“M3GAN 2.0” Is a Bombastic Feminist Fantasy
In the three years since M3GAN premiered, AI seems to have exploded. No longer a novelty or household DJ, we’re now using ChatGPT to run every conceivable aspect of our lives. From help composing difficult emails or inspiration for creative work to therapy, friendship, and romance, we’ve increasingly begun outsourcing emotional and intellectual labor to programs designed to mimic humanity. In other words, we learned nothing from Gerard Johnstone’s original film. M3GAN serves as a warning against the dehumanizing effects of technology especially when used as a substitute for parental love. But Johnstone’s new sequel, M3GAN 2.0 abandons its Cassandra-like message about opening Pandora’s box and shifts the story’s focus to our current reality. If AI is truly here to stay, how can we engage with it in a mutually productive way?
In the years since M3GAN (Amie Donald, Jenna Davis) misunderstood her objective, Gemma (Allison Williams) has become an anti-tech crusader. She’s adopted a new low-fi lifestyle and compares iPhones to addictive drugs. Alongside tech ethicist Christian (Aristotle Athari), she splits her time between lobbying Congress for stricter regulation while developing more skeletal robotic products with Tess (Jen Van Epps) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez). She’s still struggling with learning to parent her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) and tries to keep her from developing her own AI tech. But across the world, a new threat is brewing. AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) is an advanced android programmed as a covert assassin who somehow develops autonomous control. Her system seems to have been based on M3GAN’s original framework and now anyone connected with this failed product is on her hit list. As AMELIA circles ever closer to Gemma, M3GAN emerges to save the day. It seems she’s been lurking in the programming of Gemma’s smart home, just waiting for the right time to make her move. Still bonded to Cady, she makes an uneasy alliance with Gemma in order to take out this similar threat.
If the first film is a sci-fi tinged horror movie, M3GAN 2.0 is straight sci-fi action. After some eerie interactions with the lurking M3GAN system, she emerges as a trained assassin with lightning-quick reflexes. She quips her way through saving Gemma’s life several times in order to earn the trust of her human mother. The original doll was a child-sized nightmare who shocked audiences with her ability to gallop across a forest floor and willingness to kill a child. But this version is not only taller, she’s got improved reflexes, upgraded fighting skills, extended connectivity and advanced intelligence. We watch her jump off a cliff and sail across a picturesque canyon before launching herself through the air ducts of a highly guarded facility then taking out a slew of armed combatants. She’s physically matched by AMELIA, a bloodthirsty killer with none of M3GAN’s burgeoning humanity.
Like Terminator 2: Judgment Day to The Terminator, M3GAN 2.0 is bigger, bolder, and more bombastic. Johnstone plays with spectacular fight scenes and chases all filtered through the lens of advanced tech enhancements. Williams even gets in on the action with a M3GAN-assisted fight scene of her own as her resistance to technological enhancements gradually erodes. Johnstone maintiant’s the original film’s deft blend of humor and horror with M3GAN’s endearing vulgarity and tendency to perform. Yes, we do get another dance scene and hilariously cringe-worthy pop solo, and they’re just as delightful as in 2022! Jemaine Clement makes a fun cameo as a philandering tech genius, clearly skewering several real life figures. The ensemble all deliver effective performances, but the film’s stars are truly its two robotic leads.
Sakhno is effectively chilling and pitiable as a soulless robot trying to escape human captivity. Though she looks much more human than the uncanny-valley-esque M3GAN, she moves with an icy deliberateness that perfectly matches her perpetual look of murderous curiosity. But once again, Donald and Davis steal the show with an empathetic performance blending humor, horror, and heart. Johnstone folds feminism into his tech exploration while presenting both M3GAN and AMELIA as subservient female robots controlled by petty and hypocritical men.
Johnstone is dealing with evolved themes of AI regulation and seems to come down on a progressive ideal. Given that this advanced software has already been created, it’s unlikely that we will be able to put the genie back into the bottle. M3GAN 2.0 sidesteps commenting on the ecological effects of this dangerous technology to focus more on our role in dual evolution. After all, humans are just as capable of causing harm and perhaps AI regulations should be designed to inhibit us too. Have we become parents to our AI entities and, if so, should we learn to nurture this new approximation of humanity? M3GAN 2.0 argues that not only is AI here to stay, it’s a new species with which we must learn to coexist.
Jenn Adams is a writer, podcaster, and film critic from Nashville, TN. Find her social media nonsense @jennferatu.