Universal Pictures
When the first M3GAN film was released 29 months ago, the threat of artificial intelligence was largely one still silly enough for the movies to solve. Funny robot turns into killer robot — it’s not exactly prestige cinema, but after a viral marketing campaign and an unbelievable box office return, it earned a sequel. M3GAN 2.0, hitting theaters this week, is now meeting us in a world where AI is unavoidable, ethically ambiguous at best, and unpredictable enough that the social commentary writes itself.
Unfortunately, this latest M3GAN entry, directed again by Gerard Johnstone, is uninterested in anything to do with the reality we live in. AI has taken over your favorite apps if it hasn’t taken your job yet, it’s become the topic of debate on talk shows if it’s not the issue on the other side of the picket line outside the studio. This is the real world now. M3GAN 2.0 is stuck in movie world.
It’s been two years since the first film and Gemma (Girls alum and nepo baby Allison Williams), in an attempt to separate herself from the stupid mistakes she made bringing a murderous doll into her home to take care of her niece Cady (Violet McGraw), is now an AI regulation advocate and alright-selling author. While she works tirelessly to get humans on the right side of technological history, the software behind M3GAN is stolen and used for military purposes (the opening scene takes place ‘somewhere near the Turkish/Iranian border’, which received some well-deserved groans after the events of the past week) in a new unit called AMELIA. When AMELIA becomes sentient, there’s only one thing capable of bringing her down — our wise-cracking, TikTok-dancing title character.
Joining the returning cast, including the young ladies behind M3GAN’s moves (Amie Donald) and bossy attitude (Jenna Davis), is a group of comedians, there to lighten the mood among the action. Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords fame is the most recognizable of the new faces and, well, let’s just say he doesn’t get enough to do. Aristotle Athari plays Christian (pronounced for no discernable reason as Chris-tee-ahn), the villain of the piece, which the movie presents as some sort of twist but is no surprise at all if you’ve been paying any attention. You may recognize Ahtari from his one season as a featured player on Saturday Night Live (or his turn opposite another Girls alum and another nepo baby, Zosia Mamet, in the indie sleeper Molli and Max in the Future), which means that you probably don’t. And Brian Jordan Alvarez, alleged sex pest and creator/star of the unfortunately excellent show English Teacher on FX, reprises his role as Cole from the first film.
As you may be able to tell, the biggest change in the sequel is that it could no longer be classified as horror. Though tongue-in-cheek, the first film did take both parts of the label ‘horror-comedy’ seriously. And while M3GAN‘s climactic rampage was more akin to action movie destruction, it was still scary. Now, with the real-life threat of machinery overlords actually scary, the folks behind this series have pivoted to ‘action-comedy’, which would probably work better if the Mission: Impossible movies hadn’t just done the ‘action vs. artificial intelligence’ story first and better. And without the Power Rangers aesthetic — an interesting choice considering the obviously increased budget.
Though I had my problems with it, I enjoyed the first film just fine. You’ve come to expect a certain type of horror film with Blumhouse, and that’s mostly what we got, but when it comes to this genre-pivoting sequel, you don’t know what you’ll get from a Blumhouse action-thriller. It feels outside of their wheelhouse. The comedy is lame, often poor attempts at clip-farming for manufactured word-of-mouth virality. The action is poorly chopped up in the edit, whatever there was of it before. And any semblance of sincere scares are all but forgotten.
To be fair, I seemed to be in the small minority of people not having an absolute blast. My gut was not busted and I’m disappointed that it wasn’t. It seems like, on paper, something I should enjoy. This is a movie that makes the young girl’s most defining trait the fact that she likes early Steven Seagal movies. And it’s important to the plot! I like early Steven Seagal movies too, largely because the humor isn’t forced and the action is tight and, if you can believe it, they sometimes actually have something to say. Why couldn’t this be more like a ’90s Seagal? Those were Blockbuster VHS rental favorites. What we got instead was direct-to-DVD, fat Russian Seagal, uninspired and politically misguided, which nobody likes. Or wants.
M3GAN 2.0 has a run time of 1 hour 59 minutes, and is rated PG-13 for strong violent content, bloody images, some strong language, sexual material, and brief drug references.
Universal Pictures