“Everybody deserves a second chance.”
In some parts of the country there’s a saying. If you don’t like the weather wait a few minutes. It’ll change. That’s exactly how I felt by the time my two hours watching M3GAN 2.0 was through. It was entertaining, to be sure, but I felt like I had been through about five movies before it was finally over. It’s hard to imagine that is has been three years since we first met the robot/children’s toy gone berserk, but it really has. It was my hope that everyone was just waiting until they had a great new idea before they trotted the killer doll out again. Most of the characters and actors who survived their first encounter with M3GAN returned for the sequel, with at least one of them being somewhat of a surprise appearance, and just like that first movie, you really have to be careful who you trust, because killer dolls aren’t the only things that are dangerous here. The humans can actually be a lot worse, and that just might be the point, as M3GAN 2.0 gets a head start in the upcoming heated competition for the coming summer blockbuster season. We’re just weeks away from a DC and Marvel one-two combination, but will M3GAN 2.0 survive the punches? Not likely, I’m afraid.
“It’s nothing that can’t be fixed.”
Allison Williams returns as super smart toy creator Gemma. She’s tried to put the events of the first film behind her, and between talk show bits warning the world of the coming dangers of AI, she’s trying to care for her niece Cady, played by the returning and much more grown and mature Violet McGraw. Instead of building new robots, her new team is working on an exoskeleton that enhances the strength and endurance of a human “driver”. But that’s not where this film begins. Instead we discover that M3GAN’s blueprints were stolen, and one of the organizations that have those plans is the military, who have built Amelia, a new killer robot being given an exhibition mission to prove that she can be the super soldier of the future. I’m not really giving anything away here when I tell you that she goes rogue, and now she’s in the hands of some bad guys, and there’s only one chance to stop her … you guessed it. M3GAN.
So you figure this is the part where Gemma reluctantly either repairs the old robot or builds a brand new one. It turns out that M3GAN was never really gone and has been fulfilling her primary objective all along. That objective is to protect Cady, and she’s continuing to do so by creating a smart house that Gemma moves into for a really good deal. She’s smart enough to create a killer robot, but she never once thought to think something might be behind that “killer” deal. It takes Federal agents who suspect her of being part of the Amelia situation to point it out to her. Maybe not so smart after all.
So here is where the movie continues to change directions. It goes from jump-scare horror movie and then moves to a sci-fi flashback to T2, where the old monster killer machine is now the face of the machine who will protect them from the new and improved monster machine. Before long it suddenly becomes Home Alone, with bad guys getting hit by makeshift tracks, and the film is reaching more for laughs than scares. To be fair, it gets them. The audience that I saw the film with was more than willing to settle into the sudden comedy. M3GAN breaks out into song again, which got an equal number of laughs and groans. I was strongly in the groan zone. Eventually it becomes a bit of a superhero film as M3GAN goes up against the bad guys who are the real villains behind the scenes. There are moments here where the turncoat (I’m going to avoid giving that away here) reveals themselves and goes through the entire villainy plan with a laid back calm and creepy roll-with-it presentation. We find out there is a much bigger global plan here, and it’s kind of world domination time as the film pushes us into a Sean Connery era James Bond adventure with the huge lair and self-destruct sequences and master chips that must be destroyed from within. Of course, someone might have to remain behind and get killed to pull it off. By now I’ve seen enough films, and the big finish leaves me a little off-center and wondering as the credits roll if there’s still another movie going on here. The buzz is that there was a stinger that introduced us to the upcoming spin-off SOULM8ATE, coming soon. Our screening did not get the stinger, but you might.
It’s a ride, and if that’s all you’re looking for, you’re going to have fun for sure. I don’t think you’ll see the same box office magic, and honestly, I think the timing might hurt the film as well. It tries at times to look like a “big” film, but M3GAN actually worked better as a smaller-in-tone horror film. I think it will do OK enough that we’ll see M3GAN again. She’s really quite compelling when in the right situation, and I hope she can be again. I hope the franchise goes back to its roots, but here it tries too hard to be too many things. I know. because, “I see everything.”
