Embedded in My Consciousness’: The Reason Gremlins 2: The New Batch Is My Feelgood Movie
“Well, it’s rather brutal here. We’re advising all of our clients to invest all their resources into canned food and shotguns.” This nugget of wise counsel comes from the Brain Gremlin – a lab-engineered, articulate, bespectacled member of the slick creature crowd that infests Manhattan’s super-smart Clamp Tower skyscraper in filmmaker Joe Dante’s unhinged continuation Gremlins 2: The New Batch. On the surface, it’s simply an financial suggestion from one monster to another. Yet, oddly enough, it’s also pretty solid existential counsel. Honestly, listen to my reasoning.
When things go bad, the biggest mistake you can do is approach matters with excessive gravity. The Brain Gremlin grasps this. Actually, the majority of the dentally-gifted beasts that populate Dante’s unrestrained 1990 movie (possibly his finest) possess the same knowing, self-referential sense of humour regarding the blurry line separating everyday life and absolute bedlam. It’s a particular aspect of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that maintains my loyalty – and with the passage of time, it’s the underlying idea that echoes the loudest.
An Early Life Fixation
Of course, my attachment to this movie wasn’t born on such an philosophical plane. As a child, we only had a few battered VHS tapes at home. Part of that group were Gremlins and its second chapter, the latter housed in a thick former-rental sleeve almost certainly acquired from an non-chain rental store and featuring grimacing beasts on its tattered front. I was immediately enamoured and these films quickly proceeded inserting themselves inside my small, malleable brain. After that point, they became an almost-daily part of my childhood viewing routine.
Dante’s original usually receives all the accolades, thanks largely to its reputation as a partly frightening holiday classic – and let me be clear, I’ve watched Gremlins an incalculable number of times. Nevertheless, its follow-up seldom receives the same level of elevated esteem, which feels criminal. As a kid, I’d never miss an opportunity to watch Gremlins 2. During long summer holidays, I’d lock myself inside and stick it on. When I acquired my personal TV-VHS combo unit, it continued playing looped in my bedroom. Over time, it etched itself permanently in my mental framework. If my parents observed this fixation, they didn’t seem to mind.
Subtler Delights and Pop-Culture References
As I matured, new insights enhanced multiple watches, amplifying the pleasure of watching diminutive verdant beasts happily vandalize a New York high-rise. I learned the future-focused real estate tycoon and Clamp Tower owner, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), was inspired directly by the later-to-be-president Donald Trump, with his ginger staff member Marla (Haviland Morris) alluding to his one-time partner Marla Maples. Fortunately, Clamp demonstrates more humanity than his genuine article inspiration.
The “doomsday” video Clamp plays during maximum monster mayhem? I discovered it was based on a real-life “Doomsday” video produced by the CNN boss Ted Turner should the world truly faced apocalypse. I noticed how Dante went out of his way to film varying versions of a meta sequence where Gremlins seize control of the very film you’re watching. An edit for movie houses, another for home video and television, each offering a winking bit of meta pop-culture magic ahead of its time.
A Persistent Legacy
While it was makeup maestro Rick Baker’s wonderfully grotesque creatures that caught my eye as a child, this subsurface richness kept me hooked as an adult. Eventually, I even spoke to Dante about it myself and he had no reservations revealing to me he made the movie with the direct intention of poking fun at those who loved its silly-yet-sincere predecessor and desired a sequel. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he gleefully confessed. This cartoonish rebelliousness and commitment to not take his sequel as seriously as his Warner Bros bosses clearly wanted him to, only deepened my appreciation further.
When I experienced a abrupt familial death earlier this year, I was astonished to realize that, during my most profound sorrow, all I wanted to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Odd, no? Perhaps not. The comforting familiarity it offered was necessary to dilute my mind’s mourning mire – but the insights it had given me as an adult were equally valuable.
Like Gremlins running amok in a genetics laboratory, there’s particular aspects in life you just are powerless over. Dante knows it. The Brain Gremlin shares this wisdom. Sometimes, you have to emulate them: welcome the pandemonium, put everything you’ve got into preserved goods and firearms and try not to take things too seriously.
It’s robust worldly wisdom from a most improbable origin – and it’s why Gremlins 2: The New Batch will forever remain my comfort movie.
