When you think of Kevin Smith films, a few things immediately come to mind. First, the dialogue is often clever, if not overly wordy, particularly in his earlier work (“Clerks,” “Chasing Amy,” “Dogma”). Next, there are bound to be plenty of dick jokes, accompanied by “snoochie boochie” and other nonsense phrases. And finally, he’s going to always include some social commentary about the state of the world, the global economy, and various other issues affecting society. Wait, maybe not that last one. I meant to say that there are dick jokes. Lots and lots of dick jokes.
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However, according to a recent discussion with the filmmaker about what he’s working on during the COVID-19 outbreak, Smith not only gave an update about the upcoming “Mallrats” sequel, dubbed “Twilight of the Mallrats,” but he also talked about how he’s being influenced by the global pandemic and how it might affect the economy moving forward.
Speaking on his Fatman Beyond podcast (via IGN), Smith explained how the new “Mallrats” sequel might tackle the COVID-19 pandemic:
“I was working on ‘Twilight of the Mallrats,’ the ‘Mallrats 2’ script, and so I had just read last night articles about the retail apocalypse, where 2020 was going to be the death knell for a bunch of stores anyway but the pandemic has escalated that, made it worse, and we’re about to see a lot of big box stores, big-name stores that you and I have known for most of our lives just go away forever.”
“That means massive vacancies in malls, so they’re predicting the entire implosion of malls. I mean, they were already teetering, but the entire implosion of malls across America. So, as a guy who’s writing a movie set in a mall, I’m like, ‘Well that’s useful information for my line of work.’ So I had to start writing the pandemic into the movie because clearly this is going to be remembered for all time.”
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Obviously, I was poking fun at Smith at the beginning by joking about how his films often lack the depth and complexity that is found in works we’ve highlighted recently (“Nightcrawler,” “Killing Them Softly,” and “Take Shelter”), but that doesn’t mean the director is incapable of turning in a decent film that talks about the very real issue of how retail stores will be affected by COVID-19 moving forward. In my review of “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot,” I mentioned how Smith even showed that he’s capable of including some emotional, touching moments in his most recent film, but he’s often distracted by where the next dick joke can be used.
No one is expecting “Mallrats 2” to be a cinematic masterpiece, but it might very well be one of the first films to cover the long-ranging effects of COVID-19. And who could have guessed that would be true? Of course, there’s no release date set for the “Mallrats” sequel.