"Gremlins 2: The New Batch" opens with a real Looney Tunes short directed by Chuck Jones himself, and the film only gets more wild and insane from there, with a cavalcade of insane fourth wall-breaking cameos and a veritable army of Gremlins that range from Sexy Lady Gremlin to Big Brainy Gremlin who sings "New York, New York" in a show-stopping musical revue. "Gremlins 2" is so crazy that when "Key & Peele" made their sketch "'Gremlins 2' Brainstorm," which lays out every insane creative decision
that really, actually made it into the movie, writer and director Joe Dante was happy to share that was "exactly how it happened." In an interview with The AV Club, he elaborated on the reason why they were able to get away with making "Gremlins 2" so ridiculously over the top:
"Nobody had come up with an idea of how to make another Gremlins movie for quite a while. And they had tried. They spent some money, they hired some writers, they wrote some script, but they hadn't understood the appeal of the first movie anyway; so it was very difficult for them to imitate it. So out of desperation they came back to me and Mike Finnell, the producer, and said 'If you'll give us this picture by this date we'll let you do whatever you want.'"
With their blank check in hand, Dante and his crew went to work, assembling a sequel that would tear apart the very idea of making a sequel to the classic "Gremlins," and the resulting film would inspire the funniest possible note from their producer, Steven Spielberg.
Read more: 12 Best Unofficial Movie Trilogies Of All Time, Ranked
Spielberg Said Only Three Words After Watching The First 'Very Long' Cut Of Gremlins 2
With a movie so chock full of new ideas and Gremlin characters and jokes, it's not a surprise to hear the first cut of "Gremlins 2" was very, very long. And for a movie with so many gags, that was not good because it had to move fast to keep the crowd's energy up, which led to a lot of scenes getting cut. Dante and his producer Mike Finnell recorded a special commentary for these deleted scenes so fans can see some of the scenes and jokes that got left on the cutting room floor, and in the process, they shared a hilarious anecdote about what Steven Spielberg, who produced both Gremlins films, thought of their latest creation:
"I remember after the first screening, which was very long and had all this stuff in it, Steven called and so I said 'What'd you think' and he said 'Too many gremlins!'"
Steven. Buddy. The word "gremlins" is literally in the title! There had better be too many gremlins in it! The funniest part of this anecdote is that when they were making the original "Gremlins," it was the studio executives who thought the film had too many gremlins, to which Spielberg reportedly replied:
"Shall we cut them all out and call it 'People?'"
Spielberg's notes on the original film made the movie less gruesome and gave us the heroic Gizmo as a counterweight to the villainous gremlins, turning the film into a rare Christmas classic you can watch with the whole family that is also beloved by horror fans. It seems that Dante didn't listen to Spielberg's note about the sequel, but maybe he should have changed the title to "Gremlins 2: Too Many Gremlins."
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