In M3GAN 2.0, the military contracts an upgraded version of M3GAN named AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) made by a wealthy independent tech firm to work for them. On her first mission, AMELIA goes rogue and starts killing her way back to D.C. . Desperate, the military go to Gemma (Allison Williams) and Cady (Violet McGraw) for help in bringing down AMELIA. M3GAN (Once again voiced by Jenna Davis and performed by Amie Donald) reveals that she survived the events of the first film and has been posing as Gemma’s home AI.
M3GAN says she wants to help, claiming that she is the only way to defeat AMELIA. In order to stop her though, M3GAN will need a new and upgraded body. Gemma goes to work, but who ultimately poses the bigger threat? AMELIA or an upgraded M3GAN?
Gerard Johnston returns to helm this sequel to his first film. This go-round the powers-that-be decided to include Akela Cooper, screenwriter for the first movie, on only as a story co-contributor with Gerard Johnstone. Johnstone is the sole credited screenwriter here. It’s an interesting decision seeing as he isn’t credited with either story or screenplay creation for the first M3GAN.
The screenplay for M3GAN 2.0 is bad. The plot is incredibly threadbare, acting purely as a vehicle for the action scenes. It’s not funny and every joke falls flat. Some loose ends from the first film are tied up and M3GAN 2.0 retains the same tone as its predecessor, but those hoping for a horror film are going to be sorely disappointed.
M3GAN 2.0 is a comedic spy/espionage action-thriller. It chooses to discard any horror elements in favor of instead leaning all the way into meme-culture, comedy, and action. There are no horror aspects to M3GAN 2.0 . The most we get is some tension regarding whether or not M3GAN has ulterior motives and can be trusted. There are more deaths here than the first, but there is little-to-no-blood. It’s not a great trade-off.
The first M3GAN actually had a great message that was cleverly told about childhood attachment to and parents’ over-dependence on technology. The messages in M3GAN 2.0 concern crafting safer laws around technology and learning to nurture A.I instead of being afraid of it. Both messages are conveyed through a shoe-horned speech delivered by Gemma during the final minutes. It’s a safe assumption that M3GAN 2.0 is more interested in action and comedy than in conveying a message or messages.
M3GAN the doll is handled ok. She is still sassy, but lacks the edge found in the first film and generally feels neutered. She fights many people, but only kills one. She seems to be fighting to knock-out or incapacitate, not kill. Many of M3GAN 2.0’s decisions or choices were directly inspired by or modeled after those Terminator 2 made, but most work far less often than they did in that movie, including the switch of murderous antagonist to mostly not murderous protagonist.
The rest of the cast pale in comparison to the performances they gave the first time around. No one seems excited to be here. Jemaine Clement is here, but feels incredibly out-of-place and isn’t in the proceedings much. He only exists as a way to introduce a rival technology so M3GAN 2.0 can rip-off Upgrade for ten and a half minutes near the end.
M3GAN 2.0 feels empty or hollow. There’s some surface, airy fun but there’s not as much going on underneath the surface as there was in the first M3GAN. The makers of M3GAN 2.0 assumed that the titular doll was an icon after the success of the first film, and who could blame them? Maybe she was, and they ruined it.
It took United Artists seven years to make a sequel to The Terminator. It only took Blumhouse two years to make a sequel to M3GAN. Even if M3GAN WAS an icon, she wasn’t on the same level as the T-800 or even the T-1000. Give the girl some time to cook (and I’m not talking about in the kitchen).
M3GAN 2.0 is a miscalculated flop due to a variety of reasons; from the sole screenwriter not returning to said role, to a drastic shift in genres, to a presumptuousness on Blumhouse’s/Jason Blum’s part. The first M3GAN was a legitimate surprise that M3GAN 2.0 tries and fails to capitalize on. This second outing is bigger, longer (running at an hour fifty-three minutes excluding credits), and dumber, but it lacks the heart and soul of the first film. Despite what its title suggests, M3GAN 2.0 is a downgrade.
2 STARS
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