M3GAN 2.0 - Mark Reviews Movies

M3GAN 2.0, Universal Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 27, 2025

The original M3GAN came out just around the time that generative AI was becoming a phenomenon, and M3GAN 2.0 is being released about two and a half years later, when that technology has become pretty much inescapable. The first film might have served as a good, if over-the-top, warning about artificial intelligence, while the sequel pretty much accepts that any of the previous entry's words of caution have gone unheeded.

It's a significant change in theme, and with that comes a major change in genre and tone from writer/director Gerard Johnstone, returning to the helming seat and taking over screenwriter duties. The first film was pure horror with plenty of provocative comedy that mirrored how warped its eponymous villain was. This one, meanwhile, is best described as a spy thriller, in which the android and its creators/targets from the previous installment have to perform assorted missions in order to stop a greater AI threat. As for the humor, it's still here occasionally, mostly as soon as the plot eventually gets in motion, but for the most part, Johnstone takes this new approach far more seriously.

What can't be denied, though, is that the filmmaker's aims are much more ambitious this time, beyond the drastic change in genre and the notable shift in tone. The movie gives us multiple versions of M3GAN (once again performed, in its reconstructed body, by actor Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis), from a disembodied AI sentience that can control any kind of technology, to a rough draft of a humanoid figure constructed by its own three mechanical hands, and to a cute, little plastic companion robot with a digital face that's mostly in a state of irritation. M3GAN desperately wants things to return to the way they once were for it, although the AI promises its inventor Gemma (Allison Williams) that the whole killing thing was nothing more than a phase.

There's a good amount of M3GAN here in its various forms, in other words, but it's difficult to say that the character is as scary, funny, or even intriguing this time. The larger scope of this narrative means it's grappling with bigger ideas and shows the potential for even more action, comedy, or whatever else Johnstone might have in store. Ultimately, though, those ideas feel counterintuitive to everything the previous film and a good amount of this one have established, while everything else about the plot stays in the realm of potential.

The setup is that, two years following M3GAN's murderous rampage and its apparent destruction, the AI has returned to warn Gemma, who's now a public advocate for restraint in tech usage, about that more significant threat. It's an android called AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), which uses M3GAN's design and programming but has been built by the military to be used as what's essentially an unstoppable secret agent. AMELIA's first mission goes terribly wrong when the android discovers the AI equivalent of free will, so now, the government suspects Gemma might be behind some nefarious plot to undermine its efforts.

M3GAN knows all of this, of course, and convinces Gemma that it is the only hope to stop AMELIA and save civilization from that AI's new goals. Helping out are Gemma's niece Cady (Violet McGraw), who still has a bit of a soft spot for her former android friend, and the surviving members of the inventor's team, Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps).

The simplicity of the plot of the original film meant that it could play with inherent goofiness of its premise and the dark humor of seeing what was basically a child's toy become a murderous machine. The complexity of the plot of this installment means that first act is mostly spent on exposition—reintroducing us to the old characters, bringing in some new ones, going through the elaborate steps of establishing both AMELIA and how the seemingly deactivated M3GAN can return for another go. There's little room for anything else, although Jemaine Clement makes an admirable effort as Alton Appleton, a tech billionaire who reflects the worst of our current tech-company wannabe-overlords but is, unlike them, funny in his blatant megalomania.

Matters do improve significantly once the setup is out of the way, M3GAN returns in those different forms, and Johnstone embraces both spy-movie conventions and a neon-soaked aesthetic. Some of the story's new tricks and more amusing developments include Gemma's plan to inhibit M3GAN's worse tendencies (meaning the android is incapable of killing and can't swear), an amusing scene at an AI conference where the android tries to fit in by pretending to be a human dancing like a robot (a move it deems "offensive"), and a climactic infiltration mission at a technology museum hiding an even more dangerous AI. That one was implanted into a helper robot during the 1980s, but it determined that humans got in way of its chores.

The success of the original film has apparently gone to the filmmakers' heads. While that means this is a larger and more extravagant movie, it also results in M3GAN 2.0 feeling ungainly in its plotting, contradictory in its ideas, and so far removed from the basics of its predecessor that it might as well not have any connection to that film. One admires that kind of ambition, to be sure, but in the end, it's simply too much.

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