Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
Directed by Joe Dante
Young sweethearts Billy and Kate move to the Big Apple, land jobs in a high-tech office park and soon reunite with the friendly and lovable Gizmo. But a series of accidents creates a whole new generation of Gremlins. The situation worsens when the devilish green creatures invade a top-secret laboratory and develop genetically altered powers, making them even harder to destroy!
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What critics compared Gremlins 2: The New Batch to
To be fair, there are indications in the first act of “Resurrections” when it seems that the picture—the work of Lana Wachowski, going it alone without the participation of her former partner Lilly—appears ready to take off on a wild “Gremlins 2” trajectory.
In its own enjoyably twisty way, The Matrix Resurrections is the Gremlins 2 of action movies: subversive, angry, unruly, delirious, delightful.
A lot of that is done in the movie’s first hour in such a meta way that it will come off as pretentious to those who don’t know how brilliant movies like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare or Gremlins 2: The New Batch have proven to be.
Think of this as the "Gremlins 2" of the "Matrix" series.
In that moment — and the gloriously silly montage set to Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” which immediately follows — it becomes clear this is Wachowski’s Wes Craven’s New Nightmare or Gremlins 2: The New Batch , a decidedly euphoric middle finger to studio mandates and nostalgia-laden franchise filmmaking that is perfectly content to infuriate as many viewers as it might captivate.
At its best, 22 Jump Street is less an action comedy than a loosely plotted revue, and though it’s not as witty as either Joe Dante’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch or Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz (in which the directors evinced genuine love for their chosen genres), it’s sure as hell better than a straight buddy-cop sequel.
Even worse, the backstory behind it is so ludicrous and without meaningful purpose (which would allow the ludicrous part to be forgiven) that it mostly comes across like Jordan Peele’s brilliant Key and Peele script doctor sketch ripping apart Gremlins 2 (crazed killer monkeys?! Oh my God, I love it!
The tech-world satire is entertainingly broad, the Funki headquarters resembling nothing so much as the ersatz Trump Tower of Gremlins 2 (though there are a few biting bits of commentary on the techno-surveillance state; consider the way M3GAN insidiously pairs with the “Internet of Things,” bending everything from Gemma’s home assistant to her boss’s not-a-Tesla sports car to do her bidding).
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Wait… that’s the tagline for Gremlins 2 , isn’t it?
Key & Peele ’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch sketch?
Just as Gremlins 2: The New Batch , the Wayne’s World films and The Simpsons introduced a new style of self-aware post-modern comedy, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World feels like the beginning of a new form of super self-reflexive cinema that relies on not just the audience’s knowledge of film and television but also other forms of media.