Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai

Fans of comedy-horror are bound to know Joe Dante's 1984 movie "Gremlins" and its 1990 sequel "Gremlins 2: The New Batch".* Well, we now have an origin story. The protagonist is Sam Wing, the owner of the shop from which the dad bought Gizmo in the first movie. "Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai" depicts him as a boy in 1920s Shanghai, coming into possession of Gizmo and having to protect him from a malevolent sorcerer.

As with the movies, the rules are to keep mogwai away from bright light, don't get them wet, and don't feed them after midnight; sure enough, the rules get broken, and chaos ensues. The miniseries manages to be fun every step of the way. You're sure to love it. Returning cast members from the movies are Zach Galligan (Billy in the movies, Henchman #2 here) and Haviland Morris (Marla in the second movie, Theodora here); Matthew Rhys (Riley) appeared in Steven Spielberg's movie "The Post" as the recently deceased Daniel Ellsberg.

*You may recall that the sequel depicted a mogul who was supposed to be Donald Trump (with a little bit of Ted Turner).

As a huge Gremlin fan ever since I was a kid ( I had the novel and the story records), this series strikes a wonderful balance between expanding on the lore while paying fan service. The callbacks to the first two films are copious. I really enjoyed all the references and the actor doing Gizmo hits it on the head! I was a little worried this would have been dumbed down but I found myself invested about 2 minutes in. The animation is beautiful. I just wished they dropped all 10 at once.

Hopefully this will get the VIPs motivated to continue to expand the universe with another live action film (no CGI) or a live action series (again, no CGI please).

Known as Secrets of the Mogwai in the first season and The Wild Batch in the second, this show is a good entry in the Gremlins franchise. It feels like a mature series aimed at kids, never talking down to its audience, not shying away from cursing, alcohol or violence and portraying social issues in the Prohibition both in China and later the US.

The animation is gorgeous. A form of painted CGI, some of the backgrounds and animation are true 2D; this is best exemplified by water in the second season.

Where it falters a bit is that Sam's voice actor seems have an issue with intonation. I don't know if it was because he's going through puberty or something, but he sounds a bit off. An overall trivial detail.

A strong recommendation.

As a long time gremlins fan I was thoroughly impressed by how this show managed to capture the spirit of the original movies, while also adding tons of original content that now makes the gremlins universe feel so much more richer.

Each episode is well written and perfectly paced, there's lots of interesting Chinese mythology and creatures thrown in, and plenty of dark and gruesome moments to appease fans of the original movies. The main characters are great, I never feel like any of them are just standing around with nothing to do, each one has a goal that keeps you engaged and the plot moving forward. I especially enjoyed the villain for this show, who feels heavily inspired by classic Disney villains. In this day and age, it's nice to finally have an animated villain that actually enjoys being evil and having fun with it. And of course, the gremlins are lots of fun too.

The animation style isn't for everybody and this is perhaps my only nitpick for the show. I feel like it would have been received better had the creators gone in a different direction with the art. At first glance, it definitely looks like a show for little kids. But if you can get past it and give it a chance I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised. All in all, it's a perfect prequel to the Gremlins movies and I'm excited to see what the writers come up with next.

Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai (2022) is a series that my daughter and I recently completed on MAX. The storyline follows a young boy in Shanghai who is gifted a Mogwai by his grandfather. Shortly after he gets it a sorcerer of sorts arrives and eats his grandfather whole and the boy barely escapes. The boy, now on the streets and an unlikely journey, will need to work with an untrustworthy orphaned girl he encounters and his Mogwai, named Gizmo, to uncover why the sorcerer wants the Mogwai so bad and stop him.

This series was cocreated by Stephanie Gonzaga (Duck Tales), Alexandra Chiu (Guardians of the Galaxy: Animated Series), Vaughn Ross (The Clone Wars) and Michael Chang (Teen Titans). This contains the voices of James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China), George Takei (Star Trek), Zach Galligan (Gremlins), Sandra Oh (Umma) and Gabrielle Nevaeh (Monster High).

This series was released with the launch of MAX and my daughter and I love the Gremlins movies...so we had to watch it. This series started a bit slow but by the end of episode 3 we were absolutely hooked. The animation is excellent and very well done. It reminded me of a Dreamworks project. The universe was fascinating and they did a good job telling an origin story that contained magic, new elements and aspects you know from the movies. When they incorporated hopping vampires from the martial arts movies my heart jumped a beat. I also loved the gods storylines and the family dynamics. There ends up being multiple villains in this that made the dynamics seem impossible to overcome. Our green gremlins friends were tremendous, hilarious, and I could watch their hijinks all day.

Overall, this was very well done by MAX and better than Velma. It was smart to involve Spielberg and Joe Dante in the making of this project. I would score this an 8/10 and recommend it as a fun, family series that's more intense than you may expect.