The Rosetta Stone of M3GAN 2.0 and ultimately everything that doesn’t work about it, is the reception largely in the online space to M3GAN. The 2023 Blumhouse film was basically designed to be an update of the Child’s Play formula -the evil doll brought to life who goes on a killing spree, only this time with a lens of modern technological evolution and A.I. satire. But M3GAN the character, injected with a certain degree of savvy charisma in her dialogue and portrayed using a mixture of animatronic, CG effects, and a live performer -child dancer Amie Donald- that rendered her both entertainingly anthropomorphic and unnervingly uncanny, became a viral figure. Whether it was her retro dress and aesthetics, her sassy attitude when confronted, or that bizarre dance she does in the climax, she became a pretty immediate camp icon like the horror genre hasn’t seen in a long time. But it’s one thing to stumble into this kind of sensation accidentally, it’s another to try and engineer it.
M3GAN 2.0 so embraces the response to M3GAN that it switches genres entirely. Where the first film was squarely in the horror space in its use of simmering atmosphere, grounded suspense and violence, its sequel, once again directed by Gerard Johnstone (who is the sole writer this time too) leans instead into action, espionage and broader worldwide stakes as M3GAN herself is recast as a hero. The obvious model here is Terminator 2, and while there is some effort at a similar kind of visual effects prerogative on the film, it lacks any kind of the drama, intensity, or heart that must be developed if you want to have any chance of effectively replicating what James Cameron did.
This movie would appear to be well-positioned in regards to its satire, with the threat of A.I. being that much more palpable in even just a couple years. And indeed the movie's premise is cast against a thin version of that kind of reality, where A.I. has continued to march on in spite of the infamy caused by the M3GAN incident, with Allison Williams's Gemma still around as a public figure advocating for less reliance on technology yet simultaneously somehow for the "ethical" advancement of A.I. In the process, she has fallen back into being an absentee mother-figure for her niece Cady (Violet McGraw). At the same time, a military robot created from the same schematic as M3GAN called AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) goes rogue, prompting pressures to rebuild M3GAN to stave off this threat.
The movie opens on the Turkish-Iranian border, signaling from the go a dramatic escalation in scale from an original story that was content to limit itself to Seattle. And AMELIA is set up right away as a T-1000 style villain who has eclipsed her programming and seeks world domination. To then bring things back to Gemma and Cady feels jarring. The return of these characters simply to tighten continuity is ultimately one of the most damaging choices of the film. The transition in scale, sensibility, and genre would have been a lot easier to take if the movie had committed to being a standalone story -if M3GAN herself were really the only commonplace factor. But Johnstone’s insistence on linking it as much as possible to a movie and tone this narrative isn’t particularly interested in expanding or commenting on, makes the sequel feel tangibly disingenuous. And it forces relatively grounded characters into patently extravagant contexts and actions they just feel lost within. Gemma was an average suburbanite working in robotics who now finds herself involved in an elaborate heist mission, who with minimal tools rebuilds and enhances M3GAN in an underground bunker/bat cave, and who plays a crucial role in an action climax characterized by far wilder sci-fi devices than anything the first movie set up. Both she and Cady are required to unlearn a fair bit from the first movie in order for this plot to function as necessary -things which wouldn’t be problems with simply new human characters. Nobody was coming back for them after all, M3GAN is the star of the show.
And this movie is shrewd to draw her in contrast to an adult equivalent, whom Sakhno plays with some make-up or visual effects giving her appearance a pristine sheen in contrast to M3GAN’s robot doll look. She is swift, agile, and sexual, formidably threatening in a way M3GAN is not and a natural antagonist -the new model up against the relic, which we see in apt terms in what M3GAN is reduced to until she can get a body again. Yet AMELIA is pretty undercut by the forces behind her -the movie making gestures towards genuine critiques of A.I. but ultimately walking them back by laying all blame on individual bad actors exploiting within that space rather than the harms of the space itself. AMELIA is consequently robbed of significant power as a villain, while new anti-hero M3GAN still resonates inherently as the sinister one.
She belongs in that role too, and the effort to imbue her with a degree of sincerity -whether in remorse over her past actions or a genuine desire to protect Cady- never relates in the least bit convincingly. It's almost ludicrous the attempts to ground her character in serious philosophical postulations on the nature of her existence. Her menace and amorality was a significant part of her appeal in the first movie, and they have been largely stripped away. Johnstone just hopes you don't notice between scenes of her forcing Gemma to listen to her sing and donning a Sia wig as disguise for the heist.
There is a level of fun silliness in that and how broad the movie goes overall. Yet to this angle it still holds back. Where these new genres are concerned, the film doesn't commit to either playing them up intensively or adopting their conventions authentically. As such, several scenarios feel half-hearted, and the most outlandish bits -specifically one involving Gemma in the climax- don't entertain so much as boggle. And any satire on the tech industry is muted, even in the personage of a slimy CEO played by Jermaine Clement as an even cross between the cyborg fixations of Mark Zuckerberg and the impotent ego of Elon Musk. He and everything he represents winds up being just a hollow distraction from the hyperbolic tenets of the narrative.
The laudable technical effects, occasionally funny lines and interesting filmmaking choices (the illustration of one murder is pretty clever), only highlight the greater areas where this film fails. By design almost none of what worked about M3GAN made it into this half-formulated sequel, which even neuters its title character by repositioning her in a way intended to satisfy her fans. But Johnstone and Blumhouse clearly didn't grasp why she resonated, and this whole movie is a testament to that misunderstanding.
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