M3GAN 2.0
Year: 2025
Rating: PG-13
Length: 120 minutes / 2.00 hours
Plenty of horror movies have shifted into different genres for their sequel. Some like Aliens (1986) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) moved into more action-oriented directions. In fact, Terminator 2 had such an amazing twist with making the first movie’s antagonist into a protagonist that we still see its influence today in the sequel to the horror movie M3GAN (2023). By lessening some of the horror elements and leaning into more of the goofy comedy, M3GAN 2.0 (2025) was more fun than the original, but not terribly unique for an action film.
As with most technologies, it wasn’t long before the military sought to capitalize on transforming an AI companion android into a deadly assassin. Abandoning the Child’s Play (1988) feel of the original M3GAN film, we find the snarky main character now aligned with the humans to take down this theft of their intellectual property. There are plenty of amusing bits as M3GAN is trapped in the body of a toy—for obvious reasons—but this movie still leaned on the bits of dancing choreography that helped make the first movie successful enough to warrant this sequel.
With the current real-world narrative around Artificial Intelligence being what it is, M3GAN 2.0 was a bit disappointing in that it didn’t seem to have anything new to say. Even the Robocop (2014) reboot explored the concept of human autonomy and how many of our decisions are guided by algorithms (for good or bad). That the ending of this movie didn’t emphasize that AI was trying to kill everyone, not once but TWICE, isn’t the warm and fuzzy conclusion that should come from a franchise with horror roots like this.
A genre shift that made M3GAN a different kind of mediocre, I give M3GAN 2.0 3.0 stars out of 5.
