Celebrate the long weekend with this, one of the best Gremlins 2 references we've ever seen
Aux Features Film
It’s an inarguable fact that Gremlins 2: The New Batch is not only a superior film to the original, but to many (maybe even most) of the cinematic comedies of its era. (Actually, we’re sure several people, including many members of The A. V. Club staff, could argue it, but it’s a holiday weekend and we’re the only ones here, so the declaration stands.) Among its other merits, the movie is the closest director Joe Dante has ever gotten to making a full-on live-action cartoon (which is a shame, since he also made an actual Looney Tunes movie), and its gleeful embrace of chaos is endlessly refreshing for audiences revisiting it, trying to remember if it was actually as bonkers as they remember. (Yes.)
We could rant about this movie for hours—the Ted Turner-style “End of civilization” video! Christopher Lee playing a character named Dr. Cushing Catheter! The Tony Randall Gremlin!—but we’d be letting ourselves get distracted from the real reason Dante’s film is in our heads today (more than usual, that is): A picture taken by one of the film’s stars, showing that while gremlins themselves might burn away in the sunlight, some things are eternal.
See, one of the weirdest moments in The New Batch—and yes, that’s saying something—comes right at the end, when the hardass building security head (played by the always-great Robert Picardo) ends up being…seduced, we guess?…by the film’s bombshell “female gremlin.” (Herself a pretty clear reference to the old “Bugs Bunny dresses up like a sexy lady bunny” bit.) All of which is required context for the below tweet that Picardo posted today:
God, that’s good. Anyway: Happy weekend!
80 Comments
Gremlins 2 truly is better than the original and I will not accept any arguments on this. Thank you for your time.
If there ever is a Gremlins 3 they better steer clear of CGI and stick with puppet Gremlins. The current Dark Crystal prequel shows that puppets still have a place in modern day film making.
Four episodes in, that paladin is my fave hilarious MVP so far.
HUP!
There’s supposed to be an animated series in the works. The plot is apparently Gizmo and the old man from the films (whose a young adult in this series) are on a quest to solve the mystery of the Mogwai and Gremlins while encountering other mythical creature like Japanese Yokai.
It’s everything Gremlins fans never wanted.
Gremlins 1 truly is better than the sequel and I will not accept any arguments on this. Thank you for your time.::::::::: recites from memory monologue as to why Kate hates Christmas:::::
Number of gremlins played by Tony Randall in the original: 0
Number of gremlins played by Tony Randall in the sequel: 1Therefore, Gremlins 2 is better. End of discussion.
The original offers one flavor of Gremlin. The sequel offers us a variety of Gremlins, some I didn’t even know I wanted. Salad Bar Gremlin, where have you been all my life?
What about Crazy Gremlin or Electro Gremlin. Crazy Gremlin is the BEST Gremlin.
Number of fourth wall breaking Hulk Hogan cameos in the original:0Number of fourth wall breaking Hulk Hogan cameos in the sequel:1The New Batch-2 Original-0
I love Gremlins. I appreciate Gremlins 2.
Despite no Hulk Hogan appearance? Pshaw.
We do not utter that cursed name around here.
Found Nikolai Volkoff’s account.
I prefer the cut with John Wayne myself But I still love the cut with Hulk Hogan
I wonder how many holidays Kate hates because she’s not too fond of Lincoln’s birthday either – “Please…don’t mention Lincoln! Something terrible happened to me once on Lincoln’s birthday! I was six or seven, I had the day off from school. Mama let me go to the park – she made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich… This man with a beard and a hat just like Abe Lincoln….I remember…oh god!”If there had been several more Gremlins movies we could have heard about Easter, 4th of July seems really easy for one same for Halloween, NYE, and maybe we’d hear her go no no Labor day is ok.
