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With M3GAN 2.0, the 2022 sci-fi horror franchise M3GAN is dealing with the aftermath. At least the symptoms are obvious: inflammation and swelling. In the first film, Gemma (Allison Williams), a roboticist, takes in her orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw) and tests her new creation, an artificially intelligent doll, on her. Cady becomes attached to the sympathetic doll, designed to protect the child, and carries out her task with mechanical precision, destroying anyone who shows aggression and doing so with a sardonic pride in her absolute power. But at its core, M3GAN (like the Gerard Johnston-directed sequel) is a family drama, exploring Gemma’s difficulties raising children and Cady’s need for companionship, as well as the robot’s quick perception of human cruelty. The film's shortcomings are painful because its premise is fruitful.
“M3GAN 2.0” announces its genre shift from the start, starting with the opening credits, which take place near the Turkish-Iranian border. Here, an unidentified militia of all-male civilians captures and shoots a female photographer posing as a tourist at point-blank range. Don’t worry: she’s not human, but M3ganical in body and soul, and she rises to fight her way through this murderous ordeal, mercilessly dispatching her captors and a person of interest to the U.S. government. At a secret Defense Department conference in Palo Alto, her identity is revealed: her name is Amelia (yes, that’s right, in all caps, since the name is an acronym in which the M stands for “military”), and one of her handlers, speaking into a microphone, absurdly accuses her of disobeying orders.
Amelia’s (Ivanna Sakhno) highly specialized programming has made her as ruthlessly amoral a killing machine as M3GAN was in the first film; and while Gemma now advocates for strict international oversight of the seemingly limitless capabilities of artificial intelligence, she finds herself under official suspicion of being the brains behind this escaped robot. To clear her name and save the world, she must destroy Amelia. In one of the many vague and superficial plot points on which M3GAN 2.0 depends, it is revealed that the monster from the first film, M3GAN, whom Gemma apparently eliminated, has survived, and Gemma enlists her to fight Amelia.
As the plot’s geopolitical scope expands, so too does its cast of characters. Along with the return of Cady and Gemma’s scientific colleagues Tess (Jen Van Epps) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez), there’s top government agent Tim Sattler (Timm Sharp), who keeps coming back for more punishment; Christian Bradley (Aristotle Atari), Gemma’s partner in activism whose name, emphatically pronounced “Christian,” and whose thirst for attention hints at a darker side; and another AI robot, a miniature action figure named (wait for it!) Maxie. And the best performance here is scientist Elton Appleton, a wizard of neural implant technology, played by Jemaine Clement. He gives every trivial line he says an ironic, unexpected twist, and despite his all-too-brief appearance on screen, he unduly dominates the film, as his device for silently and unnoticeably communicating through thought alone plays an outsized role in the story.
In other words, the cast is expanded to accommodate characters in plot twists, which in turn are expanded to show off the budget onscreen through massive action sequences. There’s a frantic car chase that reaches Formula One speeds, a huge nightclub-style dance party where M3GAN (again played by Amy Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis) shows off her skills, and a riotous battle at a crowded artificial intelligence convention. The set pieces include secret tunnels and hidden vaults, a hidden underground lab, and even a so-called vault within a vault that’s part of a massive research facility disguised as an innocuous low-tech facility. (Best of all – yes, featuring Clement again – are Elton's finger snaps controlling the high-tech kinetic decor of his wealthy bachelor pad in the style of Fuck Love.) And Gemma and her cohorts are forced to hastily develop new technologically advanced gadgets and repurpose objects on the fly to combat enemies amid the traps and dangers of these complex settings.
The bombastic bloat of “M3GAN 2.0” was reminiscent of another failed and over-hyped sic
Sourse: newyorker.com
