‘M3GAN 2.0’ review: The killer doll meets her match in self-aware Universal sequel

Dir/scr: Gerard Johnstone. US. 2025. 119mins

Two years on from the occasions of megahit M3GAN, robotics engineer Gemma (Allison Williams) has moved on from designing homicidal dolls to develop into an advocate for accountable expertise. However when it emerges her AI programme has been used to create the last word weapon – which has, after all, gone rogue – Gemma and niece Cady (Violet McGraw) are drawn into one other spherical of girl vs machine. Returning director Gerard Johnstone doesn’t really feel the necessity to rewrite the code, delivering a tried-and-tested mixture of motion, results and comedy. But the entire thing now feels overly self-aware, leading to a lumbering actioner that lacks the novelty worth of its predecessor.

Lacks the novelty worth of its predecessor

M3GAN was all the time going to be a tricky act to observe, making a shock $180m (towards a reported $12m finances) on the international field workplace in 2023 earlier than having fun with a powerful life on streaming and spawning one million memes. There’s actually a wholesome built-in viewers for M3GAN 2.0, which ought to assist the movie to sturdy returns because it rolls out globally from June 25, regardless of competitors from summer time tentpoles together with F1, which opens in the identical week, and Jurassic World: Rebirth, which bows internationally from July 2.

A brisk newsreel montage remembers the occasions of the primary movie, which resulted in M3GAN – the life-size artificially clever doll constructed by Gemma as a companion for the orphaned Cady – killing a number of people earlier than being destroyed. Gemma has now turned her again on AI, changing into a campaigner for expertise getting used for the higher good. Right here, Johnstone – who additionally takes over screenwriting duties from the unique’s Akela Cooper and James Wan – attracts on present considerations in regards to the evolution of synthetic intelligence, lacklustre authorities laws and the detrimental results of expertise on kids.

The movie doesn’t linger too lengthy in such existential territory earlier than rebooting each M3GAN – who has been rebuilding herself within the background and initially makes herself felt by way of the devices in Gemma’s coolly impersonal good house – and a well-known plot involving unprepared people going up towards ‘malfunctioning’ robots. This time, nevertheless, the risk has been upgraded, within the type of AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), a military-grade, indestructible soldier constructed utilizing Gemma’s unique code. AMELIA is so superior that she is totally indistinguishable from a human – apart from her skill to knock off a person’s head with one punch. That’s a powerful ability in a controllable asset, much less so in a machine that has overridden its human controls and is intent on world domination.

A part of the unique movie’s enjoyable was watching M3GAN (performed by Amie Donald, enhanced with CGI and voiced by Jenna Davis) evolve from creepy plaything to murderbot, subverting her code and defying human expectation to observe her directive to guard Cady to its absolute restrict. Her uncanny-valley nature was additionally entertaining; her robotic actions and speech at odds together with her cosy home setting. As M3GAN persuades Gemma to rebuild her – she is, she asserts, their finest hope of taking down AMELIA – the movie’s design group, headed by animatronics lead Mark Setrakian, retains her synthetic aesthetic, albeit making her barely taller, updating her palms and eyes and giving her a full wardrobe of costumes.

This each appeases M3GAN’s legion of followers and places her at odds with slick humanoid AMELIA (performed by each Sakhno and a life-size animatronic model). The very fact there’s solely two years between these two variations of the identical synthetic intelligence is a chilling acknowledgement of the actual fact AI is evolving continuously, and is making a everlasting new actuality that people must handle responsibly and, in the end, be taught to dwell with.

As such, the movie’s main dramatic hook is whether or not or not Gemma and fellow engineers Cole and Tess (Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Epps, each coming back from the primary movie) can be taught to belief M3GAN to do the proper factor: assist them and save humanity. It additionally feeds into the overwhelming guilt and accountability Gemma feels as each creator and dad or mum. Williams (who additionally produces right here) manages to seek out moments of  emotional vulnerability amid the mayhem; she questions her motivations within the lab and at house, and wonders if she has set one of the best instance for both Cady or M3GAN. Elsewhere, Williams showcases some actual action-hero prowess, significantly in a memorable sequence the place she dons an augmented exterior skeleton swimsuit.

Certainly, there’s loads of high-octane stuntwork all through, along with some spectacular results, quick automobiles, espionage, a dastardly tech-villain and an AI that began life in a Eighties photocopier however is now so highly effective that it resembles “a god”. That could be a lot to compute and, as M3GAN 2.0 morphs right into a daring, brash actioner, it begins to lose its sense of self. Any nuanced concepts surrounding AI and the march of expertise are overwhelmed by a mélange of clunky dialogue – “If you happen to put an AI inside a human mind, it’s not going to experience shotgun!” – and bombastic showdowns that would have been lifted from one million different movies. In the end, it performs as if ChatGPT have been requested to jot down a surefire, mass-market summer time hit: by-the-book, fulfilling and immediately forgettable.