March 28, 2024

JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS a

Courtney Howard // Film Critic

I get it! I finally understand why the Marvel nerds lose their minds over mid-and-end-credits tags – thanks to the truly outrageous one attached to director Jon M. Chu’s JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS. It’ll make the animated series’ die-hard fanbase squeal in delight, clap like imbeciles (like meeee!) and stand up to cheer. So what is it about? How did it all come together? When can I put it in my eyeballs? In my exclusive interview with Chu last week, he laid out a few juicy tidbits on how that sequence all came together. However, I’m giving you ample warning that it’s a major spoiler.

Scroll down for what happens… or, if you prefer to keep this secret until after you see the movie, read our spoiler-free interview with Chu here.

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Keep scrolling…

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Are you ready?

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I didn’t hear you…..

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Okay…. So here’s the scoop:

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It’s the Misfits!!!!

The Holograms’ adversarial all-girl rock group makes a glorious cameo during the mid-credits stinger. A now scorned Erica Raymond (Juliette Lewis) drives up to the bands’ hangout where Roxy (Hana Mae Lee), Jetta (Eiza González) and Stormer (Katie Findlay) are graffiti-ing. Erica begs them to align with her in order to take down Jem (Aubrey Peeples). Pizzazz (Ke$ha) enters the scene. They drop their infamous “our songs are better” line.

AHGHGIHJHKJHIJGIG!!!!

Chu told me they always intended this to be at the end of the film.

That has been in the script since the very beginning. We always knew we wanted to get there. We just needed the right cast to put there. Every time we thought we had the right one, because some didn’t quite fit. I had to go do another movie [NOW YOU SEE ME 2], we had to put a pause on it. I dropped back in, had a couple pickups to get close-ups of the girls and that’s when we knew we were going to do that. Thank God we had gotten the right cast! We knew we were going to be tied down to who these people were. There’s the shadow version where you don’t really see them but we really didn’t want to do that. I wanted to find the right person. When we got these four girls together, it was like, ‘Okay. I get it.’ We knew there was going to be a pivot for the tone as well. We wanted to make sure it was at that next level – okay now you know the girls, you know they have this robot that does holograms, even if it’s low-fi right now, we’re about to get to the nuttiness of the Misfits. Even when they showed up on set, our Holograms were like, ‘Shit! Who are those people?!’ They could feel the intimidation! Even the Holograms were like, ‘Why do they get to be so bad-ass?’ We’re like, just wait.’

For non-fans, this stinger may not mean as much since they might not instantly know who the Misfits are.

We tried to keep it as close to the end as possible. When we had kept it, we had put it right at the end. People who didn’t know anything about the franchise, were like, ‘What? Who are these people? Is this Jem and the Holograms older?! Years later?!’ It might be confusing to some people so we did put it a little further away from the end, end of the movie so that people who stick around will get a little extra treat.

As far as their indelible line goes,

When Ke$ha said it out loud, she was very nervous. She was like, ‘I don’t know how to deliver it.’ I was like, ‘Do what you do.’ As soon as she said it, the whole crew was leaning in for that one line. She did it and everyone went nuts.

Since it’s the perfect set-up for the sequel every JEM fan will be dying to see, it’s only natural to wonder when we’ll see the next chapter.

We try not to say it’s definitely going to happen, but I would not have come to this movie if I didn’t think there was a road for this movie that we could take our time to tell this movie because there was too much to tell. In my mind, if we’re lucky enough for the audience to want it, we’ve got a lot of story to tell that hasn’t been told.

JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS opens on October 23. Read our review here.

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