In the aftermath, Gemma and her hanger-on sidekicks (Jen Van Epps, Brian Jordan Alvarez) are put under suspicion of treason, and quickly made into M3GAN’s fleshy subordinates. The finer details of how the killer doll survived the first movie’s climax are mostly hand-waved away, but rest assured she controls the smart house Gemma and Cady livs in and is calling all the shots before Gemma inevitably agrees to build M3GAN a new body so M3GAN can fisticuff with AMELIA. Auntie also puts on some new child locks, coding M3GAN with the command to not kill anybody (again like T2), but don’t worry. M3GAN does plenty of slaying even if without the body count.
The appeal of M3GAN 2.0 time and again comes down to the bemused guffaws this killer doll elicits every time she is on the screen. There is just something eerily honest about a smartphone that has the ability, and mouth, to judge you for your life choices. Johnstone and producer Jason Blum also obviously decided to lean into that quality while, perhaps wisely, not attempting to truly replicate the first M3GAN’s TikTok virality. There is a dance sequence, but it is so flatly shot and intercut with corporate espionage that I wouldn’t suspect anyone thinks this will be the next social media craze.
What’s intriguing though is how much the world has changed in the three scant years since this bot pirouetted her way into our hearts. While AI has long been the topic of water cooler pontification in Silicon Valley, the rest of the world didn’t really start thinking about the technology’s imminent life-changing applications until November 2022 when ChatGPT launched. Remarkably that was only 10 months or so after the first M3GAN. Suddenly the abstraction of this character’s menacing sentience took on a newfound urgency. Hence in the first movie she was a metaphor for technology writ-large being placed in a child’s palm. In the sequel, she is very much the face of both our destruction and salvation in the AI wars to come.
In theory the sequel should b e more timely, not to mention terrifying. Yet while more directly paying lip service to the potential dangers of AI, M3GAN 2.0’s pivot away from horror and social commentary is all the more curious. Rather than embrace the fatalism this unlikely franchise represents, M3GAN 2.0 essentially becomes a modern tech bro’s best case solution for “acclerationism.” Yeah, AI might try to wipe us out one day (i.e. AMELIA), but we can make an app for that, and it just so happens to rock the hell out of a pixie cut (M3GAN).
It’s a strange pivot that leads to a narrative that is much more ambitious yet also somewhat muddled with its twists on twists, and double-crosses on double-crosses. The switchbacks even multiply until the movie almost touches on a brilliantly subversive idea where Auntie Gemma and M3GAN reach a bizarre but fascinating place of detente. M3GAN 2.0’s script lacks the courage of its conviction to walk all the way through that door, but it gives Williams one exceptionally fun scene to play.
And fun is ultimately M3GAN 2.0’s prime directive. It’s a bit cluttered, overstuffed, and totally absent of its horror roots. But it is almost always fun and ready to win an easy laugh, especially when M3GAN snd AMELIA cross paths and live up to the tagline of “This Bitch vs. That Bitch.” The rivalry has all the tension of a drag race, but it also has a similar amount of gaudy style and determination to win a grin. That shameless need to please also makes it ironically the most retro of the summer movies we’ve had so far this year.
