Your Favorite Sassy Killer Robot is Back in Action-Comedy Hybrid M3GAN 2.0 (2025)
Title: M3GAN 2.0
First Non-Festival Release: June 25, 2025 (Theatrical Release)
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Writer: Gerard Johnstone, Akela Cooper, James Wan
Runtime: 120 Minutes
Starring: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis
Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence in the past few years has shifted the conversation from what the future technology will have to offer us to how will it destroy us. With data centers drinking up entire town’s worth of water in hours, deepfake technology being developed to create false, misleading, or implicating narratives, stealing jobs from qualified humans, and connections to almost every product, company, and industry, you’d think the technology would work more than 70% of the time without hallucinating something.
Still shaken by the events from two years ago where killer android M3GAN (Amie Donald, Jenna Davis) attempted to kill her and her loved ones, tech genius Gemma (Allison Williams) has dedicated her life to stopping the spread of artificial intelligence. At odds with her adopted daughter Katie’s (Violet McGraw) dreams of going into computer science and skeptical with tech billionaire Alton Athari’s (Jemaine Clemont) offer to work together, Gemma’s life is complicated further when she is approached by the FBI with troubling news. Gemma’s work was hacked and a new android has been created: AMELIA. Once backed by the Pentagon, AMELIA goes rogue when she begins executing every person who played a role in making her. With Katie’s life on the line, Gemma must decide if bringing back her worst enemy is worth it to protect her.
Lacking the punch of the original, M3GAN 2.0 embraces the campier elements of its horror sci-fi premise while taking a distinctly more action route in storytelling.
The decision to change the tone, and in some elements, genre, of M3GAN 2.0 does color the story but not nearly as much as others make it out to be. Decidedly a sci-fi horror film in the first entry, the sequel diverges in a more action-comedy direction. While it is a disappointing choice for horror fans, M3GAN 2.0 still hits all the marks it needs to for the AI carnage to bare its teeth. The killer android is still as lethal as ever. Even if her targets have changed, her priorities have not. Still quite toothless whenever Cady is involved, M3GAN 2.0 sidesteps most criticisms by delivering plenty of brainless cybernetic thrills.
The AI conversation is expanded further in M3GAN 2.0 and the results are mixed. Still recovering from the trauma of M3GAN’s original reign of terror, Gemma has taken a complete turn regarding AI, and similar devices/concepts. Practically a philistine for the technology, she has devoted her life to promoting the ethical use of AI while quelling desires for expanding it from the rich, powerful, and smart but otherwise stupid men who demand she use her talents to enrich them rather than save the world. It’s in Gemma’s second guessing these values that M3GAN 2.0 makes its missteps. Upon her return back to the physical world, M3GAN makes the case for a benevolent “aw shucks” kind of AI sentiment that feels particularly bizarre throughout the film as it takes many efforts to remind the audience of all the ways M3GAN almost killed the crew in the first place. Gemma clearly has an identity crisis in dealing with her, and M3GAN 2.0 spends the rest of the film having her flip flop as an ally for M3GAN based on the level of utility or danger at any given minute. Couple that with M3GAN’s suspect change of heart and the sequel doesn’t do much work to justify its commentary’s place in the current moment in culture.
When data centers are boiling entire city’s worth of water in a day, chatbots are driving teenagers to suicide, and misinformation campaigns are marching the world closer to fascism, it feels odd to take any kind of pro-AI stance.
The characters and comedy are what make M3GAN 2.0 stand out even when the ridiculousness gets too much. Allison Williams works as the skeptical everywoman and lead, never letting the film get lost in the tech lingo. Violet McGraw does well as Cady, even if she doesn’t have as much screen time as the previous film. And of course, M3GAN would not work as a character if not for Amie Donald’s precise physicality or Jenna Davis’s acid-tongued line delivery. These women make the characters memorable and hilarious as they scrap and fight each other against the backdrop of the AI apocalypse.
Bombastic action set pieces replace the more restrained horror from the original. Packing plenty into the two-hour film, M3GAN 2.0 makes great effort to raise the stakes in nearly every way. Expanding the scope from one company’s efforts to revolutionize the toy industry to a government plot to take over the world, there is no shortage of intrigue. Secret underground layers, cunty cosplay fits, and swatting abound to drive the spectacle of the killer pre-teen android. This maximalist approach does end up smoothing over the departure in tone from the previous entry while still holding true to the campy heart of the original.
Crowd-pleasing action, horror, and comedy mix together to put some weight behind this campy tech thriller. Stuffed with so many ideas it doesn’t know what do with them all, M3GAN 2.0 still manages to make its two-hour runtime feel action-packed and important despite the overflow. The biggest obstacles M3GAN 2.0 faces is its genre shift and its uneven commentary about the dangers of AI, but if that’s no concern it’s easy to ignore. If this review doesn’t scare you get ready to hold onto your vaginas once you finally submit to the algorithm of M3GAN 2.0.
Overall Score? 7/10
