‘Gremlins 3’ Would Not Really Use CGI
By George Robbins
Many genre defining films have been released over the years, but it was around the time of the 80’s and 90’s that we finally saw things defining the way we now get to see movies these days. Many movies have some aspect to them that make them definable in some kind of category and during those years, many different types of movies ended up releasing which defined entire genres from that point on. This is why slasher films influenced the horror genre for years to come and why the entire genre ended up getting a kind of rebranding after a certain amount of time had passed. Other than just slashers were the supernatural sub-genre in which monsters ended up being included after enough time had passed. Some of those monster films ended up changing a lot of things in the genre for time to come.
Creature features were easily one of the most interesting types of films to ever come into existence and they would easily be considered horror movies for years after their inception. They were considered wildly different from monster movies as they were often times plots which saw countless creatures causing mayhem. No other movie from the era was more in-line with the definition of a creature feature then the movie ‘Gremlins.’ This movie was easily one of the most interesting for its time due to the chaos and mayhem seen throughout the film as well as the exorbitant amount of violence seen throughout. The violence seen in the film ended up being the driving force for an entirely new rating needing to be added to the MPAA so that the film could even be released in the first place.
The MPAA, or Motion Picture Association of America, is the name of the organization in the United States that decides what the rating of a movie would be before it could release to theaters. Many of the ratings are pretty self-explanatory and they describe exactly what will be seen in the movie, if only for a short amount of time. At the start of every movie, or at least when the movie is being advertised, we always see the rating pop up on screen as well as the short descriptors for why it has that rating to begin with. For those who don’t normally pay attention the ratings are as follows: G is for general audiences, PG means with parental guidance suggested, PG-13 means parental guidance is strongly suggested, and R is restricted for those under 17 unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. There are a few other ratings, but these are the ones we generally see.
While the G, PG, and R ratings have been around for a long time, the classifications for each have changed drastically as time goes on. This means that some movies that would be rated PG-13 or R may have had a lower rating in the past for various reasons or vice versa. What many people may not know is that the PG-13 rating was actually made in the late 80’s simply because they couldn’t find a way of expressing what the recommended age should be for a certain movie which was not explicitly rated R or PG. This movie that made the MPAA scratching their heads was ‘Gremlins’ which was easily explained to be a very violent and, at parts, disturbing movie, but it wasn’t so much so that it required an R rating. Thus, due to the fact that it was a sort of cartoon violence being shown in live-action, they had to make a new rating that would fit the description of the violence seen in the film.
‘Gremlins’ was certainly an interesting film for a lot of different people who went to go and see it because it was closer to being a strong comedy-horror movie instead of a traditional monster flick. The titular Gremlins were meant to be creatures that just thrived on mayhem and they didn’t necessarily kill people on purpose. They did whatever they thought would be funny to do and for the audience watching, it was a sort of black comedy humor that people with strong senses of humor would latch onto. Due to this, it was easy to see that the movie would have a successful future which is exactly why the movie ended up getting a sequel after enough time had passed. By that I mean that just a couple of years later at the dawn of the 90’s the movie ended up getting a sequel that a lot of different people were excited for.
The aptly named ‘Gremlins 2: The New Batch’ amped up the chaos that we had seen in the first film and it even went through the trouble of making sure that there would be more comedic moments this time around. For those unaware of the premises of both films, the first film focused on a creature called a Mogwai which was originally kept in an old man’s shop until a man buys it as a pet for his son. The man is given explicit instructions that must be followed in order for his son to be able to keep the creature. The three rules were that: the Mogwai must not be exposed to light which especially included sunlight which would kill it, it must not touch water, and it cannot be fed after midnight. Needless to say, the rules are not followed the way that they should have been and the Mogwai, now named Gizmo, accidently had water spilled on him. What followed would change the course of the film into a purely chaotic one.
Gizmo was a mild-mannered Mogwai who was kind to pretty much everyone and once he was splashed with water, he multiplied. However, unlike the original, the new ones had terrible personalities that were opposite what Gizmo’s was and they eventually trick the kid watching over them into giving them food after midnight. Thus begins the part where the Gremlins themselves come into existence and they are very distinguishable from their original Mogwai counterparts as they are now much closer to monsters rather than the furby-like appearance they had before. The mayhem that ensues sees them finding more water to replicate once again and taking over the entire town, destroying everything in their path. Eventually they managed to put down all of the gremlins by tricking them and either blow them up or have them die in sunlight.
The following movie instead saw an outbreak of the creatures in a high-tech high-rise in which the now older characters find themselves working in in New York City. Through a series of mishaps, a new batch of Mogwai is created from Gizmo once again and they find food after midnight which turns them all into Gremlins once again. This time, they went for a more comedic approach to the film and, while there is certainly still plenty of violence, the addition of different types of Gremlins this time around had made the movie all the more interesting. The second movie was released exactly in 1990 which now puts the movie at 30 years of age and makes it one of those candidates for a sequel during the modern day. At least, this is what the original movie’s screenwriter, Chris Columbus, said recently, hopefully in an attempt to get another movie made in the not too distant future.
It isn’t that much of a surprise that Columbus would recommend that such a thing could end up coming into existence because sequels to older movies coming out many years later than the original is becoming a standard. Releasing sequels is something that any studio would want to do if they had the opportunity because they know for a fact that there is an audience for said film. Now that so many years have passed since many original films have released, studios can get a better idea as to what they would be dealing with if they decided to make a remake or sequel to an old film. Cult movies are a prime example of how these sorts of things can become reality because they are movies that didn’t really have much of an audience or critical acclaim when they initially released. However, since their initial release, they have since gained a fandom that gets excited for any new content related to that subject.
The Gremlin movies remain a culturally significant pair of films even all of these years later because they have managed to get a lot of people interested in those types of creature flicks. Not only that, but people simply fell in love with the fact that everything in those movies felt so lifelike because they used puppets for all of the Gremlins, and they all looked very realistic. As a result, people have been waiting for any news on a new film and they were worried that they would replace the puppets with CGI which would be terrible as the puppets gave them life in a way that no one would have thought possible. Columbus has since made it known that if the third movie were actually to be made, then there would be little to no CGI and they would stick with the original formula. Now all we need to do is wait and see if they will actually end up making the film at the end of the day.