As a follow-up to 2022’s M3GAN, M3GAN 2.0 shifts genre gears from horror to sci-fi spy games, offering a satire of the AI ethical debate we’re currently embroiled in (or should be). The result is something like a Mission: Impossible movie that’s replaced Tom Cruise with Robocop.
Pure horror fans might object, but I found this model of M3gan, also directed by Gerard Johnstone, to be just as amusing as the prototype—with a firmer sense of what it wants to do. The plot involves an artificially intelligent American spy bot named Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno, impressively impassive) who goes rogue, prompting the government to contact M3gan inventor Gemma (Allison Williams) and ask her to build a new model that can track Amelia down. Turns out M3gan has been watching Gemma—and her adopted niece Cady (Violet McGraw)—all along.
What follows is some exciting action, building up to a cleverly staged confrontation between the two AI entities, as well as a steady diet of laughs. Jemaine Clement shows up as a supposed tech genius in a hoverchair that he mostly uses to intentionally bump into things; for a while, an annoyed M3gan has to take the form of a mini-bot reminiscent of Pixar’s EVE; and there’s another goofy dance sequence, this time at an “Embrace AI” conference that looks like it’s taking place on the set of Tron. Even the editing offers a few gags, as when a shot of Amelia breaking a soldier’s neck cuts to a television clip of breaking news.
Layered beneath all of this are provocative tech questions—not just about our responsibilities regarding artificial intelligence (“You made me and I’m done apologizing for it,” M3gan tells Gemma at one point), but also about the way our obsession with digital connectivity has trapped us in a manipulatable web of reality that’s not unlike The Matrix.
Still, the series’ crowning achievement remains M3gan herself. Once again, the special-effects artists—along with child actor Amie Donald and vocal performer Jenna Davis—employ animatronics and digital effects to create a funny, sassy, personable character that is still always eerily automated. She’s almost fun enough to convince you that we should welcome our robot overladies.
(6/25/2025)
