Director: Gerard Johnstone
Writer: Gerard Johnstone
Stars: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno
Synopsis: When M3GAN’s tech is stolen to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia, Gemma realizes that the only option is to resurrect M3GAN and give her a few upgrades, making her faster, stronger, and more lethal.
Following the mega success of Blumhouse’s M3GAN in 2023, it would’ve been easy to tell a more simple revenge-driven story for the film’s inevitable sequel, but M3GAN 2.0 decides to take a page out of Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s book with a full-on change in genre. Instead of mixing the movie’s campy tone into horror, it instead goes full steam ahead into action, espionage elements, going full tilt into Mission Impossible territory. Director Gerard Johnstone certainly took a genre risk but it mostly pays off as an enjoyable time. The silly humor from the original is well represented, but there are solidly choreographed action sequences mixed in. However, along with its silly nature, the sequel has a number of competing ideas, including the dangers of AI consciousness in our world. These ideas, paired with its overlong runtime, keep it from greatness. But, M3GAN 2.0 comes out on the positive end by understanding its tone. It becomes an absurd, but playful way to spend a couple hours.
The sequel immediately establishes a new tone when we open with a new android, Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), fighting in hand-to-hand combat with goons, going rogue against her government-issued operation orders. The first film’s events left the world at a standstill with Gemma (Allison Williams) now trying to put guards on AI ever since M3GAN’s (Jenna Davis) bloody rampage. Gemma soon learns that Amelia was created from her own M3GAN tech, leading her to realize that bringing back the killer robot is the only option for the safety of her and Katie (Violet McGraw). The film’s thoughts on the ever-growing debate of ethical AI usage is present throughout and serves as light commentary to surround the film with more intrigue but it never goes anywhere interesting besides dancing on topics until the end where it goes completely off the rails, over-explaining itself. These elements are where the film carries over this same commentary from the first film and it’s about the same level of window dressing in each film, light concepts that keep interest but never really go fully anywhere and it’s the weakest aspect of both movies.
Where the movie does shine is through the surprisingly well-done spy/action film angle. With M3GAN now acting as a protagonist in the narrative, this movie goes the T2 route in more ways than one. Multiple sequences in the film are straight-up heist and spy-centric. Funny disguises for the characters to sneak around are used, and there are many action scenes to parse through. While this follow-up still retains its hammy tone, it’s surprising to see that so much of it is played straight, but never so much to the point where it starts becoming less clever because of the common genre tropes. It’s certainly a rare sight to see a Blumhouse film with car chases and 3rd act heists, but it is similar to another Blumhouse-produced film Upgrade (2018), especially with the similarities in action filmmaking. It feels twisty and precise in its robotic-like choreography and camera placement, which makes sense because M3GAN or Amelia are mainly the ones doing the fighting. The film never breaks new ground within the spy genre, action scenes, or espionage and one could say it even leans a little too hard into more predictable and boring genre tropes, especially with an exposition heavy 3rd act and unsurprising twist, but it mainly rides a line between a cool and spoofy nature.
The first M3GAN, while fun, was never truly an insanely entertaining movie because, for a film that’s supposed to be campy, it honestly took itself just a bit too seriously. There is still a lot of emotionality between our returning characters in this entry but because of the change from horror to action, it’s looser with the flow of its story. So, despite the unneeded 2-hour runtime, dull moments end up being few and far between. Of course, famous meme moments from the original are either recreated or have a new flavor to them here like a new M3GAN dance and another instance of cheesy singing that is sure to get a laugh out of audiences.
M3GAN 2.0 has a drawn-out runtime and just a bit too much clutter within it that keeps it from being great, but it was a pleasant surprise to see how effective it was with its genre change. It’s a sequel that still retains a tone that created such great success while also weaving in something new that will work for fans of the original and for those who wanted a little bit more out of it. M3GAN is a very flawed but creative shift to take a sequel to a modern hit.
