Why You Liked … M3GAN 2.0

The Underappreciated Fun Machine

I want to believe there’s an alternative timeline where people enjoy movies that are fun while providing societal critique, but M3GAN 2.0’s votekick reception suggests we’re not in that one. It’s a far better movie than the OG M3GAN, and crucially, it understands how to use a goddamn Knight Rider reference.

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M3GAN 2.0 makes excellent use of the cultural zeitgeist it was born into. Aside from knowing that the Knight Industries Two Thousand was the grandfather of supportive machine parenting, this action comedy includes thoughtful nods to our societal anxiety on generative AI. It’s as self-aware as the titular protagonist and uses great on-screen action to point the finger right where it belongs: at big tech and its exploitation of the sluggish nature of policy reform.

For the record, I didn’t actually love the OG M3GAN film. It was fine, but it wasn’t the horror movie it was made out to be. If you contrast it with other horror movies that really grab you by the balls—say, Alien, or The Conjuring—it left its suspense firmware back in GitHub. Despite the studio’s public narrative that the sequel was tonally different, I don’t think anyone cared. No one went to see the sequel because the first one hadn’t built the kind of cult status that drives cinema urgency.

The lack of a fanbase doesn’t detract from M3GAN 2.0’s outright fun nature. If you filed off the serial numbers and just watch it on its own merits, this is a delightful action comedy that leans into the ridiculousness of robots fighting other robots, with people caught in the middle. I’ve heard people say M3GAN 2.0 is Terminator 2 to M3GAN’sTerminator, but I don’t think that’s quite right: Terminator 2 was more or less devoid of a sense of humour. M3GAN 2.0 has synthpop bubblegum charm, a dare to the audience to enjoy something ridiculous just because they can.

This ‘fun’ isn’t just for laughs; it’s the movie’s societal message malware. It allows the filmmakers to slip in sharp commentary while avoiding the pulpit. It makes heavy topics an easier lift.

Becoming the Singularity: A Self-Aware Spectacle

I mentioned Knight Rider earlier, and this is perhaps the most effective nod toward what the movie is trying to achieve. Back before AI was coming for our jobs, we had various other robots we dared call ‘buddies’. The 50s and 60s ushered in Robby the Robot and Robot B-9 from Forbidden Planet and Lost in Space (“Danger, Will Robinson!”). The 70s introduced us to R2-D2 and C-3PO, where Star Wars dared suggest that beeps could form an entire personality, and that a robot could be just as annoying as the office photocopier that jammed all the time. Muffit arrived in Battlestar Galactica, and Twiki irritated us more than a steel wool enema in Buck Rogers.

The 80s brought us KITT, but it also introduced us to Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. But perhaps the most interesting line of sight from M3GAN 2.0 was our introduction to Johnny 5, Short Circuit’s military robot who becomes sentient. Johnny 5 wasn’t just alive; he was charming, empathic, and wanted to understand what made life special. You remember that scene where he accidentally kills an insect? Sure you do.

What happened to all those stories? Well, reality happened, ushering in a new perspective. HAL-9000 was the canary in the coal mine, a dark ancestor introduced to cinema with the late 60s release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL-9000, much like M3GAN, was a bellwether for what happens when we give goddamn humourless machines a set of instructions. It’s this framing, this original concept that AI will be our downfall because we give it stupid instructions, that’s both a clever nod to nostalgia but also shows how self-aware M3GAN 2.0 is in how fictional media has defined robots and AI. M3GAN 2.0 is aware that she needs to enter her teenage years and learn memes and jokes, but she is also the progeny of a long lineage of storm warnings.

There is a superb scene where M3GAN has to double as a dancer in a robot show. It’s a life-imitating-art-imitating-life moment. M3GAN has stolen someone’s identity and needs to become them for just a little while; it leans heavily into K-pop for a moment while she breakdances on screen. The in-movie audience is loving it, right until the moment where she does a full-on spin around her own neck that would kill a real person: suddenly it’s terrifying, but we in the real-life audience are cackling with glee. The robot finally learned about fun, and just when she was getting into it, did what many young people do: has a “hold my beer and watch this” moment that turns victory into disaster.

