A One Mann’s Movies review of “M3GAN 2.0″ (2025).
So, it’s NOT called, as I predicted in my review of “M3GAN“, “M4GAN”. But “M3GAN 2.0” is the inevitable sequel to the 2022 original. Inevitable, because it managed to make $180 million on its $12 million budget, which is pretty good going.
“M3GAN” was a film that managed to tap into our early unease about robotics and AI delivering a neat and entertaining little horror-cum-comedy that I really enjoyed (I gave it 4 stars). “M3GAN 2.0” takes a different path, very much leaning less into horror and more into satire and comedy.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
“M3GAN 2.0″ Plot:
The US military has managed to get hold of M3GAN’s original blueprints and build a militarised version called AMELIA (“Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android” – sigh). But AMELIA becomes self-autonomous and turns on her masters, wiping out all evidence of her origins. And that path leads back to Gemma (Allison Williams) and Cady (Violet McGraw). Fortunately, the essence of “M3GAN” was not destroyed and – to paraphrase the words of Oscar Goldman – “we can rebuild her”.
Certification:
UK: 15; US: PG-13. (From the BBFC web site: “Strong violence, injury detail”.)
Talent:
Starring: Allison Williams, Jemaine Clement, Violet McGraw, Jenna Davis, Amie Donald, Ivanna Sakhno, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Aristotle Athari, Mike Edward, Timm Sharp, Jen Van Epps.
Directed by: Gerard Johnstone.
Written by: Gerard Johnstone. (From a story by Akela Cooper & Gerard Johnstone and characters created by James Wan & Akela Cooper.)
Running Time: 2h 0m.
“M3gan 2.0″ Summary:
Positives:
- Some good gags that made me laugh.
- There’s an infectious manic comic-energy about the piece that I enjoyed.
- AMELIA makes for a great new character.
Negatives:
- As a film it’s just exhaustingly all over the place!
- There’s a lot of unexplained nonsense in the plot.
Review of “M3gan 2.0″:
Very different from the first film.
I feared as much from the manic-ness of the trailer. But “M3GAN 2.0” is a classic example of “more is less”. The first film was a nicely-honed concept with the doll turned evil in its pursuit of its mission (to protect Cady at all cost). Akela Cooper and James Wan’s script was tight, short (102 minutes) and had the right balance of horror-lite; tongue-in-cheek suspense and comedy. Here it feels like the whole feckin’ kitchen sink has been thrown at it! It’s just plain exhausting!
For starters, we are very much in “Terminator 2” territory here. There is a newer, meaner, deadlier android threatening our protagonists, so M3GAN turns from the one who had to be eliminated to saviour in one easy self-deterministic bound. How EXACTLY a disembodied M3GAN manages to maintain her ‘soul’ in the fabric of the house and re-materialise via screen etc is kind of glossed over. And how all the home-improvements and robotic building was done by a disembodied M3GAN is explained even less! But once she gets her body back, we storm from one over-the-top action scene to the next with pauses only to add some more gobbledegook exposition about AI and evil geniuses.
At one point, M3GAN leaps off a cliff wearing a wingsuit like some CGI’d female-robotic version of Tom Cruise. (I mean, we’ve seen these things scramble up and down walls like a spider… wasn’t there an easier way to get to the air duct?!)
“Mountainhead” revisited.
With merely a couple of weeks having passed since a movie was taking the piss out of billionaire tech-bros (“Mountainhead“), we again get representations of gits with more money than sense and with various forms of world domination on their minds. Here we have Alton Appleton, played by Jemaine Clement, who is a semi-disabled billionaire cloud computing tech bro seemingly modelled on a mix of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. The guy is a sleazy arrogant arse who can’t believe his luck when the lovely Amelia (the strikingly attractive Ivanna Sakhno) comes onto him. Don’t these billionaires have any common sense?
There’s a rather cheeky reference at one point to a company called Xenox with a big campus facility in Palo Alto. I didn’t check the credits (it was a late night screening and the cinema guys were looking to shut up shop) but surely they would need to get permission to do this wouldn’t they?
A comedic angle.
As stated above, the film leans far more heavily into comedy than the first film, and I did have a fair few chuckles during this.
- While still disembodied, M3GAN influences various home devices to defeat home invaders in a clever reworking of “Home Alone”;
- When M3GAN is being reconstructed she requests her body to be made “taller” (Amie Donald was 11 but is now 14!) and, remembering how M3GAN was (sappily) defeated in the last film, Gemma (Allison Williams) says “this time we’ll make her waterproof”!
- As we near the frenetic crashy, bangy and arm-breaky finale, we also have a fun section at an AI convention where M3GAN gets to do a truly head-spinning dance routine on stage.
- The film also neatly satirises the current debate about access of electronic devices to teens.
The acting is all OK.
Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Epps all return from the first film. New to this one are Jemaine Clement as the leering wheelchair-driving billionaire and Aristotle Athari as Christian Bradley, an anti-AI activist. But particularly impressing is Ivanna Sakhno who is both sexy and other-worldly as the android AMELIA.
One additional negative comment I would make is about the hair and make-up of Allison Williams. Williams is a strikingly attractive woman with her elegant and willowy frame. But in one sequence in which she gets dolled up (no pun intended) for a mission of seduction to Appleton’s apartment, I don’t think the make-up team could have made a better job of making her look more like a man. As she walked in the club I thought to myself, “oh, who’s this bloke”, before the penny dropped!
Summary Thoughts on “M3GAN 2.0″.
I saw one writer before the film’s release saying that they hoped that “M3GAN 2.0” wouldn’t just re-tread the first film. I disagree, since I could well have enjoyed some ‘more of the same’ of this class. As it is, we get a frenetic movie with too many unformed ideas for its own good. The two films together reminded me a bit of “Kick Ass”: M3GAN is almost a robotic version of Chloë Grace Moretz at Hit Girl. But whereas the first film in 2010 was an inventive delight, the sequel in 2013 was an over-the-top mess. This suffers the same sort of over-ambition.
Parts of it work and are enjoyable. But overall, its a bit of a mess and its not a film that I will remember much after a few weeks.
Where to Watch it (Powered by Justwatch)
Trailer for “M3GAN 2.0″:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYLHdEzsk1s.
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