The original “M3GAN” succeeded in part thanks to its simple, straightforward premise: Robot doll turns murderous. There’s nothing simple or straightforward about the new sequel “M3GAN 2.0” (in theaters Friday), which is both a strength and a liability for writer-director Gerard Johnstone’s film.
It’s impossible to say that “M3GAN 2.0” is just a repeat of its predecessor, which is a trap that too many horror sequels fall into. But by shifting so sharply away from small-scale horror into what is essentially a superhero action movie, “M3GAN 2.0” loses a bit of what made the first film so appealing.
Still, I’ll take an ambitious mess over a boring retread, and even at its messiest, “M3GAN 2.0” is lively and fun, full of the same snarky humor and gleeful nastiness as the original.
The first movie rose to popularity on a wave of memes, and there are times when “M3GAN 2.0” is clearly trying to engineer new meme-able moments. It’s tough to recapture that same kind of viral attention, but even if “M3GAN 2.0” doesn’t equal the first movie’s quotable charms, it has plenty of memorably outrageous bits.
‘M3GAN 2.0’ turns M3GAN into a reluctant anti-hero
The biggest change between the “M3GAN” movies is that M3GAN herself is now more or less on the side of the good guys.
Originally designed as an android companion for young orphan Cady (Violet McGraw), M3GAN (played onscreen by Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis) went rogue in the first movie, taking her mandate of protecting Cady way too far by murdering anyone she perceived as detrimental to the child’s happiness.
There’s now a much more dangerous threat in the form of Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), a military-grade android who’s disobeyed her programming and seems intent on staging a robot uprising.
Of course, M3GAN wasn’t actually destroyed at the end of the first movie, and her electronic consciousness lives on, keeping tabs on Cady and Gemma (Allison Williams), Cady’s engineer aunt and M3GAN’s designer. When government agents break into Gemma and Cady’s house demanding information about Amelia, who was built using M3GAN’s initial designs, M3GAN reveals herself and offers to help track down her megalomaniacal counterpart.
The most obvious touchstone for this transition is James Cameron’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” which refashioned Arnold Schwarzenegger’s killer cyborg into an ally for potential human savior John Connor (Edward Furlong) and his mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton). M3GAN even ends up with an inhibitor that prevents her from killing humans, just like the order that John gives to the T-800 in “Terminator 2.”
But there’s also a long history of superhero stories about wary team-ups between heroes and villains in order to take on bigger enemies, putting M3GAN alongside characters like Magneto and Loki.
Like those characters, she retains her devious edge even as she agrees to a truce with Gemma and semi-apologizes for her past behavior. In that way, “M3GAN 2.0” gets to revel in M3GAN’s violent actions and snarky asides while making her into a more palatable — and even nuanced — protagonist.
The overstuffed plot weighs ‘M3GAN 2.0’ down
It takes nearly an hour of the overlong two-hour movie before M3GAN is once again fully functional, though. There’s way too much set-up to get to that point, involving Gemma’s new role as an activist for responsible technology, working with her smarmy boyfriend Christian (Aristotle Athari), plus Gemma’s tech start-up with returning colleagues Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps).
Jemaine Clement has an amusing supporting role as a grandiose tech mogul who wants Gemma to work with him, but he mostly serves as a red herring, disappearing from the movie far too early. By the time M3GAN convinces Gemma to build her a new, stronger, taller body, the world is already on the verge of an AI apocalypse, and “M3GAN 2.0” has practically turned into a “Mission: Impossible” movie.
There are multiple sub-missions within the main mission, leading to lengthy villain monologues and somewhat obvious plot twists. There are also some well-staged action sequences, including a battle between M3GAN and Amelia at a tech conference in a neon-lit corridor that looks like something out of “Tron.” There’s some genuine character development for Gemma, Cady and M3GAN, with strong performances (including Donald and Davis working well in tandem).
It gets excessive and tiresome after a while, especially in the drawn-out climax involving multiple reversals.
‘M3GAN 2.0’ goes from horror movie to action franchise
“M3GAN 2.0” doesn’t resemble a horror movie at all, but it’s not like the original “M3GAN” was all that scary. By expanding the character’s world, Johnstone and co-writer Akela Cooper set the stage for future installments, making M3GAN into a high-profile vigilante who could take on any future nemesis.
The message about technology and AI is hopelessly muddled by the end, but the message about M3GAN herself remains clear: She’s fierce and formidable, and she isn’t going anywhere.
“M3GAN 2.0” opens June 27 in theaters.
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