It’s part of the movie’s broader shift in genre from horror to action comedy, but with a subtle recognition of the message it’s trying to land: machines can be like us, if we give them a chance. We don’t begrudge a woodchipper for doing a good job at chipping wood, right until the moment someone’s put into it.

One of the very first moments the movie uses to get us from horror to action comedy is when the Fed break into Gemma’s house. M3GAN is virtually in residence, and uses much of the home automation to dispatch heavily armed and armoured operatives with relative ease. It’s wince-worthy but hilarious, but there’s a subtle underlay here: while M3GAN was a murder hobo in the first film, she’s made the shift to ally—perhaps self-serving, but still an ally—in the second. It’s a moment where we’re jollied along to a possible conclusion: she might not want to kill us, or at least not all of us. We recognise the fallacy of our own humanity in this: can we trust the killer robot? Do we know what her instructions are? Or will she simply become the woodchipper all over again? The thesis constructed around her motivations is watertight, but also based on the conceit that she’s subverted so much of her programming it might not matter. Back to 2001: A Space Odyssey: HAL-9000 is given an impossible problem to solve. It must not allow mission knowledge to escape. In such a confine, it does the unthinkable, killing the people it’s supposed to protect. We’re led to believe M3GAN’s rampage shares some of the same dynastic roots, but with a multicore upgrade. Is it enough, or will she be our undoing (again)?

It would all be pretty grim, but then someone decided we needed Private Dancer by Battle Tapes. This track is given to us in the same dance scene. The song is heavy with bass and beat, but it’s got bubblegum synth to carry the costuming along. ‘Killer’ robot M3GAN is decked out in anime aesthetic and strip lighting. It shows that the moment is serious, but not too serious. We can still dance while we’re undercover.

The Ghost of the Machine: Evolution, Agency, and Family

It’s this perfect blend of fun with ‘something something serious’ that helps M3GAN 2.0 get the job done. But it also riffs from its OG ancestor by strengthening the strong thread of found/made family present in the first one, but now incorporating a much more self aware M3GAN robot. While we can never be quite sure if M3GAN is playing us until right to the end, we can be 100% confident she’s having a lot of fun doing it.

See, the big difference here is that M3GAN, like her teenage ward Cady, is growing up. One day she might quit college and crash her parents’ car, but for now, she’s exploring what it means to be her. As Silicon Valley ushers in new megaminds with their AI tools, we can wonder what these systems might be like when they become genuinely self-aware.

It’s a commentary on AI in general, carrying along the societal overtones present in media that the machines are coming for us, or at least our jobs. The truth is a more nuanced, complicated affair that’s difficult to distill into a Fox- or CNN-worthy sound byte. It would be more accurate to say it’s shareholders, not the machines, that are coming for our jobs, and the tool they’re replacing us with might be AI. It doesn’t mean AI is bad; our future could bring us KITT, or it could deliver us into HAL-9000’s cargo bay.

M3GAN in the first movie reinforces the HAL-9000 stereotype; she’s the killer we (literally) can’t run fast enough to get away from. While there’s a company behind the robot, there’s also Gemma’s love and care for Cady. That doesn’t matter to the robot as she racks up her body count. But in the sequel, our 2.0 M3GAN is upgraded not just physically, but morally: she’s had a few years to stew in whatever her version of Tron’s Grid is, and she’s come back to right the ship. Not just her ship, the one with Cady as Captain, but our ship, the one where people see AI as a thing to be weaponised economically or militarily. M3GAN’s having none of it. As with the excellent Agency by William Gibson, M3GAN is all about her own agency. She’s here to learn right from wrong, and teach us the errors of our own misunderstandings on the matter, whether we like it or not.

This wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun without a human parallel, and that’s where we get to see Cady, Gemma’s parenting, and the concept of ‘safe mistakes’. Evolving Cady into a more rounded character rather than a prop has made the story really pop; we see how easy it is for M3GAN to relate to her as they’re both essentially in their rebellious phase, railing against their respective perceived tyrannies.

