Maybe all that’s needed to win the battle for AI regulation is to make real the threat of being choked out by a robot dressed like a Ralph Lauren model. Double that with the knowledge she’d whisper the cattiest little aside (something like “nice haircut, slut”) to ensure we left this plane of existence with our ego bruised.
But we find thought leaders in the most unexpected of places, and if what feels timely to us now is the sequel to a 2022 horror-comedy known mostly for its viral dance routine, then let’s embrace it for what it is. M3GAN 2.0 is a hyper-camp, dumb-funny, unexpected mashup of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Mission: Impossible.
Returning director Gerard Johnstone, here taking over scripting duties from Akela Cooper (although she retains a story credit), has taken the logical next step in the story. If somebody did accidentally build a robot skilled in murder, the US military would immediately come knocking. Here, they’ve developed AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno, who nails the seemingly contradictory expression “blank but intense”), otherwise known as an “autonomous military engagement logistics and infiltration android”, in response. Their vision is of a machine that can strike quickly and efficiently, without attracting the attention of the international community.
Surprise, surprise, she goes full Frankenstein’s creature and violently rebels against her creators, which puts M3GAN’s own Dr Frankenstein, toy designer Gemma (Allison Williams) and her niece Cady (Violet McGraw), in the potential firing line.
M3GAN (voiced by Jenna Davis, brought to life through a combination of puppet work, VFX, and actor Amie Donald) was, as one might note, completely obliterated in the first film. But she, like Chucky before her, has crawled back into existence through marginally incomprehensible means. “What a shock, etc,” she deadpans on her return.
What happens next is a kind of rapid oscillation between relatively sincere reflections on the nature of parenthood, an inter-android dialogue about autonomy and sentience, and extended martial arts fight scenes. Add to that Jemaine Clement as a Musk-like tech billionaire with heinous taste in dress, interior decor, and seductive dance moves, whose neural chip has landed 30 per cent of test subjects in hospital. There’s a follow-up punchline to the first film’s scene of M3GAN delivering a non-consensual performance of Sia’s “Titanium” as a kind of emotional robot-to-human outreach. But its choice of song is both surprising and so terminally online that it might just be crowned gag of the summer.
M3GAN 2.0 is, admittedly, a pretty bizarre conflagration of tones and ideas. But so were most of the Child’s Play films that this series owes so much of its conceit to, and the rollercoaster effect of never quite knowing what genre Johnstone might pull from next is a key part of the fun. Blumhouse, the horror titan studio behind this franchise, might have nailed down the genre’s next big icon in M3GAN. She’s a cutthroat bully who’s weirdly easy to root for. And the fact that she’s using her platform to advocate for a shift in how we view technology, not as a way to replace us, but to co-exist with us? Well, that puts her immediately ahead of most celebrities, doesn’t it?
Dir: Gerard Johnstone. Starring: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Ivanna Sakhno, Aristotle Athari, Timm Sharp, and Jemaine Clement. Cert 15, 120 minutes
‘M3GAN 2.0’ is in cinemas from 27 June
