Review: ‘M3GAN 2.0,’ starring Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno and Jemaine Clement

June 25, 2025

by Carla Hay

“M3GAN 2.0”

Directed by Gerard Johnstone

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in San Francisco, the action comedy film “M3GAN 2.0” (a sequel to 2023’s “M3GAN”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A roboticist/artificial intelligence expert and her 12-year-old niece rebuild an A.I.-operated doll to fight a nefarious A.I.-operated robot that is a rogue mercenary serial killer.

Culture Audience: “M3GAN 2.0” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the vastly superior “M3GAN,” but most viewers will be very disappointed at how drastically different these two movies are in genre and quality.

“M3GAN 2.0” should be subtitled “M3GAN’s Mishandled Identity Crisis.” In this messy and convoluted sequel, the titular robot doll has changed from being a campy horror villain to an action comedy hero. The villain is an uninteresting adult M3gan look-alike. M3gan (whose name is pronounced “Megan”) doesn’t appear as a dress-wearing, ass-kicking doll until halfway through the movie. Those are some of the major things wrong with this occasionally amusing but ultimately very disappointing sequel.

Although it’s obvious that the “M3GAN 2.0” filmmakers didn’t want to copy too much from 2023’s “M3GAN,” the results are unnecessary and baffling retoolings that have turned this sequel into an overstuffed caper involving spies and terrorists in the corporate technology industry. “M3GAN 2.0” was written and directed by Gerard Johnstone, who directed “M3GAN.” Akela Cooper wrote “M3GAN,” which was a very entertaining and hilarious movie about a robot doll named M3gan (an acronym for Model 3 Generative Android) that goes to deadly extremes to protect the girl who owns her.

Cooper was originally announced as a screenwriter for “M3GAN 2.0.” But somewhere along the way, Johnstone got the sole screenwriting credit for “M3GAN 2.0,” and Cooper is credited only with being one of the people who came up with the movie’s story concept. Therefore, it seems like Johnstone should get most of the blame for the final version of “M3GAN 2.0,” which is a misguided extreme makeover of the “M3GAN” franchise.

Is it necessary to see “M3GAN” before seeing “M3GAN 2.0”? Yes. “M3GAN 2.0” has so many inside jokes and oblique references to “M3GAN,” viewers won’t fully understand what’s going on in “M3GAN 2.0” without seeing “M3GAN” first. It’s also necessary to see “M3GAN” first to know how far the franchise has fallen in creative quality with “M3GAN 2.0.”

In “M3GAN” (which takes place in San Francisco), the titular doll was created by a toy company’s roboticist named Gemma Forrester (played by Allison Williams) so the doll could be a companion for Gemma’s lonely 8-year-old orphaned niece Cady (played by Violet McGraw), whose parents were killed in a car accident. Gemma is now Cady’s legal guardian. With good intentions, Gemma programmed M3gan (played by Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis, who have the same roles in “M3GAN 2.0”) to be protective of Cady. However, M3gan becomes a serial killer of anyone who causes even the slightest of harm (such as being rude) to Cady.

“M3GAN 2.0” begins near the Iran-Pakistan border, by showing a life-sized female robot named Amelia (played by Ivanna Sakhno) killing a scientist named Naveen Parvathi (played by Mayen Mehta) and stealing a neurotoxin chemical from the scientist. Amelia had been programmed to steal the neurotoxin but not kill anyone to get it. It’s later explained that Amelia’s name is an acronym for Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android.

Amelia is a robot that was secretly created by the U.S. government with the same artificial intelligence (A.I.) that was implemented to create M3gan. And just like M3gan, Amelia has gone rogue and turned into a killing machine. It’s soon revealed that Amelia wants to kill every person who had anything to do with creating her. Gemma is one of Amelia’s targets. And, by extension, Cady is a target of Amelia too.

In “M3GAN 2.0,” Gemma still lives in San Francisco with Cady, who is now 12 years old. (“M3GAN 2.0” was actually filmed in New Zealand.) Cady is still a loner at school, but now Cady knows aikido, so she can defend herself against bullies. The movie has a short scene where Cady puts her aikido skills to use against a “mean girl” named Sapphire (played by Zara Nausbaum), who harasses Cady in a school hallway. In fact, Cady is seen spending so little time with kids her own age in “M3GAN 2.0,” she might as well be homeschooled.

Part of the charm of “M3GAN” was seeing how Cady emotionally bonded with M3gan. Because Cady is now 12 years old and presumably too old to play with dolls, you won’t see any of that type close “friendship” in “M3GAN 2.0.” Instead, “M3GAN 2.0” makes Cady a side character and puts the prickly and unlikable Gemma front and center as the main protagonist. It’s another bad decision on display in this substandard sequel. Cady (who was a central character in “M3GAN”) looks lost in M3GAN 2.0,” which makes Cady look like an out-of-place kid among the adults who make all the important decisions.

Gemma is ambitious and wants to present herself as a do-gooder because she feels guilty about all the mayhem that M3GAN caused. Gemma now works for the Center for Safe Technology, a non-profit foundation. The foundation’s purpose is to educate about the danger of irresponsibly applied A.I. and to advocate for A.I. to be used responsibly.

