Part of that self-awareness comes from the deconstruction of the original film’s own rules: Don’t let a mogwai be exposed to bright lights, don’t let it get wet, and never feed it after midnight. They’re simple, and they work in the context of the first movie, but they raise so many questions upon inspection that any sequel would have had a hard time trying to deal with the logistical holes they create.
And so it is that Gremlins 2 acknowledges their absurdity outright, with a group of security guys actively questioning Billy once the latter lays out the rules about “What if?” scenarios, such as whether or not a mogwai eating something before midnight only to have something stuck in its teeth that gets dislodged and swallowed after midnight is taken into account in the rules, or how different timezones would affect a mogwai if it’s traveling on a plane.
Even the idea of “bigger is better” that drives the production of so many sequels is openly mocked in Gremlins 2. Rather than just have another standard batch of gremlins causing mayhem, we get all sorts of crazy gremlin variants, from a gremlin made up of pure electricity to ones that develop the characteristics of bats and spiders to an intelligent one voiced by Tony Randall to a female one to one that sprouts vegetables from its skin.
It’s absolutely bonkers, something that spawned a fantastic sketch from Key & Peele that underlines the inherent goofiness of it all, but it’s that feeling of throwing it all at the wall and seeing what sticks that speaks volumes about what too many sequels tend to do, prophetic in a way that still rings far too true to this day. Are the dinosaurs in your Jurassic Park movies not enough? Let’s up the ante by creating genetic hybrid monsters!
Nothing about Gremlins 2 ever feels safe, not even its ties to its predecessor. Aside from the aforementioned breakdown of the rules, the sequel pokes fun at the original’s odd but unforgettable Christmas story told by Kate about the death of her father by having her halt the narrative to begin telling a story about something terrible that happened on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, and even Leonard Maltin – who famously criticized the original film – turns up here in good sport, trashing Gremlins on camera only to be attacked by them.
And when gremlins interrupt Gremlins 2 late in the film, resulting in a scene involving Hulk Hogan in the actual audience watching the movie in a theater, a woman pulls her daughter from the theater to actively complain that the film is “worse than the first one,” suggesting that those involved in the production were clearly aware that reactions like her’s were exactly what the sequel was going to get no matter what.
