M3GAN

 

M3GAN = C

Be it rather ironic that a film whose very topic deals with the consequences of unpreparedness, not thinking things through & moving forward despite plausible ramifications, when it itself suffers from the exact same problems. It's almost hypocritical in a way, as it is doubtful that this was intentional. A film's goal should be to be as perfect & flawless as possible. Yet M3GAN was every bit as flawed & foible as was Gemma in her design & implementation. 

The film suffered the same fate as our main character. A good central idea, that was put together too quickly & not thought out well enough before being launched.  The death of the dog made sense as it attacked Cady and posed a serious, immediate threat.  The death of the neighbor who could potentially cause problems made sense as well. Although the bully at the school was cliched, unnatural & so convenient to the plot that it about makes you vomit, even his death made sense. 

You know what didn't make sense though?  The death of David & the death of Kurt. I could see why M3gan wanted to eliminate Tess & Cole. That made sense. They were aware of the danger & of what she was capable of. If anything killing David & Kurt was detrimental to M3gan's plan. Neither of them were aware of the danger or what she had done. As far as they knew she was the answer to as David said, "Kicking Hasbro right in the ' ' ".    David & Kurt would have been the types to have wanted to have made more M3gans and to have consistently updated her.  Killing them not only didn't make sense, it killed the momentum of what was supposed to be a very intelligent self learning computer. 

I appreciated the usage of Bruce at the end of the film to aid Cady & Gemma's fight against M3gan, but again the fight in itself didn't make a whole lot of sense. If M3gan's core objective was to protect Cady at all costs, as the programming was said to have done, then no amount of self learning would have ever put itself ahead of its main objective. In other words M3gan wouldn't have put herself/itself ahead of the protection of Cady. Had it seen itself as a threat to Cady, it would have either stopped itself or even tried to destroy itself. It made no sense from an objective standpoint for M3gan to turn on Cady.  Not from the setup, the dialog or the structure of the story.  

I have to commend the film on the character arch of Gemma.  The shift of her starting off cold, callous & almost robotic in nature against the actual robot of M3gan seeming more empathetic & human was done quite well.  As the layers of M3gan were stripped away to reveal the inhuman bronze structure beneath, the layers of Gemma were added to reveal her humanity.  The film did well here. 

Yet overall, there was too much convenience to move the plot forward. There were too many character choices, especially from M3gan that didn't fit the narrative. The pieces didn't fit the board smoothly & were instead jammed into places where they didn't fit.   The suspense and mystique of it all is enough to keep you watching, as the action seems to make up for the obvious holes within the plot.  The good is there, but so is the bad. Hence the straight C, as fair and objective a grade as one can give it. 

Have to comment on how much the M3gan doll looked like the Olsen twins.  It was so similar it was almost freaky.  If only M3gan had said, "you got it dude" somewhere within the film. 

M3GAN  is in a nutshell THE TERMINATOR meets CHILD'S PLAY (2019) meets ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK'S: THE TALE OF THE CURIOUS CAMERA.