Hold onto your vaginas!
M3GAN 2.0 leans fully into being a sci-fi action comedy, with the titular robot going undercover to fight off several high-profile enemies in increasingly dramatic set pieces.
M3GAN 2.0 landed in theatres on Friday, and it’s proved itself to be the bigger, campier sequel that many fans were hoping for. Directed by Gerard Johnstone, the film sees M3GAN become an AI antihero as she’s brought back to fight the newly created, military-grade robot AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), who was intended for government use but has seemingly gone rogue, killing all those involved in her creation. Due to her role in creating M3GAN (whose technology inspired AMELIA’s), Gemma (Allison Williams) fears she’s next on the robot’s hitlist.
The story takes place a few years after the events of the first film, wherein M3GAN’s programming caused her to kill multiple people and a dog before she was destroyed. Since then, Gemma and her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) have been working to rebuild their life without the AI companion by their side (although they still have a fully decked-out smart home). We learn that Gemma has written a book about the importance of limiting technology and has become somewhat of a public figure, speaking regularly to the media and political world about AI legislation and other measures that might prevent another M3GAN situation from taking place. The jokes and comments she makes about technology are, of course, timely and show the film’s self-awareness about the world it takes place in. In one scene, Gemma quips: “You wouldn’t give your child cocaine, why give them a smartphone?”
Though the cast and characters stay relatively the same, the film takes a huge stylistic departure from its predecessor. Unlike the first film, where humour provided relief from jumpscare-ridden scenes, it would be a stretch even to label this one as a horror flick. Instead, M3GAN 2.0 leans fully into being a sci-fi action comedy, with the titular robot going undercover to fight off several high-profile enemies in increasingly dramatic setpieces. Considering the fact that sequels are usually expected to go bigger in just about every way, I think the genre shift worked in the film’s favour. It no doubt requires a generous suspension of disbelief (some of the feats that M3GAN pulls off could be pulled right out of a Mission: Impossible movie), but that seems unavoidable in a franchise about a girlbossed AI companion. And since that’s what M3GAN is, I’m in support of the idea of just taking that and having as much fun as possible with it.
The film seemed to be operating with this mindset too, with the writers clearly fully aware of M3GAN’s potential to be a campy, almost-superhero. In a scene where M3GAN is required to go undercover at an AI conference (she poses as one of the performing robots who are meant to provide entertainment during the event), she soon finds herself onstage, needing to pull out her best dance moves to blend in and distract the crowd. Complete with a sharp bob cut and hot pink outfit, it’s exactly the kind of thing one would expect from a sequel that’s aware of every meme and recreated video of M3GAN’s dance from the first film.
But of the humorous moments, my personal favourite comes during another callback to the first film, where M3GAN tries to comfort her human companions by breaking into a ballad mid-conversation. In number one, this was a ridiculous rendition of Sia’s “Titanium” that she sings to Cady in an attempt to comfort her (Cady’s parents recently died in a car crash, for context). In the sequel, she tries to make Gemma feel better about her ability to take care of Cady by singing “This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush. Gemma could not feel less pleased about the situation she’s found herself in, which only adds to the comedy of the scene. “Please don’t take it to the chorus,” she implores M3GAN, who lifts a finger to shush her as she continues to belt away.
But for all the tongue-in-cheek humour and the sharp commentary on technology and AI that the film opens with, it undermines its own message with a strangely sentimental ending when Gemma (in voiceover) delivers a speech about “coexisting” with AI. Apparently moved by M3GAN’s decision to sacrifice herself (which as we know, isn’t really a thing considering her software can simply be applied to a new device) in the name of “morality,” Gemma declares that humans shouldn’t shun AI completely but rather work to train it so that it doesn’t learn to work against us. And while I suppose this makes sense for a film whose main character is an AI bot (after all, there probably wouldn't be more sequels if M3GAN stopped framed as an “icon"), it still seems like a pretty big leap in judgement for a character as (supposedly) socially-conscious as Gemma. Not only that, but seriously attempting to frame any manifestation of AI as capable of being a “friend” in our current technological climate is a choice that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe I’m just not the right audience for it. But I’d like to think that there’s a way to have fun, entertaining movies about AI that don’t feel the need to make moral excuses for the real-life technology that’s included in these stories.
M3GAN 2.0 is now playing in theatres.
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