M3GAN 2.O Review

Two years after M3GAN’s rampage, her creator, Gemma, resorts to resurrecting her infamous creation in order to take down Amelia, the military-grade weapon who was built by a defense contractor who stole M3GAN’s underlying tech.

While the first film was entertaining, it didn’t reach its full potential. Unfortunately, the same goes for this sequel, M3GAN 2.0. On a positive note, it is funny. If you want to lose a few pounds in the theater from laughing so hard, make sure you’re dressed in a sweatsuit to get the most bang for your buck. One scene even felt similar to the ’90s classic Home Alone (1990) during a home invasion, which set the tone for the remainder of the film. Now, while laughing from start to finish is great, that’s not what most movie audiences signed up for.

In the first film, M3GAN was a murderer—a cold-blooded assassin with no remorse for anything or anyone that crossed her path. Now, if the plot were to rewrite her character into a more likeable hero to save the day against a new threat, that would be fine, but there’s nothing threatening about the new villain in this film either. It’s just another robot named Amelia who is dangerous but not scary. The trailers and the first act of the film promised a fight between the two AI-generated robots, which was delivered, but it was as dry as a loaf of bread sitting outside on the sidewalk for a week. What’s even sadder is you could barely see what was going on during their fight. It was as if the camera was strapped to a horse doing backflips because you couldn’t make out the choreography if you tried.

**Ivanna Sakhno as Amelia in M3GAN 2.0, directed by Gerard Johnstone.**

This could’ve easily been a rip-off of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) with cyborg vs. cyborg, but unlike that film, this one didn’t take advantage of weapon upgrades. The only upgrade M3GAN received was hardened skin. No flamethrower, no knives, no rocket boosters—nothing. This was a completely missed opportunity to have fun in a silly robot horror movie.

The third act is all over the place as well. Towards the end, it wasn’t clear what the true objective was. Was AI a good or bad technology for society? Who are the good guys and who are the bad? Is this character dead or alive, and who should we all be rooting for? All the story had to do was stick to a simple premise of good robot vs. bad robot, but it’s unclear at this point if they teamed up or not. There’s also an unnecessary reveal towards the end that makes things even more complicated than required. Oh, and the film is thirty minutes too long as well. It just drags and drags with no real direction.

It sounds like this film is horrible, but it’s not. It’s just a shame because of the potential it had to be great. The two main lead human characters from the first film are back: Gemma (Allison Williams) and Cady (Violet McGraw), who are great. At least Gemma has learned her lesson from the first film, which is commendable, but the rest is a bit of a misfire. There will be those who have fun with the film as just another popcorn flick that shouldn’t be taken too seriously, and while that is true, it could’ve been so much more.