M3GAN 2.0

If you read box office reports at all, you know that the misses seem to outnumber the hits these days. Budgets continue to soar and with them so do expectations, often to where even movies selling a bunch of tickets, like “the new Marvel” or the umpteenth Mission: Impossible, fail to turn a profit in the couple of months before they become a streaming service’s selling point.

In contrast to those spendy tentpoles, M3GAN was an unqualified commercial success. Released on the first full weekend of 2023, the film cost just $12 million and ended up grossing nearly $100 million domestically and close to $200 million worldwide. That success was enough for Universal and Blumhouse to quickly greenlight a sequel with triple the budget and a more competitive release date. M3GAN 2.0 (pronounced Megan 2.0, as tempting as it is to try otherwise) arrives today at more or less the height of the summer blockbuster season and invites more scrutiny because of that. Clearing the “not bad” bar in the wasteland of January is one thing. Having people come out to see you over superhero spectacle, live-action remakes of beloved animated films, and high-interest sequels is something else.

M3GAN 2.0 needs something to offset the lack of novelty and although director Gerard Johnstone and co-writer Akela Cooper return to the franchise with fondness, they don’t come up with anything to justify the two hours they ask of you here.

In the likely event that you’ve forgotten the specifics of the first film, M3GAN was a robotic doll given by its creator Gemma (Allison Williams) to her recently orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw). As you could easily predict from the viral promos, M3GAN became a killing and dancing machine.

Though seemingly deactivated at the end of the last film, M3GAN is back, this time embedded in the high-tech house/workplace where Gemma and Cady live. M3GAN persuades Gemma, who has become a somewhat influential authority on limiting children’s exposure to technology, to reactivate her inside a new body. That is apparently the least bad path for the protective guardian, who is now being questioned by authorities about AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), an even deadlier female android at large that supposedly makes use of M3GAN’s technology.

Like the more recent Chucky movies, M3GAN 2.0 knows it is silly stuff, more likely to entertain with ridiculousness than genuine thrills. And yet, despite its overly generous runtime, this sequel doesn’t have a whole lot of either. There are chuckles throughout, some supplied by Jemaine Clement as a once-paralyzed smarmy tech guru who can thank technology for his ability to walk. The biggest laugh at my screening came when the new, improved M3GAN tried to channel some human emotion via a Kate Bush song.

There’s enough self-awareness to Johnstone’s script and presentation to keep this passably entertaining and decidedly inoffensive. But there isn’t enough wit or originality to match the heights of the previous movie. It’s a mild, soon-forgotten diversion for those who prefer their genre fare with a hearty dose of camp value and PG-13 carnage.

While M3GAN 2.0‘s box office prospects seem modest, Universal and Blumhouse have already moved forward with a spin-off, titled SOULM8TE and scheduled to open in theaters (when else?) next January. Namesake producer Jason Blum and his colleague James Wan, who shared story credit with Cooper on the first M3GAN and takes a producing credit here, have cracked the code on how to turn profit from low-to-mid-budgeted fare. The consistent performance of their increasingly familiar genre label makes you wonder why other studios have moved away from low-risk, high-reward cinema.