🔗 Share this article

“Well, it’s rather brutal here. Our recommendation is all of our clients to put everything they’ve got into preserved goods and firearms.” This piece of sage advice comes from the Brain Gremlin – a genetically modified, articulate, spectacled 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 life guidance. Honestly, hear me out.

When things go bad, the worst thing you can do is approach matters with excessive gravity. The Brain Gremlin comprehends this. In fact, most of the dentally-gifted beasts that inhabit Dante’s unrestrained 1990 movie (arguably his best) possess the same wry, meta sense of humour regarding the hazy boundary separating everyday life and unadulterated chaos. It’s a single component of Gremlins 2: The New Batch that keeps me coming back – and as I age, it’s the underlying idea that echoes the loudest.

An Early Life Fascination

Naturally, my attachment to this movie did not begin on such an deeply thoughtful note. As a child, we possessed merely a few scratched-up video tapes at home. Included within that collection were Gremlins and its follow-up, the latter housed in a thick former-rental sleeve likely purchased from an independent video outlet and sporting snarling creatures on its knackered cover. I was right away smitten and these films did not delay embedding themselves inside my tiny, impressionable mind. From then on, they became an almost-daily part of my childhood viewing routine.

Dante’s initial installment commonly garners all the plaudits, thanks mostly because of its legacy as a partly frightening holiday classic – and let me be clear, I’ve watched Gremlins an incalculable number of times. That said, its follow-up seldom receives the same level of elevated esteem, which feels criminal. As a kid, I’d always seize the chance to watch Gremlins 2. During long summer holidays, I’d retreat into the house and stick it on. When I acquired my personal TV-VHS combo unit, it continued playing looped in my bedroom. Gradually, it ingrained itself in my mindset. If my parents noticed this obsession, they didn’t seem to mind.

Subtler Delights and Pop-Culture Easter Eggs

As I grew, new insights rewarded multiple watches, elevating the fun 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 modeled closely on the later-to-be-president Donald Trump, with his ginger staff member Marla (Haviland Morris) referencing his one-time partner Marla Maples. Thankfully, Clamp possesses greater compassion than his genuine article inspiration.

The “apocalyptic” video Clamp plays during the height of creature carnage? I discovered it was inspired by a actual “Doomsday” video created by the CNN boss Ted Turner should the world truly faced apocalypse. I noticed how Dante went out of his way to film alternate cuts of a self-referential segment where Gremlins hijack the actual feature in progress. An edit for movie houses, another for home video and television, each providing a grinning portion of self-referential entertainment sorcery before the term was even a thing.

A Lasting Influence

While it was effects expert Rick Baker’s fantastically vile creatures that caught my eye as a child, this deeper gold held my interest as an adult. In time, I even spoke to Dante about it myself and he had no hesitation telling me he made the movie with the express purpose of poking fun at those who loved its absurd-yet-genuine predecessor and desired a sequel. “We were going to make fun of the fact you came to see it,” he gleefully confessed. This Looney Tunes-esque defiance and commitment to not take his sequel as solemnly as his Warner Bros bosses clearly wanted him to, only increased my affection for it.

When I endured a unexpected loss in the family not long ago, I was surprised to find that, during my most profound sorrow, all I wanted to do was sit and watch Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Strange, isn’t it? Maybe not. The comforting familiarity it offered was necessary to dilute my mind’s mourning mire – but the perspectives it had imparted to me as an adult were just as useful.

Like Gremlins tearing apart a genetics laboratory, there’s particular aspects in life you just can’t control. Dante understands this. The Brain Gremlin agrees completely. Sometimes, you have to follow their example: accept the turmoil, invest all your resources into canned food and shotguns and try not to approach life with excessive gravity.

It’s robust worldly wisdom from a very unlikely source – and it’s the reason Gremlins 2: The New Batch will forever remain my go-to cinematic solace.