Skip to main content

M3GAN 2.0

I thought the first M3GAN, about a killer robot that goes on a bloody rampage, was fun. It wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, but I didn’t hate it, either. It treaded over the same familiar ground that the original Chucky movies did, but did a slightly better job of it--at least as far as a slasher film about a killer doll can go. The first M3GAN still did well enough to warrant a sequel three years later: M3GAN 2.0. The sequel was a huge bomb at the box office, with its main producer, Jason Blum, actually going out and doing press to apologize for the “wrong turn” that the sequel made.

But that "wrong turn" is exactly why I enjoyed M3GAN 2.0 so much.

The sequel wisely throws out the horror trappings of the first film in favor of a more fast-paced, heavily science fiction-imbued action tale. M3GAN 2.0 opens with AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), a super spy robot, on a mission into Iran, where she is tasked with finding a kidnapped scientist. But AMELIA goes rogue when, instead of rescuing him, she kills the scientist and steals his tech. She then proceeds to start killing everyone involved with the original M3GAN project--which is really bad news for M3GAN’s original main creators, Gemma (Allison Williams), Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez), and Tess (Jen Van Epps), along with Gemma’s niece Cady (Violet McGraw).

This foursome of characters makes for a very cozy group to follow through this entertaining romp, and they’re all played very well by their respective actors, with the writers giving them each something productive to do that makes them shine. And they’re not alone in facing AMELIA; as it turns out, the original M3GAN, despite having her body destroyed in the first film, is back in (electronic) spirit. Jenna Davis returns as the voice of M3GAN, with Amie Donald also returning as the physical embodiment, once Gemma and her friends build M3GAN a proper body to battle AMELIA with.

Ivanna Sakhno--whose Shin Hati character was one of the few great things in the abominably bad Ashoka Disney+ series--also does wonders with AMELIA, giving her a nice sense of menace, and even garnering some sympathy for what should be just a one-note villain character. And while 2.0 may stumble here and there (in its lesser moments, 2.0 sometimes feels like a rehashed Terminator 2), the sequel’s immensely funny humor, as well as its sympathetic characters, is its saving grace. By eschewing the horror framework of the original, M3GAN 2.0 injected vital new life into its franchise. Here’s hoping it will be re-discovered on video. --SF

M3GAN and M3GAN 2.0 are available on both streaming and physical media.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Explorer From Another World

It’s Friday night during the summer in Beutter county, an idyllic farming community in Indiana, and the good folks are settling in for what should be another humdinger of an evening. Until their plans are shattered by the arrival of an Explorer From Another World! This turns out to be an alien (Gemma Sterling) who starts savagely killing people from the moment it disembarks from its flying saucer. Local kids Eddie (Colin McCorquodale), Marybeth (Sage Marchand) and Culpepper (Nolan Gay) are planning on seeing a movie, but it looks like they’ll be battling for the very survival of the human race instead! Explorer From Another World is a wonderfully done throwback to the B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Ably directed by Woody Edwards (who gives himself a small cameo as Hank in the sheriff’s jail cell), the film is forty five minutes long, but manages to tell its torrid but funny story very effectively in the time allotted. And the short running time tracks when you...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice -- a review

Despite coming out thirty six years after the first film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice , once again directed by Tim Burton, wound up being vastly entertaining, adding lots of pleasant surprises, like the use of stop-motion animation. The sequel takes place within the same real-life time frame, with Lydia Deetz, played with wry humor by Winona Ryder, now the host of a ghost hunting show. She’s also the mother of Astrid, a teenager played by Jenna Ortega. They live with Delia Deetz (the always great Catherine O'Hara), Lydia’s step-mother and Astrid’s step-grandmother. After the death of Charles--Delia’s husband and Lydia’s father--during a bird-watching accident involving sharks, the Deetz ladies must go back up to the creepy house in Winter River, Connecticut for his funeral. This is the same place where Lydia first encountered Beetlejuice all those years ago, and she is understandably reluctant to even mention his name, lest she accidentally calls forth Beet...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Top Five of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is returning (finally!) on the 17th of July with an all-new third season. To celebrate the return what has become my favorite of the new Star Trek shows on Paramount+, I decided to create a list of my top five episodes from the first two seasons. Memento Mori After several episodes of hinting at their presence, Memento Mori is the first big confrontation between the Federation and the Gorn. First introduced in the TOS episode Arena , with a memorable fight between Captain Kirk and a slow moving, green-skinned humanoid lizard, the Gorn have popped up in the episode The Time Trap of ST: The Animated Series , and in the In A Mirror, Darkly Part Two episode of ST: Enterprise (using really bad CGI that wasn’t much of an improvement over the Gorn suit used in Arena ). We never actually see the Gorn in Memento Mori , except for their ships, which look like angry claws ripping their way through space. This is a wise move, because not showing the...
Post a Comment
Read more