Animal abuse


I like this movie, it's well done, has an awesome atmosphere, some great ideas, great pacing etc... it's still a classic.
BUT
from a grown up perspective in 2020, and not as a kid in the eighties, I have to say that it handles its topic in a completelly ignorant way:
Gremlins are creatures of this planet. A very intelligent kind of creature, almost as smart as humans. They are quite a rare species too.
They are just following their instinct in behaving "visciously".
Like a lion or a spider or an ivy (or a human) or whatever other lifeform on the planet, they are following a program that tells them to attack enemies to secure their habitat.

So, let's push beyond good and evil and let's see what's happening here:
an ignorant man "purchases" from an exotic animal trafficker a rare creature. Ignoring any correct handling of such species, he puts his ignorant family and town in direct conflict with a sudden overpopulation of such creatures (which the ignorant man's ignorant family directly caused).
We are supposed to root for such ignorants in their quest to violently exterminate such lifeforms (in the most gruesome kind of way), and cheer for them every time they do (like...shouldn't they, as human, as the superior species, at least try something else? They never ever once even attempt to capture them or sedate them or neutralize them: it's only the kill that counts).

All in all it's a movie in favor of animal abuse and cruelty, a movie that puts humans (no matter how ignorant, misguided or selfish) above other animals, no matter how rare or intelligent they may be.
I know I'm sounding like a sjw, but I don't see any other way to interpret what's happening in this movie.

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They like to kill people, though.

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Yeah, ok, well...who doesn't?

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Lol. Got me there.

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Humans, for example.

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It's a movie about fantastical evil creatures. Yes, they're plain evil devil's spawns who do evil for evil's sake. Lion kills for food or at worst for play (which is also important for survival as a sort of training). Gremlins are a mythological archetype representing a corrupting force. For example, when engineers can't find a cause of the problem, they'll say it's the gremlins. So no, treating a mythological horror as just another animal would deafeat their point.

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"treating a mythological horror as just another animal" isn't that the point of the movie?

When they take a myth and base it in reality (like in this movie or Ghostbusters or ET or any other modern fantastic movie) you have to start making realistic assumptions about it.
Gremlins are defined in this movie as the imago (adult stage) of this life form (gizmo stage being its larvae form). They are given a scientific background to make them belong realistically to our real world.
Gremlins from this movie are not the gremlins from the myth, magically sabotaging US airplanes during the war. They are inserted in the nature of the real world, so even if they are fantastical (because they don't really exist) they are not myths (because they really exist in the world of the movie).
Gremlins in this movie are just another animal (maybe of chinese origins) acting accordingly to their own nature, which is what it is, no matter if it might appear to us as evil (check out what some instects do to each other and you'll see that interfering with a stop light or with a stair lift is ludicrous by comparison).

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May I suggest two good Star Trek (original series) episodes that addresses the issue that your thread raises (killer creatures among humans)

'The Man Trap'

'Devil in the Dark'

Both have different answers.

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I'll check em out, thanks

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They were an invasive species which went from one to hundreds within a day or two. There was no way for the town to capture them and sedate them. When the characters tried to contain them, they retaliated, mamed, and killed. Sorry, but I disagree. What the movie showed us was a day or two. Imagine a week of Gremlins. You can contain them, but it only takes one to restart the cycle.

Billy's dad shouldn't have purchased Gizmo. He wasn't responsible.

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Ok, I understand your approach and I could agree with your position.
But what about the cruelty showed against these creatures? One Gremlin for instance, was trapped inside a microwave. Wasn't that already contained? Did she need to cook it alive?
To me they are not much worse than big rats. Whenever I catch a rat in my house with the trap, I take him in my car and liberate him in the wild. I don't put him in the oven. And rest assured, when I catch one there's gonna be another one the next day. Still, I don't think it's humane to kill any of them, they are doing their thing, I'm doing mine, we can be civil to one another.

Obviously, I wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence.

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We'll come to an amicable disagreement. Though I don't come to the same conclusion, you mean well enough. Just dont feed any mogwy after midnight and Ill do the same.

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Are you SURE you would just take a gremlin into the wild and ... liberate it? Are you SURE that would be a good idea?

"I don't think it's humane to kill any of them, they are doing their thing" - their thing is to kill humans ... and reproduce damn fast.

Damn, this age have removed any kind of reason in some people. Who would put "humane" over their own species survival (i don't care about personal survival, in this case would be just a darwin award)?