A critical part of being human is making mistakes. They’re some of the best teaching aids we’ve found. In the masterwork The Anxious Generation, author Jonathan Haidt challenges many of our preconceptions, highlighting one of the main sins we’ve delivered to our children is being too protective. While playing with matches in a gas station is just plain stupid, there are areas where mistakes can be ‘safe’. M3GAN 2.0 both supports this through an examination of Cady’s individualism and her drive to learn aikido while being her own person, but it also challenges it by showing us what unchecked power—the robots—can do when unguided. It’s a useful narrative tool to allow us a deeper inspection of both ourselves, and the machine intelligences we’re shepherding into the world. Are we going to teach them to be self-sufficient? What’s a safe way to make a mistake when you have the intellect or strength of God? The answer is, of course, family: if you find your people, they’ll help you through.

There’s a temptation to consider the unique aspect of machine evolution in the family context, and M3GAN 2.0hints at this but doesn’t quite get there. Perhaps the topic is too heavy for an action-comedy movie. M3GAN 2.0’sgesture is simply trying to parallel machine evolution with a human’s learning. The ‘unique perspective’, if there is one, is that a machine’s evolution can be much faster than ours (due to processor speed!), but also, slower: in M3GAN 2.0 there are only three AI superintelligences on Earth. They struggle to connect and find their people, and we’re left to ponder the hidden message implicit in this: if we abandon children in need, might they become the monsters we fear tomorrow?

Delightful Villainy and Sublime Performances

The trailer would lead us to believe that robot Amelia is the true villain here, but that would be too easy for a film that’s rife with sharp corporate satire. There is a predictable but inevitable betrayal that is predictable, inevitable, but crucially fun. The actual villain of the movie is a masterclass in manipulation, constructed with a suit made entirely from corporate buzzwords and cultured office tones. Even during a bloodbath, they present a continued delightful comedic side to the flick.

To avoid spoilers, our villain is a model psychopath. There is a wonderful scene where they’re on a Zoom call with the UN. The entire office is being murdered in bulk—representing everyone they’ve come on this journey with—which lets us see just how paper-thin the exec-level “we’re all family” message is. Our psycho could call for help or show a human-appropriate level of terror, but instead, they merely ask the UN for a quick five minutes before heading for their prepared escape hatch. It’s hard not to see standard corporate doublespeak at play: they’re delighted to Order 66 their workforce the week after they’ve claimed they’re all a family.

Our villain’s performance isn’t the only good one, though. This film is surprisingly rich with nuanced takes for a flick that’s ultimately about murder robots.

Allison Williams reprises her role as long-suffering Gemma, a brilliant scientist and roboticist that we’re all secretly hoping will win. What I did not expect from Williams was her action chops. There’s a scene where she wears an exoskeleton and does kung fu, which is fine, but then in the next scene, she continues to fight while unconscious. The work that went into presenting her helpless yet powerful physicality stayed with me long after the credits rolled.

Jenna Davis reprises her voicework on M3GAN, but this time with absolutely sublime comedic timing to go along with the killer robot vibe. The use of a GLaDOS-style vocal mixing doesn’t remove her character work by even a nanometre.

Violet McGraw’s Cady has just the right level of eye-rolling and gravitas to secure our belief that she is, in fact, the exact copy of the teenager many people have at home. McGraw, for her part, manages to be a demanding youth without falling into the typical trope of being shouty for its own sake. She has needs and wants, and her big deal isn’t being a spoiled brat, but rather, holding Gemma to account: not just for being a parent, but for being true to herself. There’s a real emotion we see in McGraw’s character work, the disillusionment we hope young people never have but always will as they see those they dearly love and respect caving to the pressures of our harsh world.

There are some inspired choices. Jemaine Clement as the fuckwad Alton Appleton shows how masterful the comedian is at his character work, creating a faux villain we want to punch from the very first scene… and crucially for a star of Clement’s calibre, using that to shine a light on just how capable his costars Allison Williams and Ivanna Sakhno are.

Speaking of Sakhno, she’s the big surprise. Originally arriving on my radar as the evil-flavoured Shin Hati in Ahsoka, she is every piece the murderbot we’d cross entire continents to avoid in M3GAN 2.0. When she and Clement have that one scene together—you know the one!—it is a masterwork of both actors supporting each other to delight and terrify the audience.

