M3GAN 2.0

This sequel goes for broke, moving from the horror-comedy genre into the action-comedy genre, as it embraces M3GAN’s new status as a pop culture icon in a plot that takes inspiration from Terminator 2 to (potentially) turn her into an unlikely antihero.

Premise:  Two years after M3GAN went rogue and killed four people (and a dog), Gemma (Allison Williams) has become an advocate for ethical AI regulation, while her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) adjusts to life without M3GAN.  But when a military prototype android called AMELIA (Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics & Infiltration Android) (Ivanna Sakhno) becomes self-aware, Gemma learns that AMELIA was built using stolen technology from M3GAN, which makes Gemma and Cady potential targets for the rogue android.

Review:

I had low expectations for the first M3GAN film before I saw it – but I ended up being won over by its twisted dark comedy.  In fact, despite playing with horror tropes, the first film was quite light on the horror, and most of the memorable moments where the comedic ones.

M3GAN 2.0 doubles down on the comedy, and all but drops the horror, resulting in a film that could potentially alienate audiences expecting another “Blumhouse horror”.  With its story focused on setting up an android-versus-android action packed confrontation, it’s fair to say that M3GAN 2.0 is effectively a sci-fi/action film with a vein of dark humour, but it’s no more a “horror” film than Terminator 2 was (which is a film that M3GAN 2.0 clearly takes a lot of inspiration from).

“…swings for the fences & tries to do something wildly different…”

None of which is intended as a criticism – in fact, probably the worst thing M3GAN 2.0 could have done was try to simply repeat the tone and beats of the first film, as it would have failed to recapture the lighting in the bottle and come across as a cash-grabbing rehash.  Far better to swing for the fences and do something wildly different, even if it’s not what some people will have been expecting.  But the character of M3GAN (spoiler alert – she didn’t die at the end of the first film…!) still maintains her edge – all the way through this sequel, despite M3GAN’s claims to have turned over a new leaf after seeing the error of her ways, Gemma (Allison Williams) quite understandably doesn’t really know whether or not she can truly be trusted – and the film keeps audiences guessing too.

The rest of the (surviving) cast from the first film are also back, with Violet McGraw as Cady, who is still struggling to find an equilibrium with her aunt, Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Epps as the sidekicks/comic relief Cole and Tess, and Amie Donald and Jenna Davis returning as M3GAN’s physical and voice performances respectively.  Joining them as new characters are Jemaine Clement as egotistic tech billionaire Alton Appleton, Aristotle Athari as Gemma’s fellow AI regulation campaigner Christian Bradley, Timm Sharp as Colonel Sattler, who’s responsible for the creation of AMELIA, and of course, Ivanna Sakhno as AMELIA herself.  Ivanna Sakhno has been making an impression in films like The Spy Who Dumped Me and TV shows like Ahsoka for some time now, but this is arguably her biggest role to date (even if she does seem to be getting typecast as emotionless, robotic characters!).

“…the joy of the movie is its go-for-broke, far-fetched approach…”

Although the highlights of the film are the comedic moments (especially M3GAN’s barbed one-liners), M3GAN 2.0 also delivers on the action front with some very impressively choreographed set-pieces, and the plot itself had a few twists and turns that kept things interesting.  But the joy of the movie is its go-for-broke, far-fetched approach to expanding the scope of the series, which started as a small scale story about a surrogate mother struggling to accept parental responsibility for her orphaned niece, and now develops into race against time to save the world.

It could be said that the film isn’t sure what it’s target audience is – not only might horror fans feel ignored, but there are a couple of (great) gags based on 80s pop culture references, which I imagine would go over the heads of most viewers under 30.  But all that said, I had a great time with M3GAN 2.0, and while the sequel doesn’t quite match the surprise factor of the original, it’s still far from a pale imitation thank to its own self-aware, over-the-top campy tone.