M3Gan 2.0
Starring Alison Williams, Amie Donald and Ivanna Sakhno
M
4/5
M3Gan 2.0, the sequel to the 2022 sci-fi horror-comedy M3Gan, is the Terminator 2: Judgment Day of the M3Gan franchise, with a grander scale and more elaborate set-pieces, a killer robot turned good (and barred from killing) against a more advanced robot threat, and the driving theme of AI-induced nuclear armageddon.
Robotics expert Grace (Alison Williams) must reluctantly team up with Megan (Amie Donald), her android creation who tried to kill her, to take down a runaway military android.
M3Gan 2.0 is full of snarky wit and lucid commentary on the dangers of AI and runaway tech trends, with Jemaine Clement as an amusing Elon Musk parody.
Williams and Donald have a fun adversarial dynamic once again as two people who hate each other but work together for a common good, and Megan shows gratifying growth as a murderbot with a newfound conscience.
The action is exciting, creative and bloodier than the infamously bloodless first film.
The Macguffin of a vintage motherboard housing a godlike AI may have drawn inspiration from the Old AI SCP Foundation short story.
The only major weak link is Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), the rogue military android.
Sakhno plays Amelia with deadly grace, and I love the allusions to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in her costume and secret purpose, but a third-act twist robs her of any agency as the antagonist, which the plot must clumsily restore in the climax.
Plus, Grace’s role in Amelia’s creation is rather poorly-defined, and the way Megan can easily back-up her consciousness harms the tension.
Bigger and mostly better, though a little sloppier, than the first film, Megan 2.0 is playing in most Victorian cinemas.
