Gremlins 2: The New Batch. A staple of classics. Considered a cult classic, Gremlins 2: The New Batch is a very interesting movie. If you have ever watched this movie before, you know what I am talking about.
Director Joe Dante did not want to make this movie. When he was asked to make a second one, he declined. He knew they only wanted to make this movie for the money, and not for anything else. In response, he ended up accepting the deal with a couple of caveats- he gets paid more, and he basically can do anything he wants with the movie, which is very clear in this movie. Even before the movie starts, the ‘free-range’ direction appears with Bugs Bunny opening up the movie. This movie goes in an entirely different direction than the first one, clearly explored at the start of this movie. This movie was made to make a satire on Hollywood.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch was a clear example of Hollywood only caring about money, and not caring about the quality of the movie. This is very clear, as it strays away from the first Gremlins movie, which was a scary movie. However, this time around, the movie feels more like a satire than anything. Throughout the whole movie, the gremlins are mostly used in gags. For example, one of my favorite parts of the whole movie is when the gremlins sing New York, New York, by Frank Sinatra for a whole 3 minutes!
With no real story, Joe Dante expresses how he got complete freedom on this project. One of the parts of his contract was that he had complete control over everything in this movie, which he abuses in this movie. From making “hot” gremlins to gremlins popping out of spaghetti, it is clear how much he did not want to make this movie. This whole movie is full of gags of gremlins, including the whole introduction of the movie making fun of Donald Trump and his shady business back in 1990.
Being set inside a New York building, Gizmo, the main gremlin, gets out of his cage, gets water spilled on him, and makes 4 more little gremlins. These gremlins decide to take over the building, and there are many gags inside of the story. Another cool gag in this movie is when a character in the movie is reviewing the first movie on TV, and the gremlins come up behind him and kill him. Even later in the movie, the gremlins are partying inside of this skyscraper, and a female gremlin appears. She tries to get with the security guard. There is another gremlin who displays electricity and is shown many times throughout the movie, with him flying through the air as electricity.
This movie is so wacky, weird, and out there that it does not really have a story, and is more about just poking fun at Hollywood executives and how money hungry they are. The deleted scenes are even wackier than the main movie. Putting the gremlins in a bunch of different movies, they venture into Batman, The Exorcist, and more.
With Gremlins having a proper ending, Gremlins 2: The New Batch did not really have much room for expansion based on the first movie. Joe Dante knew this, but Hollywood pressured him into making this movie with extra benefits.
Overall, this is not a scary movie, and Gremlins 2: The New Batch is a staple of how money-hungry Hollywood movies are, especially sequels.
