Sometimes it feels like we can't have anything.
Do you remember the fervor when the teaser for M3GAN hit back in the fall of 2022, revealing her eerie yet exciting dance ahead of a sassy slaughter? Just like that, a fandom arose, eagerly anticipating the fierce slaying antics of a murdering doll who looked like she came from an American Girl store. She was an instant horror icon, embraced by women, teens, and the LGBTQ+ community. Awed by her audaciousness and her stone-cold face card, we were eager to worship at her feet, which were clad in perfectly polished Mary Janes.
The movie itself thrilled critics and audiences alike, digging into the expectations of killer doll horror, from vicious kills to creepy singing and a snarling sense of dark humor. Plus, there was something distinctly queer in the co-parenting relationship between the robo-nanny and her creator, Gemma (Allison Williams). So, we M3GAN lovers cheered when a sequel was announced, dreaming up a Terminator 2-like scenario that might go more deeply into the horror-musical terrain. Well, be careful what you wish for.
M3GAN 2.0 brings us the robo v. robo showdown we wanted. But its filmmakers have utterly lost their way.
Unlike the first film, this doesn't feel like a movie for the girls, gays, and theys who cheered M3GAN since she first sashayed down that hallway. This sequel feels like the filmmakers were trying to make a movie for everyone who didn't get their villain's appeal the first time around. And they're doing it by making her a superhero.
M3GAN 2.0 isn't even a horror movie.
From the opening sequence of this sequel, director and co-writer Gerard Johnstone (M3GAN, Housebound) makes clear the franchise's genre has shifted dramatically. Audiences are ushered into a standard black ops mission, where a mysterious operative is meant to collect the engineer of a lethal chemical gas. But instead, she kills him and taunts the remote observers who watch her through her installed cameras.
This is Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), a robo-agent made covertly from M3GAN's blueprint. She's a threat to the killer doll's estranged human family… and all of mankind. AI uprising, yadda yadda yadda — you know the drill. But M3GAN 2.0 will gratuitously explain it anyway.
Before this android assassin gate-crashes their home, Gemma and Cady (Violet McGraw) have rebuilt a pretty cozy life in the wake of the disastrous M3GAN launch. Gemma has pivoted to a book deal and establishing an advocacy foundation that combats the intrusion of AI into parenting. Cady is getting into computer science and coding, and is irate that her guardian keeps cutting off her screentime. But when their lives are threatened by Amelia, they reluctantly boot up M3GAN, giving the killer robot a second chance to be redeemed T2 style.
However, far from the action-packed cat-and-mouse that comparison implies, M3GAN 2.0 goes espionage thriller in the dullest way possible. New characters are set up to be swiftly killed off, with none of the gritty, improvisational flair of the 1.0 version. Exposition dumps about missions, tech, and photocopiers go on and on, bogging down any possible momentum and forcing audiences to spend time with a tedious FBI oaf. And when it comes to the actual M3GAN versus Amelia of it all, the results are achingly underwhelming.
Gone is the distinctive flair of M3GAN, replaced by a rushed sequel that hastily steals from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Black Mirror, any half-baked spy thriller, superhero power-ups, and much of the filmography of Steven Seagal, who is name-dropped far more than anyone could possibly predict.
M3GAN 2.0 shed its horror skin to become another dumb action movie.
You'd like to think that with all the horror movie makers behind the scenes on M3GAN 2.0, from director Johnstone to producers James Wan and Jason Blum, working in big scares would be a given. And yet, there's hardly a fright to be found. While there's the occasional eerie comment from the eponymous killer doll, there are no scares worth noting. Like Loki from the MCU, M3GAN has been retooled to make her more appealing and less threatening — therefore destroying a HUGE PART OF HER APPEAL!
But this isn't the first time M3GAN's been revamped to appeal to a broader audience. In an interview with Mashable after M3GAN: Unrated was announced, the first film's screenwriter Akela Cooper revealed that her script for M3GAN was intended to be a hard-R horror story.
"Once the first trailer came out," Cooper explained to Mashable contributor Karama Horne, "It had such a big response from teenagers in the TikTok community. Universal was like, 'There's your audience, [but] they technically can't go see R-rated films." Ahead of release, the movie was re-edited and reshoots were done to make M3GAN PG-13. The Unrated cut later premiered on streaming as a new way for fans to experience the chic killer doll. But the differences between the two cuts were minor and chiefly related to gore.
Cooper is not credited on the screenplay for M3GAN 2.0, but gets credit for the story and for creating the original characters, alongside Wan.
With its sequel, the franchise's move from horror to anything but is far more aggressive. M3GAN undergoes the standard superhero makeover, not only getting a taller body more capable of grappling, but also a cheeky anime-disguise to go undercover at a tech conference. But this departure strips away any groundedness the first film established.
In appealing to action movie fans, it seems Universal and Blumhouse are specifically targeting a more mainstream male audience, one that might not have been awed by M3GAN. Hence, Steven Seagal being haphazardly introduced as Cady's personal idol, and Gemma — who read as queer-coded in the first film — being saddled with a boring boyfriend. The arguments between Gemma and M3GAN still have some subversive psycho-biddy horror energy — like when Gemma says, "You threatened to rip out my tongue and put me in a wheelchair," to which M3GAN responds sharply, "I WAS UPSET!" But where the design of M3GAN wasn't a sexualized vision of femininity in the first film, Amelia absolutely is.
Her body is slim yet curvy and metal-plated, like a modern men's magazine version of Maria of Metropolis, down to titanium breasts topped by an attractive human-like face that's far less rubbery than M3GAN's. Well, that is, when she's not on a covert mission. Then she dresses like a Bond girl, all shimmery low-cut evening wear meant to lure dumb men, like a toxic tech bro played by Jemaine Clement. The Male Gaze is strong in this one.
M3GAN 2.0 is at its best when it's actually about M3GAN.
Amie Donald and Jenna Davis return to play M3GAN's body and voice respectively, and they're a pair made in hell. And I mean that as a compliment on their Frankenstein creation. But sadly, too much of this movie is about Amelia, the FBI, and, inexplicably, Gemma's bumbling male co-worker (Brian Jordan Alvarez) — while her female co-worker (Jen Van Epps) is sidelined. M3GAN 2.0 has too much screentime that has nothing to do with its main attraction.
Whether a haunting voice in Gemma's AI home assistant, confined to a cutesy robot toy, or back in a redesign of her classic look, M3GAN is still the star here, even when the bits are beneath her. She'll dance again, now for a crowd. She'll sing in that unnerving high key in a scene that feels awkwardly wedged in as if it were an afterthought of fan service. And yet the most fun bit of the movie might be when she teams up with Gemma for some real sci-fi shit in a fight scene. It's surprising, creepy, and fun — making sublime use of stunt performer excellence and the comedy skills of Williams and Davis. It's the rare moment when this sequel's concept actually works.
The energy of M3GAN, chaotic and passionate, thrums through such scenes. But it's an inconsistent current, interrupted by the bizarre pitch to make it attract superhero movie fans. The result is a sequel that is a horrendous mishmash of ideas and influences. M3GAN 2.0 is occasionally outrageous, but mostly it's derivative, bewildering, and bland.
Our killer queen deserved much, much better.