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Yes, I'm 1000% positive, same way I would put a lion back in the wild. Or should we kill them all because that is using "reason"?
What kind of ignorant statement are you trying to make?

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Are you comparing a lion with a gremlin? What kind of ignorant statement is that?

Probably you would do the same with an extremely dangerous ebola strain ... let's be humane about it and release it in the wild.

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Look, dude, you completely lost this argument because it's based on a false equivalence obvious to everyone but you. You equate gremlins to lions or rats, but when's the last time you heard of a rat sneaking into someone's house and killing them in their sleep while laughing about it with his buddies?
If there's a comparison here to be made, the one that asom made with an ebola strain is much more accurate.

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They are just following their instinct.
They should be controlled and neutralized, not exterminated, considering how rare and intelligent they are.

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Given their ability to mass multiply with great ease and the enormous chaos, destruction and even death they inflict, Gremlins would at the very least be considered a ‘pest’ and on that basis would be culled like any other pest creature except more urgently.

The old man was right, Gizmo should have stayed in the shop.

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I guess you are right, but I don't know how is a pest dealt with when it s a rare or endangered species?

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It’s debatable how ‘rare or endangered’ they are when a splash of water has them multiplying faster than any other creature, at which point everything and everyone else becomes endangered.

The obvious solution is to keep a few mogwai in captivity and use water to maintain their population.

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Well ok they seem easy to multiply, but who knows how many pure mogwai exist in that reality.

Gizmo was not happy to multiply, and his offsprings were already gremlins oriented.

I guess only the originals want to be mogwais. So that already makes them rare.

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I don't totally share your perspective, but I get where you're coming from.

The issue, as I see it, isn't about the gremlins' moral centers, but the lack of consequences that Billy, Billy's dad Randall and Mr. Wing's grandson face. People get killed and maimed, but the actual causers of trouble don't suffer any serious lasting effects.

When a pet harms someone severely, it gets put down, but putting down the gremlins doesn't feel like comeuppance because they're not entirely responsible for the damage caused - it's the ignorance and greed of the three humans mentioned that led to the deaths and harm of the people in town. And then at the end, after a slight scolding, Billy gets told he might get Gizmo back someday - wtf Mr. Wing. Wtf.

So I can definitely see why you'd call this a movie about animal abuse. It's like Wing wants the gremlins to be born, just to be murdered by Billy and friends. Or else he's secretly hoping the gremlins do some population control? Not quite sure.

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Yes, precisely. And when a pet harms someone, and gets put down, the owner of such pet is held responsible too. Unfortunately they don't get put down too, but they are held accountable for the actions of their pet. Exactly because THEY are the ones responsible for any harm caused by their pets, who acts following its instincts, not human laws. It's the human master that should respect the other humans.
Anyway, this movie is seen from a very small minded and old fashioned view, with humans at the center of the universe and every other creature existing only to be exploited.

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Frankly I see Gremlins as being like wolves in the U.S. Wolves used to be all over the U.S. Til men came from European countries and built houses and farms. The wolves were a threat to their live stock and pets so they went about hunting wolves to near extinction.

This might be considered wrong by you but it was neccesary so that farms could produce their cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys for everyone to eat meat.

The Gremlins are worse than wolves in that they are a threat to all life as we know it. Plus they are a biproduct of giving Maguias food after midnight. Therefore Gremlins should not exist at all and nobody should feed Maguias after midnight. That's my take on it and you probably won't agree with me on it.

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"This might be considered wrong by you but it was neccesary..."
Yeah, I know! I'm a silly guy like that!
You know, 8 billion assholes are not enough, who needs wolves on this planet?
We need more cows, pigs, chickens to feed such assholes till they become 9 billion, 10 billion, 11 billion...never enough assholes!

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Wow! You are crazy! You'd actually like all humans to die so that other animals can thrive! If it were up to me you'd be put in prison since you basically admitted to being a terrorist who thinks animals are more important than humans!

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GGO8, you have a tendency of putting YOUR words in other people's mouth.

"You'd actually like all humans to die so that other animals can thrive" = where the fuck did you read that??!?
Who said anything about "All humans"??
I am just stating the obvious, that 8 billion is a staggering high number for such a consuming species, and it could be way lower and leave some room for other species too.
Any idiot would agree with that.

BTW, most animals are definitely more important than many humans, starting right on this chat ;-)

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