Kevin Smith’s ‘Mallrats’ Sequel Has a Title
Regardless of his actual filmmaking skill in his later years, I remain loyal to Kevin Smith. He lived out his wildest dreams with nothing but a couple cameras and maxed out credit cards. He was my age when he made Clerks. If that isn’t inspiring to young filmmakers, I don’t know what is.
Still, I have to bring up when the emperor isn’t wearing clothes. One of his naked moments, of which there are many: returning to Mallrats, and the sequel has a new title. Enter Mallbrats.
The reason I feel hesitant about seeing a Mallrats sequel? Because there’s no such thing as a mallrat anymore.
Mallrats lived in the ’90s and died in the mid-aughts. They were born as grungy, flannel-wearing outcasts that evolved into scene kids who rocked to Yellowcard and Fall Out Boy in their iPods. Scene kids grew up and graduated community college years ago, and their successors are teens too busy making dumb Vines.
And teens are making Vines because malls have undergone a gentrification not seen since Brooklyn, thus exiling teenagers. Menlo Mall, my hometown mall (that was even mentioned by Jason Lee in the original Mallrats) morphed from a typical, suburban mall to an upscale shopping center with stores like Banana Republic and J. Crew, stuff no teen on an after-school paycheck can afford.
During my teen years, Menlo had this gathering place between the arcade and the movie theater. It was like the Babylon 5 station but with way more weed and drugs trafficked by high schoolers. Everyone hung out at that spot on Friday and Saturday nights, a time you could see your crush from algebra mingle with your friend from middle school who you drifted away from after graduation. It was a society straight out of a sci-fi, but also naive and juvenile. It was ours.
In my freshman year of college the arcade was torn down and the theatre upgraded to a dine-in (read: more expensive) joint, and the teens disappeared. The few times I’ve walked by since, it’s become an empty lot. The citadel has been reduced to a way station, now sparsely populated by families and adults on awkward group dates. The ghosts of my teen years haunt that spot, and it’s bittersweet.
Not every mall is the same and I’m sure there are leftover mallrats who still walk among the tombstones, but the mallrat archetype is gone. I’ve actually asked teens and people younger than me if they had ever heard of the term, and they haven’t.
None of this would be a big deal but despite having his own teenage daughter to learn from, Smith failed to make an impression with millennials and Gen Z’ers. Mallrats, along with the rest of his early filmography, expertly captured Gen X at their youthful apex. Using his films and podcasts as a measuring stick, it is easy to see that Smith aged; he hasn’t grown.
But I’m not going to be a hater either. If I were a betting man, I’d wager this to be the theme of Mallbrats: aged youth. There is a whole generation who thinks young, but upon looking in the mirror they see aged skin and hair they never thought would season. That’s been a big theme in some of Kevin Smith’s work — particularly Clerks II — and despite my hesitance of Mallbrats, it’s a story I’m very much looking forward to see as I approach a quarter-life crisis.
