M3gan Movie Review: M3gan Is About How Scary Tween Girls Are

My favorite way to terrorize a former colleague and current friend is to ask her what will happen to her two daughters (ages 7 and 4 (ages, not names) when they finally become teenagers. That’s it.

“Are you afraid of that?” I texted her over the holidays, my first instinct after receiving her holiday card. In the photos, everyone is smiling and having a great time.

“1000 percent,” she replied.

As a former kid and 8th grader, her fears are justified. Tantrums, mood swings, and bad behavior all get bigger (and worse) when a child becomes a being with her five-foot intelligence. What makes everything even worse is that the children are also surrounded by other children, all of whom are testing new limits of their autonomy.

And at that age, I didn’t fear death or injury like I did when I got a hot glare from my three supernaturally cool best friends in Catholic elementary school (I didn’t name those girls I’m still afraid of them).

Their friendship was most likely based on the coincidence that they all hit puberty spurts at the same time. I sucked it up. For example, whether one of her teachers had a spectacle eye, or how each would be required on her 8th grade trip to Catalina Island. Sharing two showers in cabins (one for boys and one for girls) or flashing a “peace” sign during Mass was actually much cooler than a handshake.

Those girls told us real world things our parents never told us. And if our parents weren’t willing to tell us the grave truths these girls uncovered, my classmates and I wondered what our family was hiding from us. I started to have doubts.

Those girls were my M3gan.

on the surface, M3 gun is a horror film about a ferocious rogue AI, but it’s also a 1:30 camp meditation on how your best friend, a pretty white girl, can become one of the scariest things in American life. Olivia played by Sydney Sweeney in Season 1. white lotus Or the tween girl who gave the despicably cute name “cheugy” to the inevitable obsolescence of millennials.It’s Regina George or Heather Chandler, and any mention the tweens call vintage (or unintentionally mean) after explaining that there was once a movie mean girls another called heathers.

in the meantime M3 gun — A flashy little robot built to be the best friend of preteen Cady (Violet McGraw) — Murderous, sure, but the scariest thing about her might not be that she’s about to inflict mortal harm. You may have learned in A violent boy or a biting dog does not discipline itself. M3gan knows more about the world than the adults who created her would like. This is very scary.

M3 gun Dare to ask: what if little wonder Was it a bitch?

When toy designer Gemma (Allison Williams) created the M3gan, she was having a hard time parenting her orphaned niece Cady, so it was satisfying. In the film, the meals that Gemma prepares for Caddy are plain her toast, hot dogs, and a slice of veggie-topped pizza, all showing that Gemma doesn’t know how to feed her children. increase. Additionally, Gemma doesn’t quite understand how she plays with her Cady. Gemma wants her to learn how to operate her levers, switches, etc., she thinks. Caddy, on the other hand, finds her joy in rolling objects such as her ball. Gemma also doesn’t understand how to send her caddy to her school or teach her educational lessons to her caddy at her home. She accidentally tries to enroll Caddy in an outdoor-based school that appears to be for delinquents.

That’s why Gemma created an AI doll to protect Caddy, feed him, play with him, teach him about science indoors, flush his toilet, wash his hands, and give him pink eye. If you can remind them not to give or not, that’s great. A person who fails on multiple fronts may be good at something. Gemma is good at robotics and computers. So she creates a technological singularity, the most advanced AI humans have ever seen, inside a tiny white girl robot, M3gan. (M3gan, like Darth Vader, is played by two actors: Jenna voiced by Davis and embodied by Amy Donald with a heavy prosthetic leg.)

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For Gen X and some millennials, M3 gun Amazingly similar to Shaw little wonder, a sitcom about a robotic engineer who smuggles home a prototype named “Vicky” (voice input identifier).both clichés little wonder When M3 gun No matter how smart or advanced a robot is, it can never truly understand the wrinkles and curiosities of human family life.

of little wonder With Vicki (Tiffany Brissett) giving directions too literally, “dropping” dishes into the sink, and pouring coffee until it overflows, it’s played for laughs.of M3 gun Anything lost in translation ends up in a nightmare where your neighbor is killed in a power wash.

The problem with M3gan is that she commits murder. She kills quite a few people. But that’s not because she’s inherently evil. M3gan’s problem is that she knows the world works too well.

