In this era of particularly craven IP mining, trading on particularly grotesque bouts of seemingly incurable nostalgia, it’s a wonder that a couple of major Amblin-produced classics from the mid-1980s, Back to the Future and Gremlins, have managed to escape any major big-screen revival since their sequels ran out in 1990.
The closest thing to Back to the Future Part IV was either a theme-park ride, a video game, or a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon; now an animated approximation of Gremlins 3 arrives on HBO’s newly rechristened streaming service Max. Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai isn’t exactly like the cheesy Saturday morning brand-extensions of old, but it’s a refreshingly kid-friendly offshoot – a fun bit of ancillary material for older fans and (presumably) their offspring that doesn’t get too self-serious about (gag) the Gremlins mythology. In fact, one of the best things about Secrets of the Mogwai is the way that mythology weaves Gremlins backstory in with a bunch of other folklore.
But even the show’s moments of opportunistic prequelizing feel like fair play to some degree. Joe Dante, who directed both Gremlins movies, has discussed his feeling that the Star Wars TV sensation Grogu, AKA Baby Yoda, owes a lot to Gizmo, the cuddly mogwai from his films. If Grogu can be adorably toddler-like at around 50 years old, the show seems to reason, why couldn’t the cutely animated Gizmo be nearly a century old, or maybe more? (If this development was conceived before The Mandalorian aired – entirely possible, given that the Gremlins series was greenlit four years ago – Dante and company have even more reason to be annoyed.) Secrets of the Mogwai begins in 1920s Shanghai, where Sam Wing (voiced by Izaac Wang), who will grow up into the elderly shopkeeper from the first film, first encounters a lost Gizmo. (The show fudges around with mispronunciation as a half-hearted way of explaining why the creature sports the same moniker seemingly given to him sixtysomething years later by a suburban American family.)
Sam’s grandfather (James Hong), a treasure-hunter and magic-dabbler, recognizes Gizmo as a rare (and potentially dangerous) mogwai and implores Sam to help return the misplaced Giz to his hidden, far-off homeland. Aided by teenage urchin Elle (Gabrielle Nevaeh Green), hindered by the adults in his life being temporarily neutralized, and chased by power-hungry industrialist and sorcerer Riley Greene (Matthew Rhys), Sam and Gizmo embark on a cross-country journey.
Making former horror-comedy Gremlins into a full-on fantasy adventure sounds suspiciously like the gameplan that resulted in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a movie with a nauseatingly sentimental reverence for its own Awesome 80s backstory. But Secrets of the Mogwai avoids this toxic self-regard by immersing itself in a world where the mogwai and the gremlins (the scaly green monsters that less virtuous-minded mogwai merrily turn into when they’re fed after midnight) are not the only fantastical backstories in town. Zombies, a shapeshifter and mind-controlling tea all come into play in the 10-episode season’s middle installments, which do the best job of mixing serialized developments with monster-of-the-week adventures. Some later episodes feel a bit repetitive as they force the usually-anarchic gremlins into more familiar roles: hench-creatures for one stretch, big-bad architects of a master plan for another.
The show does give the gremlins their due, however, by keeping them gross. As in the films, many of the creatures are killed with splattery slapstick glee; a kitchen sequence even pays homage to a similarly gruesome scene in the first film. The animation style – computerized, but with painterly textures – softens the viscera, while also enabling a nod toward Gremlins 2, where the monsters have more individualized designs and personalities. One gremlin goes so far as to specifically imitate a beloved Gremlins 2 character for no real reason other than the presumption that fans want more of that character.
The longer the series sticks around, the more of this fan service appears. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai takes a long winding road to arrive at more or less rehashing the previous Gremlins movies in its last few episodes, appended with some kid-friendly last-minute plot developments, and life lessons about not living in fear (and the likes of which the more satirically minded movies would have cackled off the screen). On the other hand, it’s hard to begrudge a show where a lantern-jawed gremlin wears a captain’s hat as she confidently steers a ship, and later dons a flapper outfit. Compared to two great movies, this series doesn’t really measure up. Compared to the long history of animated spinoffs, however, it goes far beyond its 80s counterparts.
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai is on Max in the US now and in the UK at a later date