At the same time, Gemma also owns and operates a financially struggling scientific lab based out of her home. The lab is trying to get seed money for an invention called an exosuit. People who wear the exosuit can have superpowers that are generated by A.I., so that people can do superhuman tasks and won’t be replaced by robots. It’s at this point in “M3GAN 2.0” where you start to see that “M3GAN 2.0” isn’t going to be a horror movie at all but instead will be a weak imitation of a comedic superhero movie.

Two of Gemma’s lab employees are people she used to work with at the toy company where she worked in “M3GAN”: Tess (played by Jen Van Epps) is quick-thinking and logical, while Cole (played by Brian Jordan Alvarez) is awkward and insecure. At the Center for Safe Technology, Gemma works closely with a smooth-talking former cybersecurity executive named Christian Bradley (played by Aristotle Athari), who handles most of the public relations for the Center for Safe Technology. Christian is romantically attracted to Gemma, but the feeling isn’t mutual.

Shortly after Gemma and her colleagues find out that the lab’s computer system has been hacked, they get a business offer from a sleazy billionaire named Alton Appleton (played by Jemaine Clement), the owner of a technology company called Altwave. Alton wants to own the rights to the exosuit, but Gemma doesn’t want to sell the rights to him. She also refuses Alton’s offer to use an Altwave neurochip that Alton says is needed to improve the exosuit. Gemma tells Alton: “We’re not going to be part of a company that turns people into cyborgs.”

Alton brags that he has multiple Ph.D.s, but he acts like an ignorant buffoon. Clement’s comedic talents aren’t put to very good use because the screenplay is so lazy in making Alton such a generic cliché of a tech billionaire who hides his dorkiness behind a playboy persona. Meanwhile, the U.S. federal government has passed a bi-partisan bill that will allow more freedom for companies to use A.I. for use in human-like robots. Gemma believes this bill will leave room for more abuse of power.

What does all of this have to do with M3gan, the title character of this movie franchise? M3gan, as a computer program, still exists but she needs a physical body. M3gan reappears in Gemma’s life, and Gemma puts M3gan in the body of a green toy robot, which M3gan accurately describes as looking like a Teletubbie. Gemma doesn’t want Cady to know that M3gan has come back, so Gemma gives the name Moxie to the Teletubbie-looking robot body that M3gan has.

For the first half of the movie, M3gan is stuck in this Teletubbie body instead of looking like the iconic doll that she’s supposed to be. M3gan (as Moxie) does a lot of whining about being stuck in this Teletubbie body. There’s some time-wasting nonsense about Gemma trying to keep it a secret from Cady that M3gan has returned. Cady eventually finds out the truth, of course.

The plot gets even more complicated when Gemma is suspected of being the mastermind of Amelia’s deadly rampage. The U.S. government puts Gemma under investigation for treason and illegal arms trafficking. Gemma is interrogated and stalked by Tim Stattler (played by Timm Sharp), a U.S. Army colonel who tells Gemma that he has a warrant to put surveillance on her computer devices. Col. Stattler says he works in the Army’s “defensive innovation” division.

Amelia is on the loose and uses various disguises and aliases, acts like a femme fatale spy who tracks down Alton. When Gemma finds out about Amelia, M3gan convinces Gemma and her team to re-assemble M3gan to be look like the doll she was meant to be, except that M3GAN wants to taller, stronger and faster than she used to be in this doll body. And you can bet that the exosuit invention will be a part of these hijinks.

None of the above is spoiler information because it’s all revealed in the “M3GAN 2.0” trailers. Willliams is one of the producers of “M3GAN 2.0,” which is probably one of the reasons why Gemma gets much more screen time than Cady. Horror master James Wan (one of the creators of in the “Saw,” “Insidious” and “The Conjuring” franchises) is a producer of “M3GAN” and “M3GAN 2.0,” but it was major blunder to let Johnstone take over the screenwriting for “M3GAN 2.0.”

One of the problems with the Amelia character is that she looks too similar to M3gan: Amelia and M3gan have got the same pretty porcelain doll face, slender build and vacant stare. Unlike the lively M3gan, Amelia has a lifeless and boring personality. A better movie would’ve made Amelia devilishly snarky, with just as many quippy and sassy jokes as M3gan. It’s no fun to watch M3gan battle against a villain who might be a formidable physical opponent but who doesn’t snap back with cutting lines of dialogue.

“M3GAN 2.0” has some jokes and comedic situations that can generate some laughs. But much of the comedy is crude commentary about female anatomy. During one part of the part when M3gan says, “Hold on to your vaginas,” it might sound funny, but there’s nothing really clever or imaginative this type of joke. The serviceable acting performances in “M3GAN 2.0” are stifled by a bloated screenplay that tries to cram in too many ideas, most of which don’t work well when compared to the first “M3GAN” movie.

The action scenes in “M3GAN 2.0” are adequate, but horror fans will be severely let down that there is nothing scary about “M3GAN 2.0.” This movie’s marketing is very misleading because the truth is that it takes too long in “M3GAN 2.0” for M3gan to appear as a doll. Worst of all, “M3GAN 2.0” has lost much of the charisma and suspense of “M3GAN.” The characters have less-appealing personalities that more closely resemble the type of soulless artificial intelligence that is hated by the “heroes” in the movie.

Universal Pictures will release “M3GAN 2.0” in U.S. cinemas on June 27, 2025.