4 Reasons Gremlins Are the Deadliest Movie Monster Ever
Mogwai were introduced to the world by way of the stone-cold classic 1984 horror/comedy Gremlins. They were the adorable little balls of fur who swallowed the soul of Howie Mandel and, through some kind of sorcery, used it to be funny and awesome.
The voice of Bobby wasn't all there was to know about Mogwai, though. They had some very specific rules of care and handling that, if not followed, produced this ...
That's a Gremlin, and it will tear your shit up. In the movie, their path of death and destruction is mostly limited to one town. But a simple analysis of what we know about Mogwai and their more destructive offspring leads us to believe that, if we were living in that alternate version of the world where Mogwai exist, the Gremlins would have destroyed us all a very long time ago. Here's why ...
China Is Too Wet to Keep Them Contained
We learn early on that there are three rules when it comes to caring for a Mogwai: no bright light, no eating after midnight and don't get them wet. We see later that getting them wet causes them not only to reproduce, but to do so at a rate proportionate to the amount of water they're exposed to. The movie harnesses the power of racist stereotypes (see above) to imply that Mogwai come from China, a country that gets a whopping 20 feet of rain per year. In that kind of climate, everything gets wet. What the rain doesn't get, the floods will. By this point in history, China would be flooded with Mogwai, there is simply no getting around it. There was also no getting around that pun. Surely you understand.
But hey, that's China's problem, right?
The Internet Would Make Sure They Spread
Wrong. The Internet would see to it that "pet Mogwai" become a thing at some point. The film states pretty plainly that Mogwai are intended to be domesticated and owned as pets. Why else would the shopkeeper sell one as a gift in the first place and, more importantly, warn at the end of the movie that the West is not yet ready for the responsibility that comes with caring for Mogwai? So cut to the part where someone in China hacks through a firewall, vaults over a moat filled with crocodiles and completes whatever other extreme tasks are needed to get an Internet connection and uploads a video of their adorable pet Mogwai doing something super cute, like clutching an umbrella, perhaps. Good luck stopping that from going viral.
The only thing keeping Mogwai from being sold on a larger scale in the movie is a lack of availability or even knowledge that they exist. The Internet would happily fix both of those problems. Filling holes is what the Internet does, in so many ways. It would make sure Mogwai made their way to our shores in no time at all. And there wouldn't just be one this time.
They Want to Change
All of those rules and regulations in place to keep Mogwai from becoming Gremlins are faced with fierce opposition from one horrifying truth ... some Mogwai want to change. We see this when Gizmo, the "good guy" Mogwai whose story is central to the plot of the movie, gets wet. This results in five more Mogwai being born and hatched, almost immediately. And one of them, Stripe, makes it clear that he has one goal in mind, and that's to convert himself and his fellow Mogwai into Gremlins. It's as if still being a Mogwai is just spitting in the face of progress and natural selection. Even if that doesn't hold true for all Mogwai, the ones who do still maintain the same reproductive properties that they did when they were Mogwai. They'll make enough Gremlins to go around for everybody. And when that happens, we're fucked, because ...
They're Advanced Enough to Win
You could make a strong case that Gremlins are the most terrifying movie monster ever by arguing on no other factor than their jaw-dropping intelligence. These things go from cocoon to figuring out modern weapons in the space of a few hours. At an age when we're all still shitting in diapers, these lethal killing machines are setting up intricate plans to neutralize and eventually dominate their adversary. Not only has the Gremlin in the above picture learned to handle a gun, it's also picked up some surveillance and camouflaging techniques as well. It's like starting a fight with a man who has one arm only to find that his missing arm has regrown as a machine gun sometime during the conflict.
So, are we safe to assume that their evolution ends that night and they simply get no smarter for the remainder of their existence? Probably not. Bottom line: The Gremlins would have ended us all.