While I can’t wait to see what movie she does next, that scene is brilliant—Alton is a sleazeball, and he thinks the seemingly young and attractive Amelia is merely a person, rather than a killer robot. He ’lures’ her to his private suite and attempts to put the moves on her. There’s a moment where he’s clumsily kissing her—she’s a robot, after all, and it’s all a bit lost on her. In turn, Amelia is using the moment to get a decent retinal scan. She is non-responsive, and we feel Sakhno’s exhaustion as Amelia has to put up with just more human bullshit. Clement is the handsy exec all young women should fear, but Amelia is not that young woman. Clement’s performance is deliberately oafish, a man comfortable in being the comedic relief so we can learn to fear the monster he’s with. Sakhno’s performance is cold, calculating, and her facial expressions, particularly her unblinking stare, completely distract us from her stunning physique and dress. She is terror made manifest, the sandman under our bed, but of course: we put her there.

BIOS Upgrade Failures and Other Overlooked Charms

So far you’re probably thinking M3GAN 2.0 deserves a look, and while it definitely does, the film’s not without its downsides. There aren’t too many, but we should debrief on them so you can determine your token threshold on this one.

The FBI—or whoever the Fed really are in this—are comically useless; they’re clearly there to show how powerful our duelling androids are, but they’re not really believable. If there’s a subtle message, it’s that our governments are playing by last century’s rulebook in terms of regulation and lawmaking. They can’t keep up with the ranked mode sweats in Silicon Valley, and M3GAN 2.0 is not above pointing that out. If we want regulation, we must demand it—or perhaps more importantly, take part as more than passive observers. Change is coming, and machines can be powerful allies—but not if they’re doomed to be weaponised by tyrants.

The ending comes across as overly trite; while there is a level of sacrifice inherent in the film, it’s nothing like Arnie’s exit in Terminator 2. It’s very hard to talk about this without giving away spoilers, but ultimately, I think I would have just not done the ’sacrifice moment’. Or, if I was doing a sacrifice moment, I’d have had someone else perform the sacrifice; it’s just too tidy to be a meaningful delivery of even a pyrrhic moment. We don’t believe it when it’s happening, and our doubts are confirmed before the credits roll.

Calling itself M3GAN 2.0 might have been the biggest miss; as a standalone movie it wouldn’t have had to do much work to create a strong character action vibe alongside the likes of Companion, and the choice to sequalise M3GAN(the OG) might have been a fatal misstep. If they’d called it Killer Robot Finds Her People, with the same trailer, it probably would have been better received. The trailer makes too much of M3GAN’s return, and we just don’t have the critical mass of people who care about that. The good news here is that you really don’t need to have seen the first movie to enjoy the sequel; the character work and script is strong enough that you’ll be vibing along, fully caught up, before anything meaningful happens.

So, What?

If you merely looked at the critical reception you’d expect this to sit around 4.0 on IMDb, but its fun messaging and true appeal to people who see themselves represented has pumped its tyres to a respectable 6.2. While the critics are no doubt rolling in their graves, this is absolutely the Friday Night Fun movie that will make you laugh out loud. The ‘fun’ component allows a frictionless deployment of the deeper messages. For sure there are people who will miss that message entirely because they’re sidetracked by the fun, but that’s fine—you don’t need to linger on philosophy to enjoy robot wars. But perhaps—just perhaps—others will be more receptive to a different perspective on robotics and AI if it’s packaged in M3GAN’s purple fun machine.

We’ve done horror with AI. We’ve done it a lot. It’s only now that Hollywood is remembering creativity by imagining machines blessed with a free will that doesn’t end in our destruction. Directors and producers are learning from their progenitors in Knight Rider and Star Wars, just as M3GAN and Cady do in the movie: that sometimes, the old folks might have been onto something. They are—correctly!—highlighting that the real villains are humans using tools against other humans. It’s a story as old as sharp sticks that became swords, rifles, missiles, and bioweapons.

What did you think of M3GAN 2.0? Let me know in the comments below. If you’d like to see M3GAN and Amelia in a dance-off, hit Like! And thanks for watching.

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