While I do agree that GREMLINS 1 is more nostalgic mostly because of the Christmas Holiday I must contend that GREMLINS 2 is FUNNIER Although I don’t think anyone needed Kate regaling us with why she hates Presidents Day because she was molested by a pedophile who strongly resembled Abraham Lincoln In the first movie the story of her father breaking his neck because he dressed as Santa and went down the chimmney with a load of presents was Really Stupid but also Incredibly Heartbreaking at the same time. Her childhood story is the sequel is just lame Although it’s funny when Zach Galliger has to drag Phobe Kates off stage and he’s struggling not to laugh GREMLINS 2 IS AWESOME FOR THE MOST PART BOTH MOVIES HAVE THEIR STRENGHTS AND WEAKNESSES
Which one has a scene where the Gremlins are watching a nudist volleyball film? I rest my case.
Personally, I agree.
Just as the first Terminator was more horror than action/sci-fi/comedy of its bigger budget and better produced sequel, Gremlins had more creepy and horror elements whereas The New Batch was straight-up comedy.
They both are great enough for me.
That may actually be the best answer!
Gremlins is a movie.Gremlins 2 is an exercise in lack of creative restraint. I love it, but it’s not a better movie.
They are so dramatically different in tone, its not even a fair comparison. The first was a 80s christmas themed horror movie, and the second was an 80s comedy making fun of the first one and a whole bunch of other tropes.
The movie also gave us this amazing sketch
Came here for this.
I didn’t remember that sketch at all but good god was that great.
I watch this sketch every time I see Gremlins 2 mentioned. And I run in circles where Gremlins 2 is mentioned a LOT.(The circles I run in are just me watching Gremlins 2 again.)
You are wrong about G2 and Key & Peele are right.
Wa-wa-wah-wa-wa, wa-wa-wah-wa-wa, New York, New York …Gremlins 2 is better
Does Gremlins 1 have its own institute to study its philosophical implications? No? I rest my case:https://twitter.com/G2Institute
Daniel Clamp 2020
Fun fact: Clamp was originally much more like his namesake, and was going to get killed in the movie. Glover’s performance was so energetic and likeable that they couldn’t bear to make him an asshole, so they moved the more trumpian traits to the security dude, and promptly dialed up the ted turner style eccentricity so daniel clamp was less an evil corporate guy and more a sheltered upper class oddball.
You can see this in the film, where HIS lines were changed, but things said about him were not. So the dialogue and even the score play him up as a villain, but pretty much every scene with him after his first has him as a sympathetic character.
Robert Picardo is amazing in the outtakes. “Well, it’s HARD!” “He said situation, so I said problem.”Though of course, the major unavoidable albatross around the movie’s neck now is its unbelievably naive spoof of Donald Trump as a lovable Willy Wonka-esque manchild. I’m actually really curious if Dante has ever commented on how badly this aged.
Robert Picardo is too pure for this world.
I was visiting London last year from Australia and decided to go and see Young Frankenstein: The Musical. Two guys sat next to me and one started chatting to me and introduced his friend Robert. After a minute or two I was compelled to ask “is your surname Picardo?” It was indeed him and we had a chat about Star Trek and The Orville before the show started. Then at interval he asked if I wanted to get a picture, which I did. Really nice guy.
Holy shit!
“Things! … Stuff!”
Gremlins is the better movie. Gremlins 2 is barely a movie at all. Yes, it’s witty and crazy and cartoonish in a good way. It’s also little more than a teetering tower of homages, pop culture jokes and meta references to the original. For my money, the first one does a great job of straddling a line between the insanity in Dante’s head and a crowd-pleasing, Amblin-esque horror movie. That its tongue is only partly in its cheek is a tremendous feature.
Gremins 1 is a better movie … but it’s also sort of a bad movie. Gremins 2 is a very good whatever it is.
I’m honestly unsure if being a “better movie” makes any difference when arguing which movie is superior. It’s hard to argue you’re wrong on that count if you’re judging the films on purely academic grounds but Gremlins 2 is infinitely more fun to actually watch, which is why I pull it out once every couple years but haven’t dusted off Gremlins in probably 20. Every time I watch the sequel I marvel at how bonkers it is and how amazed I am it ever got made. There’s literally nothing else like it.
I watch Gremlins at least every other year. YMMV. I like the sequel but its zaniness is exhausting to me sometimes.
“It’s an inarguable fact that Gremlins 2: The New Batch is not only a superior film to the original, but to many (maybe even most) of the cinematic comedies of its era.”I think you should move the “not only” to after “film” and then the sentence will make sense.
