‘M3GAN 2.0’ Review: This Woman’s Work is Never Done [C+]
Happy Pride Month from Universal Pictures! Upon the release of her first film, M3GAN – the killer robot who made a splash in the 2023 film of the same name – instantly became an unquestionable camp icon. The girls, gays, and theys were powerless to resist her fashion sense, trademark dance moves, and above-it-all diva attitude. Universal and Blumhouse clearly know this, and their yas-gawd-that’s-the-tea-mama style marketing for the sequel M3GAN 2.0 would have you believe that she threw the first brick at Stonewall. And so, fans who began constructing their M3GAN Halloween costumes when this film’s first trailer dropped all waited with baited breath to learn the answer to a very simple question: does she slay? Incredibly, this film takes the unexpected – and unwelcome – route of actually dialing back on the fabulous charm that made the original so beloved, instead opting for overly scripted dialogue scenes between the human characters (or “meatsacks,” as M3GAN not-so-lovingly calls them) and a convoluted plot that can’t seem to make up its mind about what type of message it wants to send. Despite its robotic doll’s murderous tendencies, M3GAN 2.0 shows that one can kill without slaying.
As shown in a quick info dump sequence, Gemma (Allison Williams), the robotics expert who gave a prototype M3GAN doll to her adopted niece Cady (Violet McGraw) in the previous film, has since become an advocate for AI regulation. But she alone can’t stop the advancement of artificial intelligence, which is being accelerated by a very Musk-y tech billionaire played (extremely broadly) by Jemaine Clement. But it’s not just the private sector that’s pushing AI. In fact, an even more lifelike android named AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) has just escaped the grip of the US military, which hoped to use her as a virtually indestructible spy and assassin. Suspecting Gemma of having a hand in AMELIA suddenly going rogue, the FBI invades Gemma’s home and threatens her with serious charges if their suspicions can’t be disproven. With this dramatic development, M3GAN reveals that she’s still watching over Gemma and Cady, living on in their smart home’s technology and internet connection. However, she needs a physical body in order to escape the, as she puts it, “disembodied void” in which she resides. She manages to convince the understandably skeptical Gemma that she’s turned over a new digital leaf and simply wants to help find and disable AMELIA once her corporeal form is rebuilt.
The film might as well be called M2: Judgment Day for how much it cribs from James Cameron’s classic. But where that film was very clear on where it stood regarding the threat of machines gaining sentience, M3GAN 2.0 wants to have its cake (or to use an internet term, cookie) and eat it too. In what appears to be a compromise so as not to disenfranchise certain viewers, the film can’t seem to make up its mind as to how dire a warning it wants to be about the dangers of unregulated AI. A lot has changed since the first film came out. When M3GAN first invaded theaters, we could have no way of knowing just how obnoxiously social media would be littered with AI-generated uncanny imagery. And back in early 2023, the diamond was merely a simple shape rather than a strangely dominant symbol of unasked-for artificially minded “assistance”. Thus, M3GAN could simply be a fun horror-comedy about a fantastically unmanageable robot, whereas M3GAN 2.0 is now burdened with the dreaded expectation of Commentary. But rather than taking a firm stance in either direction, the film ends on a wimpy “let’s all get along” note, as if potentially ruinous AI tech is an inevitable development for humanity rather than an avoidable fate.
And that’s not the only way the film desperately seeks to appeal to the widest possible audience, thus robbing it of a sense of uniqueness. In her origin film, Miss M3GAN is menacing and aloof. These cold qualities are juxtaposed with odd idiosyncrasies, like out-of-nowhere dance movies and a legendarily unexpected rendition of “Titanium,” the pop song made famous by Sia. These disparate elements are the necessary ingredients to turn a figure into a queer-appealing icon and as every piece of marketing for M3GAN 2.0 shows, the powers behind this film are aware of that. Unfathomably, the sequel dampens M3GAN’s peculiar qualities, except for a few instances of manufactured strangeness (her song and dance abilities get perfunctory moments in the spotlight). Instead, she’s closer to a softball insult comic, tossing off quips and reads aimed at her human companions with little ingenuity behind them.
Thankfully, the real life components that bring M3GAN to life are a wonder. As with the first film, she’s a combination of animatronics and the physical performance of young actor Amie Donald. She and voice actress Jenna Davis (also returning from the first film) are the true stars of the show, giving M3GAN the perfect combination of uncanny humanity coupled with robotic movements and vocal affectations. And the puppetry of the animatronics is a thing of wonder, especially in comparison to what one can imagine the CGI equivalent looking like. One deconstructed, mangled version of M3GAN that we see early in the film is particularly unnerving.
Allison Williams boldly plays her character in as real and unexaggerated a ways as is possible in a movie like this, acting as a grounding force for the film. This choice allows the more ridiculous antics to have a point of comparison; if this film were a science experiment, Williams would be the control. And Violet McGraw has only expanded her emotional range since the previous film. At the film’s climax, her portrayal of fear is so real that it feels genuinely upsetting. Unfortunately, that moment is dragged down by Aristotle Athari’s performance as Christian, Gemma’s boyfriend who, like her, is a tech ethicist in favor of robotic regulation. Athari is uncompellingly low energy throughout the film, which undersells the decisions and developments of his character.
M3GAN 2.0 doesn’t seem to know what its audience wants. Or perhaps it’s so preoccupied with trying to mash, rebuild, and reconstruct itself into an all-appealing, desperate-to-please product that it loses the sense of authenticity and almost-accidental perverse brilliance that made the first film so impactful. This panicked energy can be felt in the screenplay, which ties itself up in knots with long stretches of overly wordy dialogue (I even tried to copy down one of the more egregious moments of a character yammering, but there were simply too many words for me to write them all down in time). Perhaps fittingly, the dialogue feels like when a long text gets away from you and autocorrect essentially gives up, letting both typos and improper corrections litter the message. As we’ve all experienced in moments like these, technology is far from perfect. The same can be said of M3GAN 2.0, the cinematic equivalent of an app update that purports to improve functionality but instead just makes things more complicated.
Grade: C+
Universal Pictures will release M3GAN 2.0 only in theaters on June 27.
He currently resides in Chicago and is a proud member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. He also writes and podcasts for Next Best Picture and co-hosts his own podcast “Halloweeners: A Horror Movie Podcast.” You can follow him on Twitter, Letterboxd, and Bluesky @codymonster91
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