Right at the end of pride month, the queen has returned! M3GAN 2.0 pronounces the return of our beloved, murderous, AI giving Mother. In fact, everyone’s back…a big reason this sequel was as anticipated as it was…and why it was clearly going to be a banger.
After “killing” M3GAN while trying to have a conversation, Gemma (Allison Williams) and Cady (Violet McGraw) are in the process of growing up and moving on. Cady’s taking self defense classes and picking up adopted mom Gemma’s flair for computer science. Gemma’s trying to be the ultimate modern woman, raising Cady while also becoming an novelist/advocate against AI Tech takeovers of humanity with her boyfriend Christian (Aristotle Athari). But the 2 ladies can’t really escape their past: an AI military agent called AMELIA has gone rogue, and is eliminating everyone vaguely involved in her making. A Judgment Day if you will, terminating 2 girls possibly? Gee, I wonder whose side M3GAN (played by Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) might be on?
Not only is the main cast back in this one, but director Gerard Johnstone and writer Akela Cooper as well. Everyone seems excited to be back too, which you can tell all over M3GAN 2.0. No one is happier than Allison Williams, the low key MVP of this movie. Johnstone has lasered in on M3GAN and Gemma being the weirdest amusingly toxic parenting duo, fighting literally and figuratively over Cady. Props to Williams for leaning into that icy, unfeeling persona as the perfect foil to M3GAN’s overly emotional nonhuman. Gemma takes all sorts of L’s as this movie goes along, with M3GAN tersely sniping correct answers back at her. They are the emotional backbone of 2.0, with Gemma the recipient of one of those beautiful M3GAN lullabies, and Gemma’s reluctance to trust her unstable partner.
The horror comedy scale of M3GAN 2.0 is slightly more tipped toward the comedy side on this one. On the whole that’s a good thing: the movie’s best sequences involve some sort of punchline. The T2 story takes the scarier parts of M3GAN 1.0 and turn them into greatest hits in this one. There’s a new M3GAN outfit, and dance, that will no doubt sweep the nation, especially in the convention circuit. We get funhouse mirrors of scenes from the first, the funniest involving Gemma’s work partner Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) forced into a one on one discussion with M3GAN. There’s also some wonderful new wrinkles, the best being the advent of smart housing and how M3GAN/AMELIA can make a rhumba or even a cabinet drawer something silly and menacing. M3GAN 2.0 is almost too funny, because it undercuts the big 3rd act when we have to resolve the story, but at that point you won’t care that much cause your face hurts from smiling and laughing over and over again.
There’s enough meat on the bone to hope we get a big final movie to close out M3GAN’s story. As long as Allison Williams and Gerard Johnstone are on board, I’d love to see what other beautiful nonsense can be conjured. Can we keep jumping genres? Maybe a creepy romcom between Gemma and M3GAN, who start falling in love? That’s gonna really turn people off…or turn them on? Ok, I’ll stop, before M3GAN breaks my neck from those sh*tty ideas.