Film Review: M3GAN 2.0

Welcome back to the blog readers. Just like when I reviewed The Last of Us (2023-) earlier this year, this review is a special one for me because M3GAN (2023) was the first film I ever reviewed on this blog. When I was unsure of what I would think about the film as a whole, I wound up absolutely loving what was presented so you know this film was one of the films I had circled on my calendar. Would the wait pay off? Stick around to find out.

M3GAN 2.0 was written and directed by Gerard Johnstone from a story by him and Akela Cooper, based on characters created by Cooper and James Wan. The film stars Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Amie Donald and Jenna Davis as M3GAN, Ivanna Sakhno, Aristotle Athari, Timm Sharp, and Jermaine Clement. In the film, M3GAN is rebuilt to take on a humanoid military robot named AMELIA that is hellbent on an AI takeover.

As you may remember from my most anticipated films post, this was one of the films that I was really looking forward to because of how much I loved the first one. When I learned of the premise of this film, I was intrigued. Then the reviews started coming out and they were not as positive. Turns out Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) had to wait only two days to find a film that I thought was a bigger disappointment than this. This film is absolutely terrible. The genre-shift was unwarranted and makes the film not work, the performances feel phoned in, and M3GAN is not the same bitch she was last time out.

First, I need to talk about the performances in this film. Violet McGraw, who played Cady in the first film and reprises that role here (and has an older sister that stars in The Black Phone (2022) and its upcoming sequel Black Phone 2 (2025), gave an excellent child performance that really stuck with me. This time around, I did not feel the magic of her performance because it felt phoned in and bland, just like it did with everyone else, including Ivanna Sakhno.

Now I need to talk about the genre shift and how it completely sinks the film. The first film is a campy horror with elements of comedy that does not take itself too seriously, and it really pulled on what the audience was looking for. I fully expected them to do that again in this film (because if it isn't broke, why fix it?), but them making it an action comedy really did not work at all. And it did not work because the action was not innovative or engaging, and the comedy was unfunny (save for a few jokes). Tonally, it completely took me out of the film and felt like a campy ripoff of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

And the last point I want to make regarding this film has to be the fact that the story is absolutely terrible. The first film did kind of have a copy-paste story, but at least it did some things different to the point where that film was enjoyable. This time around, I found myself absolutely bored out of my mind with the story. There's a M3GAN clone and now she has to be a good guy to take out the bad guy? Where's the redemption arc if that's the case? Also it is way too convenient and leaves you betrayed by the end because M3GAN was written to be a total tool in this film. She was not as funny or as quippy as she was in the first film, but her singing to Gemma was the highlight (although not as great as the first film because we kind of expected it here).

In conclusion, M3GAN 2.0 is a lazy, piss-poor attempt at a follow-up that is 100.0% crappy and 0.0% watchable. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.