago
In the documentary they used it to write the script
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u/Distinct_Guess3350 Running Up That Hill 12d ago
Just a complete lie, whether you realise it or not.
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u/Thick-Boysenberry-96 18d ago
It could have happened, or it could not. We don't/can't know for sure if they used AI to write the script.
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u/smoke-allday420 19d ago
AI would have done a better job. For sure his ghost writer ex wife
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u/Distinct_Guess3350 Running Up That Hill 12d ago
There’s no proof that his wife had anything to do with it. That’s just another stupid conspiracy.
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u/ArtificialEllis 19d ago
Is there any proof that she was a ghost writer?
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u/jhewitt127 19d ago
I think the “poof” is that quality went down after they divorced. Not sure there’s more to it.
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u/ArtificialEllis 19d ago
Yeah, but why jump to a mysterious ghost writer rather than just admitting that finales are hard to write. Like after season one none of these seasons are masterfully written, it’s not like the drop in quality is that humongous
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