The most delicate part of any attempt to prequel a beloved classic is surely the balancing act required to expand a world that’s already established while remaining respectful of of established continuity. When you get it right, the results can be wondrous, but get it wrong and end up with people complaining about Midiclorians for decades. Well, now it’s time for Gremlins to give it a shot as Max’s animated show, Secrets Of The Mogwai, aims to finally reveal a few of those secrets, starting with the origin of the Mogwai itself!
Dropping in some back story is usually the first step to diluting the mystique of an established thing or character after all, did you really want to know the Joker’s origin, or Captain Jack Sparrow’s, or Hannibal Lector’s – or does a healthy dose of mystery only enhance the myth?
Either way, if we’re going to lift the curtain on where the Mogwai came from, at least we’ve got Sandra Oh, voicing it…
Gizmo, Sam, Elle and their newest tag along, the rather muddled Radish and his vegetable companion, Theodore, have made it to the Ghost City of Fengdong only to find that it’s… and actual ghost town that’s utterly deserted. However, before they can despair too much, matters are made far worse by the arrival of the villainous Riley Green’s Gremlin populated steamer ship, who have come to search for Gizmo so he can be eaten for his sweet, immortality bestowing, aftertaste.
While the group hides as the mischievous big-eared shits hunt for them, Gizmo uses his familiar, trilling song to open a portal to a world in another plane of existence known as the Spirit Market where ghostly beasts and gods from Chinese mythology hang out and barter for goods and services. It’s here that two rather stunning revelations are made – one: due to the fact that everything in this bizarre Bizarre has a living soul, we discover that Theodore us actually Theodora who sounds suspiciously like Marla Bloosstone from Gremlins 2 (in actuality, it is Marla Bloodstone as the radish is voiced by actress Haviland Morris who keeps that New York twang.). The other thing we find out is the very origin of the Mogwai themselves because, sitting in a local tavern, getting wasted of her snake-like ass, is Nüwa, the Chinese goddess of creation, who will happily send Gizmo back to the Valley Of Jade lickity split, but she refuses to trust the humans to go there.
If she’s going to make up her mind, she’d better be quick because thanks to a Gremlin with an unusually good pitch, Green has managed to open the portal, enter the Spirit Market and bring his slavering, giggling, entourage with him.
Always Buy A God A Drink First is utterly packed with reveals both big and small as the franchise seems to have quite a lot of exposition to get off its chest and, unusually for a modern take on a classic movie, its explanations actually not only shed some light on the birthplace of the Mogwai, but even retroactively clears up a decades old plot hole much in the same way that Rogue One reasoned away the Death Star’s weakness.
If you don’t want to be spoiled, then I’d suggest you watch the episode (and if you haven’t, why on earth are you even here?), but the gist of it is that Nüwa got into a debate with fellow God Fuxi about how trustworthy humans actually were, so a test was created in which a perfect, delicate, but mischievous creature called the Mogwai was created to see if mankind could be worthy. While Nüwa created the offensively cute lil’ bugger, Fuxi created the three rules to test mandkind’s sense of responsibility which all were subsequently broken leading to the destruction of the City of Fengdong. As origins go, I have to admit it’s pretty solid and it even finally manages to clarify the “eating after midnight” rule with the actual wording being the way more clearer: “No feeding them when the moon was highest in the sky”. Seriously, whomever came up with that needs a raise, pronto.
Elsewhere, we not only find out that Theodora is female, but so is Claw, which makes sense considering that she is voiced by veteran vocal artist Grey Griffin, but retroactively then makes the creation of the Girl Gremlin in Gremlins 2 a bit weird(er) – best not to think too much about it, I guess. On top of all that, after drinking a particular mixture of mystical potions, the Noggin Gremlin makes like the Tony Randall voiced Brain Gremlin (again from the sequel) and develops civilised speech patterns of his own, but this time using the unmistakable vocal chords of George Takei – oh mmmyyyy!
It’s a lot to take in and if I’m being picky, not everything fits, however, matters are helped immensely by the fact that Sandra Oh is voicing Nüwa as a bitter drunk and coming from her, I’d accept pretty much any exposition she said, even if it was revealed that the Mogwai were created by stoned Venezuelans who bred dogs with bush babies because their pee promoted hair growth. Much like all back stories in fantasy properties nowadays, the story behind the Mogwai is presented in a different, lush, animation style that looks like ancient, Chinese art on old parchment and the Spirit Market carries yet another nod to Spirited Away while also adding a slight tinge of Guillermo Del Toro to proceedings as it goes.
As we’ve come to expect over the last five episodes, the design is stylized, but still highly detailed and the Spirit Market itself, with glowing, multicolored spirits, cat-faced con-artists and snake tailed deities, is strikingly beautiful while still ensuring that Gizmo and the Gremlins look like this is a world they could be convincingly birthed from.
As a result of such world building, all the characters are mostly subdued this episode as it has a lot of details to lay out, but thankfully the Gremlins themselves didn’t seem to get this memo and continue to act like psychopathic toddlers while everyone else gawks in awe.
Be it the usual bursts of unprovoked violence and nose picking, or weirder quirks such as the Gremlin with a beautiful singing voice or the one that thinks it’s hilarious that he’s just necked a lethal poison, their reliably anarchic ways prevents the episode from becoming too talky as it balances the episode against the buckets of exposition and lashings of awesome fan service.
Now we’ve actually found out some of the titular Secrets Of The Mogwai, it’s a great relief to find that they mostly hold water – unlike the Mogwai themselves, that is…
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