Director: Gerard Johnstone
Stars: Jenna Davis, Allison Williams, Brian Jordan Alvarez
It’s got to be a little exciting, when your $12mil budget sci-fi horror movie rakes in over $180mil. Deciding what to do next with a certified hit is probably quite daunting. Given that it’s ultra-sassy, murderbot M3GAN that we’re talking about – which established itself as gleefully irreverent under the pen of Akela Cooper – the temptation to go full T2 with the premise is a natural one. James Cameron’s muscular sequel was bigger in every way, flipping Arnold Schwarzenegger’s titular menace from baddie to goodie and upping the spectacle across the board. M3GAN 2.0 tries for something very similar, but it also pulls from multiple other influences, magnetising detritus from various sources until it’s an overly busy and cumbersome collection of hampered and twisted metal.
As with the first two Terminator movies, you could call the first a horror film, but not the second. Returning director Gerard Johnstone (now the sole writer, though Cooper retains a story credit) jettisons basically the entire Blumhouse trick bag in favour of something that splices a sci-fi comedy with a hi-tech espionage thriller. We start, for instance, on the Turkish/Iranian border before flipping to the techy darkroom of an US military base. Where previously the safety of orphaned Cady (Violet McGraw) was the primary objective, we’re now out to save the world from an AI MacGuffin not a million miles away from The Entity as featured in the last two Mission: Impossible movies. There’s even a base jump from a clifftop. M3GAN hasn’t just been rebooted; she’s gone through a full-on rebrand.
It’s two years later. Cady’s aunt Gemma (Allison Williams) has done a public 180 on her AI inventions, and even written a best-seller warning of the dangers of our new-found dependence on artificial intelligence. It’s secured her the affections of her purist boyfriend Christian (Aristotle Athari), but hasn’t helped Cady make new friends at school. Gemma’s new sense of righteousness is put to the test when a rogue ‘copy’ of her invention codenamed AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) starts leaving a trail of bodies leading directly back to her. With Cady’s safety at stake once more, Gemma reluctantly turns to the maniacal program she thought she’d defeated for assistance.
It’s a good while before M3GAN is back in a form we recognise from the first movie. The opening hour instils an understanding of her diversity; she can be in anything from a home security system to a self-driving car console, but the constant shifting is also emblematic of a movie that can’t seem to rest on one idea for very long. Here, her funniest manifestations are in a cutesy toy robot and as the partially re-animated skeletal shell she was reduced to at the end of the first movie. M3GAN 2.0 constantly resets its own dynamics in an effort to feel fresh, without giving a single one the breathing space to feel lived-in. Throw in the rapid-fire info-dumps, plot-twists and side-switching, and it all gets a little exhausting.
Ultimately, Gemma arrives at a thesis that the ability to change our minds is what separates humans from tasked automatons. It’s a little ironic, then, that one of the movie’s biggest flaws is it’s taciturn nature. Instead of picking one idea to develop and run with for this sequel, it feels as though Johnstone has decided to try them all.
This extends to the humour of the first movie, which is expanded upon but also bastardised for the sake of fan-service. M3GAN quickly became a knowingly-camp IP, something its original marketing picked up on at speed. The need for this same sensibility has been telegraphed into this sequel. Sometimes it hits the mark dead-on (see a dance sequence at an AI convention). At other times it can feel as though everyone’s favourite robo-slayer has been taken over by Ryan Reynolds. The success rate is approximately 50/50.
This also goes for M3GAN’s appearance. Perhaps its the knock-on effect of her rival AMELIA looking more lifelike, but the uncanny-valley mash-up of CG, human doubles and complex animatronics makes several scenes feel queasily off. For all the improvements and upgrades, 2.0 doesn’t look better than the first, it looks worse. And, as it leans more heavily into action and stunt work, this also manifests in choppy editing. There are some neat moves in there, but they’re heavily borrowed from Leigh Whannell’s far superior Upgrade (though being James Wan’s old mate, I’m sure Whannell isn’t too upset at the blatant pilfering).
There’s definitely fun to be had here. Williams is given a great bit to do in the overlong and chaotic third act, Jenna Davis’ autotuned vocal work as M3GAN is as fun as before (when she’s not doing her Deadpool impressions) and Jermaine Clement chews the scenery as a particularly odious tech billionaire. But there are as many flaws and deficiencies. The convoluted story, AMELIA’s confused level of threat, the charmlessness of Athari’s Christian, and a lot more besides.
It’s okay for sequels to take a tonal turn away from the source. In fact, sometimes it’s absolutely the right move. But there’s an identity crisis at the heart of M3GAN 2.0 that makes it feel like an overstuffed parody piece, unsure if it’s mocking itself or any number of other tentpole franchises. At it’s worst it feels like a shit Marvel movie, forever one step away from one of the main characters looking back over their shoulder to snarkily quip, “Well, that happened!”
Maybe it is time to return to factory settings…
The Lost Highway Hotel 