Movies…with a little bit of obscure culture and sports mixed in
“A robotics engineer at a toy company builds a life-like doll that begins to take on a life of its own.” Director: Gerard JohnstoneWriters: Akela Cooper, James WanStaring: Allison Williams, […]
“A robotics engineer at a toy company builds a life-like doll that begins to take on a life of its own.”
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Writers: Akela Cooper, James Wan
Staring: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis
Release Date: January 6, 2023
IMDB
M3gan (2023) was the cultural peak for a short amount of time after its release in early 2023. There was a buzz around it before it was released to the public, and after the killer robot began showing off its dance moves, the world became a sunder with the malevolent robot.
Personally, I don’t get all of the praise heaped up on M3gan. I get parts of it. But the massive Tik Tok trends, cosplay dedications and meme-ability of the movie leaves me a tad baffled as to what the majority of society saw.
M3gan as a movie has some great moments. The visual of M3gan rising from the shadows just before killing Celia (Lori Dungey) gave me a good chuckle. The still shot of M3gan in the woods just before doing into the spider call was effective.
What the majority of the viewing body loves about M3gan is its over-the-top campiness. Everything about story and character is tuned up to 11, resulting in many of the characters becoming overzealous as well. Cady, the young girl, I wanted to throw her off a building at times. Is that insensitive? Maybe. She did loose her parents and that freaking sucks. But Cady sometimes deserves to be locked up in the longest timeout ever. No phone, no technology, no nothing.
Now if we are are to put our therapy hats on, it is a dependence on technology and on M3gan that makes Cady go insane. It is a rather obvious, punch me in the face, message from screenwriters Akela Cooper and James Wan that too much technology is dangerous and a reliance on it could be catastrophic. That is beaten into the script right form the jump. Right from the get-go you see a kid with no social awareness regarding her technology etiquette.
So then why does technology play such a huge part in the ending of the movie and “defeat” of M3gan. It is to the surprise of no one that Gemma’s original robot is a major part in the grand finale. Sure, the final blow is delivered with a screwdriver, a manual tool. But the only way Cady could deliver the final blow was by using Gemma’s robotic prototype, Bruce. Wouldn’t a more prudent finale had involved Cady and Gemma finding away without any technology?
I know I am not-picking right now, but I was set off by some comments on YouTube where people said they got goosebumps when it was mentioned there was another member of the family, and his name is Bruce. Maybe it spawns from jealousy. I just had the opposite reaction. I was rolling my hand asking the finale to get on with the note you knew it was going to hit. I wanted to see how the story would flip the script on the expected…but they just never did.
Director and writer Gerard Johnstone is new on the scene, and M3gan is only his second motion picture. He has been at the helm of different TV shows, and made the well received horror comedy Housebound in 2014. Johnstone does have a knack for the absurdist horror genre. M3gan is 100% absurd, and Johnstone does a great job combining the what the fuck moments with the classic horror moments. The starring through the windows and the creepy head turns are all big gasps for air between the eccentric dance moves and glitchy voice changes.
While I think that Akela Cooper and James Wan’s script doesn’t keep its zaniness momentum all the way to its conclusion, Johnstone does have great touch for putting on the extra pizzazz. If M3gan was a clean cheese pizza, Johnstone does a great job of making a fantastic meat lovers pie with bacon, sausage and pepperoni. Now, sticking with the pizza analogy, M3gan is great for about three slices, but then I you get a bit full on it. It is great for short bits, but you aren’t going back and reaching in for the cold slices on a whim.
STANKO RATING: B
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