Review: 'M3gan 2.0' gives the killer robot the 'Terminator' treatment, but loses momentum repeating the campy nonsense of the first movie

In the action sequel “M3gan 2.0,” writer-director Gerard Johnstone tries to recapture all the bat-guano craziness of the first movie and augment it with some equally insane mythologizing — with the end result being more unhinged but less fun than the 2023 original.

Tech wizard Gemma (Allison Williams) and her niece/ward, Cady (Violet McGraw), are still dealing with the aftermath of what happened in the first movie — when Gemma’s high-tech robot plaything, the Model 3 Generative Android, dubbed M3gan, turned into a killing machine. 

Gemma’s coping mechanism is to become an activist and author, warning parents about the dangers of letting kids have too much screen time — a campaign aided by her new boyfriend, Christian (Aristotle Athari). Cady, when she’s not using her new aikido skills to subdue bullies, is studying robotics on the sly. What they’re not doing is talking to each other about what happened.

Before that sort of family bonding can get going, the Feds bust into their house. Specifically, Col. Sattler (Timm Sharp), a Defense Department contractor whose latest project, a military-grade killer robot named Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), went rogue on a test mission. (There’s a too-clever acronym for Amelia’s name, but I wasn’t interested enough to jot it down.) Sattler thinks Gemma’s in league with whoever is controlling Amelia — because the new robot’s programming is based on M3gan’s original design.

Then comes the least surprising aspect of the movie, which is that M3gan isn’t dead. Her software lives on in Gemma and Cady’s smart house technology, and it wants out to play. Gemma reluctantly agrees, with limitations, as they go “Ocean’s 11” in the lair of an arrogant tech billionaire (Jemaine Clement) to get to his system before Amelia does.

Can Gemma and her crew — her assistants, Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez), and Tess (Jen Van Epps), are along for the ride, for reasons that even the script admits don’t hold water — get ahead of Amelia? Can M3gan pull a “Terminator 2” and go from villain to savior? Can Johnstone slip in a “Metropolis” reference for Amelia without getting caught? 

The answers, it turns out, are fairly irrelevant, because Johnstone — who shares story credit with Akela Cooper, who wrote the first movie with James Wan, but otherwise seems to have taken over the franchise — is more interested in loading up on campy set pieces, mostly borrowing from and riffing on the first movie’s biggest hits.

It’s fun watching Williams getting her teeth into this role, as Gemma becomes a fierce warrior for Cady. But the highlight, now as before, is the collaboration that creates the devilish M3gan: Amie Donald making the moves and Jenna Davis providing that uniquely snarky voice. 

One watches “M3gan 2.0” fully confident that the producers won’t want to squander their chance at a “3.0.” There’s too much money on the table, and too many opportunities to satirize the A.I. monster that Hollywood  screenwriters fear and their bosses want to keep alive, not to keep the franchise going.  

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‘M3gan 2.0”

★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 27, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong violent content, bloody images, some strong language, sexual material, and brief drug references. Running time: 119 minutes.