“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 here, 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 has 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 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 villainous 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 waiting, as the credits roll, to see 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.
Video
M3GAN 2.0 is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.39:1. The ultra-high-definition 2160p image is arrived at by an HEVC codec with an average bitrate of 65 mbps. The ultra-high-definition gets most of its bump from some of the bright, “techy” colors that dominate much of the film’s action. There’s a lot of neon and LED out there with colorful sparks, and all of that takes full advantage of the HDR uptick here. Black levels are nice and sharp if not necessarily inky. Contrast can get lost in all of those sparks and flashing lights, but compare it to the Blu-ray and you’ll see it could have been much worse, so you are getting a bump here. The movie was actually shot in 4.6K, and the digital intermediate was done in 4K, so this is not an upconvert here. This is the real deal. It’s glossy and at times atmospheric, using clever lighting elements. The f/x blend well, and it’s a rather nice image presentation. Is it a show-off piece? No. But it works nicely.
Audio
The Dolby Atmos audio presentation defaults to 7.1. The surround here is all over the place. You’ve got yourself surrounded by sound. I guess that’s why they call it surround sound. Everything from subtle music cues and even dialog wraps you up in the experience. There is some respectable sub stuff here, and it adds a bit to everything including dialog, which by the way is clear all around. There’s a lot of electric sparks and shooting and explosions to keep you immersed throughout.
Special Features
The extras are found one on each disc.
Total Upgrade – Making M3Gan 2.0: (11:18) For such a short feature, they blitz through pretty much all of the production beats here. We get a really good look at the huge sets and the production design.
Droid DNA: (7:39) This is the fun stuff. You get a behind-the-scenes look at the animatronics, puppets, and other tools to bring both M3GAN and AMELIA to life. It’s actually really cool.
The Art Of Slaying: (5:06) Here we get a look at the stunts and action choreography.
Scene Break Down – Embrace AI Convention: The big tech gather in the last act of the film is big in a lot of ways, and you get a look at how it was designed, built, and all wired up.
Final Thoughts:
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.”
