M3GAN 2.0 (dir. Gerard Johnstone)

by Jack Martin | Jun 27, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 120 mins

UK Distributor: Universal Pictures

UK Release Date: 27 June 2025

WHO’S IN M3GAN 2.0?

Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Ivanna Sakhno, Aristotle Athari, Timm Sharp, Jemaine Clement

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Gerard Johnstone (director, writer), Jason Blum, James Wan and Allison Williams (producers), Chris Bacon (composer), Toby Oliver (cinematographer), Jeff McEvoy (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

The devious AI doll M3GAN (Donald/Davis) is brought in to take down a more dangerous threat…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON M3GAN 2.0?

Though both films are otherwise very different from one another, M3GAN shares a lot of similarities with Kingsman: The Secret Service. Both arrived pretty early in their respective years, both became formidable hits with both critics and audiences (enough to where they even made it onto more than a few end-of-year lists), and both are fondly remembered not for their designated genres – in M3GAN’s case, a sci-fi horror exploring the dangers of commonplace AI – but for their rather lively camp factor, which they embraced wholeheartedly in ways that made them way more entertaining than they were ever expected to be.

However, they’re also both alike in the sense that their first sequels crashed and burned by attempting to one-up the campiness of the original, only to give in to the misguided belief that something is better just because it’s bigger and more outlandish than before. But while M3GAN 2.0 isn’t quite as much of a trainwreck as Kingsman: The Golden Circle, it still lacks the pure sadistic fun of watching a creepy AI android kill people while doing a bunch of TikTok dances, swapping that out for a less-satisfying rendition of the Terminator 2 template.

The film, from writer-director Gerard Johnstone (one of the many returning talent from the first movie), picks up with roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams) attempting to lobby for stronger regulations of AI, especially after surviving the murderous rampage of her creation M3GAN two years prior. However, Gemma and her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) come under scrutiny when it emerges that a new military-controlled AI android named AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) – which, as to be expected within the realm of sci-fi, stands for Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android – has gone rogue, having been built from the same blueprints as M3GAN herself. Speaking of, M3GAN (voiced by Jenna Davis, and portrayed by Amie Donald in physical form) agrees to help a distrustful Gemma to take AMELIA down before she can cause real damage, and once fitted with a brand-new body – one that’s taller, so as to explain Donald’s growth from two years ago – she sets out to save the day.

I’ll give Johnstone and his fellow filmmakers, including producers Jason Blum and James Wan, some credit for dropping the pretence of this being a horror, because even in the original this concept was always sillier than it ever was scary, so it makes sense for the sequel to drift further away from that. However, by going more of an action-comedy route, one that effectively recontextualises the title character as a superhero, it somehow makes it all feel so much more ridiculous, and not exactly the good kind. There are parts of this movie where it goes so over-the-top that it’s practically flying (which at one point M3GAN does, in a wingsuit and everything, like she’s suddenly in a Mission: Impossible movie), with a fluctuating tone which Johnstone struggles to balance out, embracing its silly nature one moment and then stopping to have a serious conversation about the real consequences of unregulated AI. The first movie at least felt more focused, delivering its Paul Verhoeven-esque satire with moments of wit and, indeed, camp thrown in at just the right moments, but here it’s much more all over the place, and therefore a lot messier to try and comprehend.

Johnstone’s script is also filled with repetitive scenes that are themselves packed with clunky exposition, padding the film out well beyond a more digestible ninety minutes (this one is pretty much exactly two hours long, and feels it in places). There isn’t enough liveliness in the action, the suspense, the visuals, nor even the acting to really make the film a fun watch, as the script doesn’t give many of its actors enough material to work with, rendering certain performances rather dull and flat, and it certainly doesn’t follow through on the few interesting ideas that are raised before reverting back to comic relief moments straight out of a Michael Bay Transformers movie. As a result, it can get pretty boring after a short while, to where you lose interest even as things gets a little crazier in its action and fight choreography (which, if nothing else, just make you want to rewatch the far better AI-themed Blumhouse thriller Upgrade instead).

That isn’t to say there’s nothing about it that works, for there are one or two fun set-pieces which play on the cult-like worship of AI in modern society (one of which is set at a celebratory AI convention, where of course M3GAN gets to dance), and a few characters and performances stand out among the otherwise bland pack, such as Jemaine Clement as an Elon Musk-riffing tech bro, and Ivanna Sakhno who is eerily good at replicating a robotic sensibility. But for the most part, M3GAN 2.0 gets lost in its own desire to out-do its own ridiculousness, to a point that it loses what made the original film so organically fun in the first place. It’s pretty much exactly what happened with that Kingsman sequel, which became so overblown that Sir Elton John roundhouse kicking a pack of robotic dogs no longer felt as awesome as it sounds on paper. It’s just silliness for the sake of it, something that M3GAN 2.0 unfortunately also falls victim to.

But on the plus side, if there does so happen to be a M3GAN 3.0, by that point the robots will have fully taken over, so there’ll be no need to worry about how much sillier it’ll undoubtedly be.

SO, TO SUM UP…

M3GAN 2.0 is a sci-fi sequel that halts and catches fire due to its overly-ridiculous nature that, by trying to outdo its much more organically campy predecessor, eliminates much of the enjoyment and overall entertainment.