Different, but still pretty good (Spoilers)
Since the events of the last film, Gemma Forrester (Allison Williams) has served time in prison after her toy creation M3GAN (Amie Donald, Jenna Davis) went on a killing spree. She somehow retained custody of her niece Cady (Violet McGraw), however, and has also become a proponent of AI regulation alongside her new boyfriend Christian (Aristotle Athari), whose name is pronounced “Chris-tee-AHN.” That tells you everything you need to know about him.
At the same time, AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), an android assassin, has been built from M3GAN’s designs. She not only looks more human but bears an even greater resemblance to Elizabeth Olsen. AMELIA goes rogue and starts killing off everyone involved in her creation. Gemma and Cady team up with a not-quite-terminated M3GAN to combat this new threat, building her a new body that’s taller because of Donald’s growth spurt since the last film and more combat-capable.
As you might have gathered from reading the premise, M3GAN 2.0 goes the Terminator 2: Judgment Day route by being more of an action movie. However, the horror elements haven’t been stripped away completely, which I appreciated. A particularly disturbing sequence is how AMELIA kills tech entrepreneur Alton Applegate (Jemaine Clement). There’s also a lot of campy comedy like the first film. A standout example of the latter is M3GAN singing to a disinterested Gemma.
Also like in the last film, the cast’s performances in this were really good. Before M3GAN sings for Gemma, there’s a surprisingly well-done dramatic scene where Gemma opens up about how she hates M3GAN so much because the events of the last film were her fault, with M3GAN then telling Gemma that she’s a better parent than she thinks she is. Sakhno was also a great new addition, being suitably menacing and charming.
More M3GAN, More Problems
The part where this sequel lost me a little is when it’s revealed that AMELIA never developed sentience and was being puppeteered by Christian, who runs a group of anti-AI terrorists. The foreshadowing that Christian’s evil isn’t exactly subtle. Like M3GAN commenting on Christian’s virtue signaling. Before the reveal, Gemma thought that M3GAN was the one controlling AMELIA, and I don’t see what would have been wrong with that plot twist.
There was also nothing wrong with AMELIA being the antagonist the whole way through. Towards the end, AMELIA becomes self-aware and turns against her masters for real. So, the entire Christian is evil subplot ends up being even more superfluous than it already was. The only thing it succeeded in doing was adding a half-hour to the runtime. Of course, the point could have been to prevent this movie from being too hard on technology.
Christian is similar to Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) from Black Panther. He makes several valid points but is still a villain due to his unnecessarily violent methods and blatant hypocrisy. After Gemma refuses to join him, Christian tries to brainwash her with a neural interface, which he even admits goes against his ideology. Like T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), Gemma adopts a more middle-ground approach at the end, focusing on parenting AI instead of preventing it.
During the end credits, a montage contains clips from this film and its predecessor. It gives the sequel this air of finality that I was not expecting. To be clear, I would be fine without more sequels. M3GAN and M3GAN 2.0 were both good, but another isn’t necessary. Spin-offs set within the same universe, like SOULM8TE, I’d be down for, however.
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