User reviews

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.

I watched this series with my 4 year old son and we both had a blast watching it! That being said, of course Secrets of the Mogwai gets browning points for contributing to some bonding tome between me and my boy. This show maintains alot of that speilberg magic and fun that made the first film such a beloved staple in so many households. Many adults or even older children may be turned away as the animation style may come off as being to childish and truth be told these were my initial thoughts as well. I beg however, please do not let the look of this series turn you away from sitting down and just giving it a shot! It has the childish animation and fun characters that kids will love while also delving into more serious matters and having captivating character and story moments that will also keep the older generations invested. Secrets of the Mogwai is a series that I would recommend anyone gives a watch especially if your a fan of the gremlins and ESPECIALLY If you have little ones to watch it with!

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).

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.

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).

A decent season. This movie does a decent job of being a gremlins prequel, to me the biggest problem is the story, the story is very generic episodic childrens show, filled with a generic adventure with one big bad but many secondary bads throughout. With that being said, I like the animation, it's not the prettiest but I think it is more than serviceable I also do for the most part really enjoy the characters personalities, outside of a couple random people most characters are really enjoyable, likeable and interesting to watch. The gremlins are very similar to the original films, admittedly not quite as chaotic, but they definitely still do a good job portraying the gremlins. I think the show does have a bit too much of a reliance on magic but that's a small nitpick. Finally this show is a bit violent, but there isn't really any blood, just creepy bodily horror and non bloody mutilation, it's still surprisingly dark and accurate to the originals. If you like gremlins, or your kids to young to watch it this is a pretty good show for you.

The boy has eyes like he's always emotional. Always afraif always to the point of crying or emotional eyes, always. Why is it so hard to make a boy like a boy. The vilain girl has eyes that bothers me less. I hate this focus on emotional eyes, weakness.

It's like they want to keep the youth to stay backward, submitted to state propaganda. While on the other side the girl has the eyes to see the head to think, the boy has this unnatural innocence that the state propaganda would want your boy to have. I surely don't want my boy to have this attitude in life.

I can see it could reach another kind of audience, the kind of audience that is not coming from the west as they look like they would fit more into this kind of approach.