As such, she goes after Cady’s field school nemesis, Brandon (Jack Cassidy), and kills him. Brandon is a violent bully and possibly even a violent rapist in the future. On their encounter, his first instinct is to start undressing M3gan’s girlfriend, mount her, and slap her in the face— It’s all a disturbing overture to sexual assault before M3gan turns the tables. It will get worse and worse. Maybe M3gan read the headline.

For M3gan, Brandon is like the next-door dog who punches Cady in the arm (and kills her too). Brandon is never punished or reprimanded. He will probably be sent to another school to terrorize another girl, possibly one who doesn’t have M3gan’s counterattack tool. drove into the street.

After Brandon dies, Gemma and Caddy (while observing M3gan) discuss Brandon’s death. In an attempt to comfort Caddy, Gemma spouts the cliche, “He’s in a better place.” Once again, Gemma, who is not good at raising children, is also a terrible liar. There’s no better place to die than being run over by a car than at a comfortable, wealthy field school in the Pacific Northwest.

Later, when Caddy asks M3gan if what Gemma said is true, M3gan tells Caddy that Heaven wasn’t made for boys like Brandon. Unseen by Cady and Gemma, but visible to the audience and his M3gan, is his Brandon’s actions before being run over. Is M3gan wrong? No, she understands much more about the violence Brandon can do than Gemma or Caddy.

M3 gun It takes the idea of ​​a child who knows too much about the world, grafts it onto extreme premises, and stretches it to the point of absurdity. But the core of horror from which it begins isn’t as alien as it seems.

Parents are tasked with teaching their children how life works, but because they are adults who have lived a while, they know the cruelty the world can be. , becomes an impossible task of balancing how much to teach. Obviously, we can’t start by knowing how bad things really are. A growing body of research suggests that girls develop brain functions and brain connections faster than boys, but girls who don’t understand how brutal the world can be are optimistic about the optimistic world that adults offer them. It is frightening because it is a threat to

Gemma fears the murder M3gan can perform, but is unafraid that M3gan will physically harm Cady. Gemma is more scared of who M3gan is teaching her Cady.

Please name one of M3 gun sequel M3G4N

In the wake of M3 gun‘s $30 million opening weekend domestic box office (against the film’s reported $12 million budget), there are already whispers of a sequel in development. Director Gerald Johnstone and screenwriter Akela Cooper left the ending open.

Throughout the film, as M3gan gains sentience, she also begins hacking into other computer-controlled objects. This includes everything from Gemma’s smart office, to the cloud where her GPS data in M3gan is stored, to finally the electric sports her car that her M3gan hijacks. Her one of these objects is her Elsie in her Gemma, a virtual assistant like Siri or Alexa that controls Gemma’s home. In their big fight, M3gan apparently shut down the power to her Elsie and her Gemma homes.

After Gemma and Caddy defeat the M3gan and are rescued by the police, Elsie turns it on again. The film’s final shot zooms in on Buggy’s Elsie, showing M3gan’s consciousness persisting via a virtual assistant.

Another road for M3gan survival is already paved. In the second act of the film, Gemma’s boss’ assistant Kurt (Stefan Garnaultmonten) sneaks M3gan data into his computer. M3gan eventually kills Kurt, but before he dies, she tells him she knows how he hacked and got the files.

Another film gives Gemma a little more time to ponder over her culpability here, beyond her role as the creator of M3gan.

In his first pitch, Gemma said the M3gan allowed him to do what he wanted with his time. Every threat M3gan sees as a danger to her Cady is also a threat to Gemma and her ideal life as a full-time robotics engineer.

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Had Brandon survived, he would have kicked Caddy out of school and forced Gemma into Caddy’s homeschooling. This is something she never wants to do.Celia (Lori her Dungee), Gemma’s nosy neighbor who has a dog that bit Caddy, eventually tells the police about her M3gan and Gemma would have taken away her parenting robot. Gemma’s boss David (Ronnie Chen) and his assistant Kurt are trying to hijack Gemma’s creative vision. It’s unclear if she programmed these threats on purpose, but Gemma seems to be her AI expert.

M3gan’s slaughter not only protects Cady, but allows Gemma to become the woman who “has it all.” Why not continue the legacy of M3gan by fully indulging in a capitalist-themed girl-boss fantasy?

No matter how this rocks, I hope the sequel continues to play with the subversive idea of ​​the cute murder doll. It’s a camp engine. And the only thing scarier than the M3gan is apparently her M3gan in her teenage years.