The director of Gremlins doubles down on his claim that The Mandalorian’s Grogu is a rip-off of Gizmo. A pop culture earthquake occurred when, in the very first episode of Disney+’s Star Wars show The Mandalorian, the character dubbed Baby Yoda was first unleashed on the world. But not everyone found the little green alien irresistibly adorable. Criticism came from film director Joe Dante, who found the design of the Baby Yoda puppet a little too reminiscent of the look of the big-eyed, pointy-eared Mogwai Gizmo from his own 1984 film Gremlins.

Baby Yoda aka Grogu continues his adventures through the recently-aired The Mandalorian season 3, and is now firmly established as an undeniable pop culture presence, but Dante isn’t ready to back down from his insistence that the character is something of a rip-off. Speaking to Empire, Dante revealed that he’s received backlash for his Grogu remarks, but nevertheless doubled down on his claim that some design pilfering has taken place. "I got a lot of criticism,” Dante said, adding, “But if you put the two designs together, it's pretty obvious where one came from and where the other came from."

Dante’s Original Grogu Remarks Were A Lot Stronger

Dante’s new Grogu remarks are in fact somewhat mild compared to what he originally said back in 2022 when he first took Disney to task for ripping off Gremlins' Gizmo, telling the San Francisco Chronicle the following:

"I think the longevity of (the films) is really key to this one character (Gizmo), who is essentially like a baby. Which brings me, of course, to the subject of Baby Yoda, who is completely stolen and is just out-and-out copied. Shamelessly, I would think."

The design similarities between Grogu and Gizmo are indeed quite striking, as too is the similarity between the name Gizmo and the “real name” of Baby Yoda, which was not revealed to audiences until The Mandalorian season 2. For his part, Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau cited E.T. as the biggest Grogu influence, telling Deadline in 2020, "Dave [Filoni] had done a sketch of kind of a Michelangelo/E.T. moment, and that was a source of inspiration.”

Those who revere Dante’s 1980s classics Gremlins and Gremlins 2: The New Batch may share in his dismay over the way The Mandalorian seemingly copied the design of Gizmo in order to achieve maximum cuteness with Grogu. The charitable reading of the situation is that Favreau and the creatives at The Mandalorian were paying homage to Gremlins' Gizmo with their Baby Yoda concept. Dante likely would not accept this optimistic interpretation however, given that he appears to still be annoyed about the whole situation a year down the road from his initial remarks.

Source: Empire