Movie Review: ‘M3GAN 2.0’ goes big, maybe too big, to ‘Mission: Impossible’-level existential crisis  

‘M3GAN 2.0’ trades horror-comedy for chaotic, high-octane action with global stakes and military AI warfare. While visually ambitious, the sequel loses the original’s charm and coherence in favour of blockbuster tropes and an overly complex plot

If you want to know how big an upgrade the ‘M3GAN’ sequel has on the original, look no further than the very first scene. ‘M3GAN’ was mostly set in a Seattle house, but “M3GAN 2.0” starts at the Turkish-Iranian border — with a murderous rampage in a secret military installation and the presence of Saudi intelligence, with US Defense Department officials covertly watching.

Two hours later, it’s not clear if this is really an upgrade. Most of the same team that gave us the refreshing horror-comedy original two years ago have not only gone super-big, but also changed the franchise’s genre, turning ‘M3GAN 2.0’ into an action movie with two AI robots, two villains, FBI units, wingsuits, neural implants, a “Mission: Impossible”-style vault heist, exosuits, a 250-mph street chase in a supercar, a power grid disaster, a countdown clock, the United Nations and the fate of the planet at stake.

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If the evil doll M3gan in the first movie was responsible for the deaths of four humans and one dog, this time the screen is littered with the corpses of shootings, decapitations, severed limbs and laser slayings.

What you won’t get is much of the vibe of the original, which fused horror, cultural commentary and humor. This time, that’s muted in favour of an overly ambitious, horribly convoluted plot that sometimes feels like the moviemakers just threw money at the sequel and tried to ape other franchises by going massive.

Director and screenwriter Gerard Johnstone turns Allison Williams — who plays M3gan’s creator, Gemma — into a high-profile author and advocate for government oversight of artificial intelligence as the sequel opens. Her niece Cady — the fabulous Violet McGraw — is now a budding computer programmer and rebellious.

Facing a global existential threat, Gemma is convinced to build a body for M3gan to go toe-to-toe with the military-grade AI killing machine known as Amelia.

Jemaine Clement from “Flight of the Conchords” has fun as an arrogant tech billionaire, while Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Epps return as Gemma’s tech teammates.