You’d think with the fervor surrounding the rise of a new sassy horror icon and a plethora of similar films to build from, “M3GAN 2.0” should be an all in, self aware camp fest. The “Terminator 2” formula clearly baked into narrative is easy to execute when you have a character like M3gan rearing to quip, dance, kick all kinds of ass and look fabulous doing all of it. Yet somehow, some way, this movie can’t even clear the lowest bar set by its predecessor and new action comedy focus. It’s inexplicably light on both, and even light on its main character who has the least amount of screen time across this sequel’s unnecessary 2 hour runtime. It commits the worst crime imaginable when it comes to a sequel like this: it’s boring.
That’s worse than being bad and not knowing it, worse than trying something different and not quite getting there, and worse than trying to rehash the original. This movie has no idea what it’s doing and it shows, each passing minute feeling like a troubled production with a new director and writer for each day of filming.
Frankly, it’s hard to say a lot about “M3GAN 2.0” because the film itself doesn’t have anything to say for itself at all. Rather than dialing up the camp and action and slay bay murder robot, this sequel ops to spend a majority of its time exposition dumping arcs for needless character additions and mind numbing debates about technology and AI use in the modern world. It’s all a bunch silly science mumbo jumbo that – even though the robots are at the center of the AI debate – have no business being in a dumb movie like this. It spends a majority of its time examining the uses and implications of AI, which would be fine if it had anything to do with the story at hand or even M3gan herself. Her absence is felt because its traded out for the worst sci-fi tendencies that have no business being in something this lowbrow. The film completely forgets to be fun, which is literally the one thing it should do best.
It has flashes of what could have been, which is mostly whenever M3gan is onscreen and roasting the meatsacks around her. There’s some very funny bits surrounding M3gan breaking out into song randomly and Steven Seagal puns, but that’s about as far as “M3GAN 2.0” is willing to go with them. They’re mere mentions instead of fully fleshed out bits, and it is constantly undercut by moving on to more AI jargon and subplots involving characters we just don’t care about. It never once embraces the camp and silliness that is desperately needed to make something like this work, and approaches the best parts at arms length and an occasional wink and a nod. It’s over-convoluted plotting and genre mishmash can’t replace the horror comedy roots, and despite the original writer/director Gerald Johnstone returning to helm this sequel it feels as if no one – cast and crew included – had any idea what made the first “M3GAN” so successful.
Everything and everyone in “M3GAN 2.0” is just shooting in the dark, and what should be an upgrade ends up being malware, a virus that corrupts your eyeballs and forces a hard reset of your mind. It’s bad version of “T2” and an even worse something borrowed “Upgrade” with a tinge of “Mission: Impossible” (yes, really) and once in a while a hint of “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” None of that is a compliment either, because no film should be a hodgepodge of all of those, let alone more than one at best. And the film only includes their weaknesses and completely misses all of the aforementioned films’ strengths, including the original “M3GAN” itself. This movie is dumb and not dumb fun, that last part crucial to making this sequel worth your time.
There’s really not a whole lot more to say about this major misfire. I wish so much that “M3GAN 2.0” was better. I went in with the lowest expectations and it didn’t even try to clear them. It actively works against itself at every turn, and while M3gan herself is still an icon worthy of her own franchise, her sequel that she’s barely in doesn’t do her any favors. This is the rare case where the trailer understood the assignment more than the film.
M3gan deserves better than “M3GAN 2.0,” and so do we. I’m all down to see more of the slay queen murder bot, but if this is the package she’s delivered in then I’m inclined to return to sender. And if you absolutely HAVE to do this again, for the love god make “M3GAN 3.0” R rated.
Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
“M3GAN 2.0” is now playing in theaters. You can watch the trailer below:
