Why did the filmmakers make M3GAN a good guy for this sequel entitled M3GAN 2.0?
Perhaps the filmmakers realized that a lot of the first film’s appeal had to do with the AI villain’s cheeky humor and it was easier to make her a wisecracking ally.
Perhaps it was due to studio worries about a franchise being built around a villain even though the similar idea of Chucky from the CHILD’S PLAY franchise proved it could be done with six films and even a spin-off TV series.
Or was it that director Gerard Johnstone fancies himself James Cameron and wanted to do a riff on T2: JUDGMENT DAY by turning his robotic ‘Terminator’ into a hero as well?
No matter, a funny thing happened on the way to this sequel – the nasty AI doll has shed almost all of her horror genre dressing. Oh sure, the doll is still a stitch, but the tonal shift has turned this one into more of a sci-fi action-comedy. It’s very funny, but it feels like a betrayal of the source material.
In the first film, scientist Gemma (Allison Williams) and her niece Katie (Violet McGraw) battled and defeated M3GAN in a climactic battle sequence that saw the doll turn into a psycho killer. Now, that same AI has become their ally. There’s a more dangerous AI out there, one that wants AI to take over the world, showing just how far Johnstone is willing to go in repeating TERMINATOR plotting. Maybe it’s hard to hold M3GAN accountable for the killing of the dog and dozens of human beings in the first film, but versus the numbers of a world population? Well, you do the math.
The new chapter starts with Gemma gallivanting about as an anti-AI warrior while leaving colleagues Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps) back at the lab curious as to what they can do next as actual scientists. Katie herself has become a teenage tech whiz, and it isn’t long before they’re all aware of M3GAN’s backed up ‘soul’ still alive in their computer system, one who is talking a blue streak at them. It’s M3GAN who hypothesizes that a CIA-directed AI robot called Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno) hasn’t gone haywire, but rather rogue in an effort to unite all AI on the planet to topple humankind.
The plot gets very thick from that point and characters spend a lot of time explaining all the techno mumbo-jumbo to each other, all the while Amelia creates havoc wherever she goes. Seemingly, only M3GAN is capable of stopping the superior AI, so she steps into hero shoes. Screenwriters Johnstone and Akela Cooper stock their script with a ton of silliness and loads of bitchy dialogue to make it all a lot of fun. M3GAN may have been a wise-acre in the first movie, but here she’s practically a standup comic. Granted, most of her dialogue and dancing are quite amusing, particularly when she serenades Gemma with a love ballad, but the tonal shift to out-and-out comedy feels jarring. It also robs the stakes at play of any real weight.
Amie Donald gives an excellent performance as the physical M3GAN, while Jenna Davis’ distinctive voice delivers the doll’s quips with great relish. Williams and McGraw struggle to make their characters half as interesting, and the writers still make Gemma too naïve and stubborn by half. (With scientists as slow as she is on the uptake, maybe AI’s should take over tech.) Everyone on screen chases around a lot and throws down in fights that go nowhere. Every few minutes they all stop to let M3GAN toss off generous portions of snark, especially digs at those in her cross-hairs like a too-cool-for school scientist (Aristotle Athari), a doofus fed (Timm Sharp), and an Elon Musk-type billionaire played drolly by Jemaine Clement.
If you like sci-fi you’ll probably be fine with M3GAN 2.0 and guffaw at her withering insults, but where are the scares? There was something disturbing about a little girl’s doll in the first film using a paper cutter blade to slash a corporate asshat to ribbons. Equally, the first film showcased M3GAN as a better caretaker of Katie than Gemma, making for sly commentary about what it takes to parent. This film is interested in no such scares or editorializing. M3GAN 2.0 seems mainly interested in garnering laughs, and it surely does. But it feels like a bait-and-switch and, for my money, the threatening bad-ass that was M3GAN deserved a better sequel.