Gremlins 2 was the first movie I ever I saw more than once in the theater.
Maybe you have to see them as a kid. I watched the Gremlins movies more recently and wasn’t that into them. I recall that only one person seemed to have actually died, but then the sequel confirmed that nobody did, so people can stop categorizing it as in any way a horror film.
Oh, he definitely died in the original. That he is alive and well in the sequel is but one of the many ways in which it’s completely bananas.
I was actually thinking of the rich old lady the audience is supposed to hate and who gets launched out of her house via that stair-chair.
Miss Deagle didn’t die from that?!
It’s stated in the sequel that nobody died.
The Futtermans totally got smooshed by that snowplow, but who can complain about Dante bringing them back for the sequel?
That woman, Mrs. Deagle, was played by Polly Holliday who played Flo on the old TV show ‘Alice’. The way the Gremlins say ‘Deagle’ over and over again is something I catch myself doing from time to time.
Pardon me, Flo?
It’s ‘Excuse me, Flo?’, and KISS MAH GRITS.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/8d1e0668-18a7-420d-8072-aae5773e9469
Every time I sit next to a campfire this line pops into my head: “Fire: The untamed element, oldest of man’s mysteries, giver of warmth, destroyer of forests, right now this building is on fire. Yes! The building is on fire! Leave the building! Enact the age-old drama of self-preservation!”Side note: The announcer from the second Gremlins served as inspirado for the voice I use when I am announcing roller derby.
I trying to think of other films that completely deconstructed themselves in the sequel. Back to the Future 2 comes to mind. The Gremlins/Gremlins 2 example is tough to top.
ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN.
Yes!
I’m told OCEAN’S TWELVE, but I still haven’t seen it.
Grease 2 maybe… ?
Aliens, in a sense, took the original around a hard 90 degree turn – but it worked fantastically.
Ocean’s Twelve felt like one big in joke for the makers, with the audience expected to just come along for the ride.As bad as Thirteen treats Ellen Barkin’s character is way better than Twelve. Granted that’s not the point you were making, but I find Twelve frustrating to watch.
I’m kinda surprised no one mentioned “Scream 2″, since it was an explicit – well, I guess, was it a deconstruction of “Scream”? It was, right? In pursuit of the same end as “Scream”, which is kind of different from.God, I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m just going to go with “Scream 2″, for “Movie sequels which existed to deconstruct their antecedents”.
I agree. There was that Nightmare on Elm Street entry that went meta too.Also I was thinking maybe House of 1000 Corpse’s => Devil’s Rejects.
Oh yeah, “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” was great, one of my favorite movies ever.
Wes Craven was the best. Scream 2 is a deconstruction of horror movie sequels, as Scream was a deconstruction of slasher movies, but Scream 2 is also a straight deconstruction of Scream-itself, becoming an extra level of meta deconstruction.And that’s not even getting into the ongoing Stab deconstructions of the series, resulting in the incredible intro to Scream 4 where it just keeps folding in on itself.
The Scream movies are the best.
I’ve seen Scream 2 a couple of times after it came out, and each time was blown away again by exactly that – totally fascinating, and more melodramatic, which I love and is totally both a commentary on something which is typical of sequels, and effective simply because it’s good melodrama because good melodrama is good! If you follow. And you do“Hot Fuzz” did the same thing, just within the paramaters of the same movie. And I looooooooove “Hot Fuzz”.
Matrix Reloaded.
Babe: Pig in the City
Lol. Good God, yes.“Let’s add a pregnant pink tutu wearing chimp named Zootie!”
Picardo’s T-shirt game has always been top-level:
To this day it is weird to see Picardo with hair.
I like both Gremlins flicks but I can’t tell if this article is some kind of ironic hipster take or not. And that pretty much sums up the current state of the AV Club.
What!? No mention of Picardo’s most memorable 2 minutes of screentime? …juicy boy??!
There was an image of that thing on the back cover of the VHS. It always freaked me out too much to rent it as a kid.
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I love both movies for different reasons, and that’s what movies and there sequels should always strived for.