\n\tMore than half a century ago, \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey\u201d was the visionary cinematic manifesto of artificial intelligence, with HAL 9000 as the mopy-voiced avatar of the computer technology of the future. What wasn\u2019t so clear at the time is that \u201c2001\u201d would anticipate the theme of 100 artificial-intelligence thrillers (most of them haven\u2019t even been made yet, but just you wait). The theme being: AI is here, and it wants to kill you.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cM3GAN 2.0<\/a>\u201d inflates that theme into a heavy-duty, poker-faced preposterous, but mostly more straight-up than not \u201ccautionary\u201d sci-fi action thriller. The borderline-camp quality of \u201cM3GAN\u201d isn\u2019t completely gone, since the new film is structured as a duel between two androids who are photogenic enough to be fashion models. But this one plays it with less overt cheekiness.<\/p>\n \n\tThe title killer of \u201cM3GAN\u201d has been resurrected, but she\u2019s now an unironic heroine who is also more of a chatterbox than ever. And there\u2019s a new fembot terminator, named AMELIA (it stands for autonomous military engagement logistics and infiltration android \u2014 but why isn\u2019t there a 3 in her name, dammit?), who is introduced, in the opening sequence, as a weapons-grade U.S. military experiment gone rogue. AMELIA was sprung out of M3GAN\u2019s coding, so the two have a lot in common. But M3GAN, reconstituted after she was destroyed, still has vestiges of a sense of humor. AMELIA is all strictly-business paramilitary poutiness.<\/p>\n \n\tIf you leave aside the tangled web of comic-book movies, sequels \u2014 the old-fashioned kind, the kind that producers didn\u2019t necessarily plan to make \u2014 still tend to fall into one of two categories. There\u2019s the sequel that\u2019s out to duplicate the appeal of the original film. And then there\u2019s the kind that wants to seriously level up, in the spirit of \u201cTerminator 2: Judgment Day.\u201d The very title of \u201cM3GAN 2.0\u201d tells you it\u2019s of the latter variety. The irony being that \u201cM3GAN,\u201d<\/a> a sleeper hit in the early months of 2024, was just a cheeseball throwaway that landed.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cM3GAN 2.0\u201d simply isn\u2019t as much fun as the first film. Gerard Johnstone, who returns as director (now writing the screenplay as well), certainly knows what he\u2019s doing, but he allows much of what audiences dug about the original movie to fall by the wayside \u2014 its whole clever\/stupido slasher kitsch insanity. Gone is the hook of the title character as a demon-doll android who becomes an 8-year-old\u2019s surrogate assassin. M3GAN, in the first film, was a satirical extension of the devices we use to keep our kids from being bored, but she turned into a dancing robot pixie who knew how to use a nail gun: a fusion of HAL, a missing Olsen sister and Chucky.<\/p>\n