M3GAN fever took the movie world by storm in 2023, becoming that rare horror film to turn a profit during Hollywood’s notoriously dry January season. With its disturbing robo-doll villain and unapologetically campy script, M3GAN proved to be a lean, mean, killing machine—with dance moves to spare. So the pivot to a June release for M3GAN 2.0 signals Blumhouse Productions’ clear desire to franchise the IP, even if M3GAN’s return lacks the spontaneity of her previous model.

Somehow, M3GAN 2.0 pulls a Terminator 2—not only pitting one killer robot against another but also rewriting its entire genre code. Gone is the horror, replaced by an action–sci-fi hybrid that trades scares for choreographed fights and a semi-heroic redemptive arc. The results are far from ineffective, buoyed by a cast—and a doll—fully embracing the zaniness of their mission. Still, the sequel’s wild ambition makes the story feel like M3GAN in name only at times.

Given the first film’s bloody aftermath, you’d expect major legal fallout for creating a killer AI intended for mass production. But by now, M3GAN’s creator, Gemma (Allison Williams), knows the robotic genie isn’t going back in the bottle. She’s now a fierce advocate for AI regulation, juggling Congressional testimony, an AI awareness foundation she co-runs with her new boyfriend, and more ethical tech products developed with former lab partners Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps). Meanwhile, domestic problems still plague Gemma’s life: Her now-preteen niece Cady (Violet McGraw) is diving into computer science and aikido, prompting Gemma to fear that history may repeat itself.

The past returns—with an upgrade. In an opening scene that loudly announces M3GAN 2.0’s genre shift, a U.S. government-built robot named AMELIA (Ahsoka’s Ivanna Sakhno) infiltrates a terrorist cell to retrieve a military asset. Instead, she kills the asset and several others tied to her creation. The only remaining link? Her tech was based on M3GAN’s design. This puts Gemma back on the radar of a federal agent who sees her as the prime suspect— only to gain an unexpected ally in M3GAN (played by Amie Donald and voiced by Jenna Davis). Despite her past, M3GAN’s core programming still drives her to protect Cady. Logically—if sassily—she deduces that AMELIA will target the family next. That still doesn’t stop her from mocking her dysfunctional creator with all the passive-aggressive charm of a teenage GLaDOS.

Adding a second robot escalates the sequel in every way. Embracing its T2 inspiration, we now have one robot cast as protector against a more lethal machine that’s disturbingly good at passing for human. The plot is significantly more ambitious than the first, introducing a shady tech billionaire and even staging a robot brawl at a Chinese AI convention. But where the original was grounded in the emotional story of a woman trying to help her grieving niece, this sequel goes unapologetically wild. Even with the real-world rise of ChatGPT, Grok, and AI-generated art, director Gerard Johnstone’s script isn’t quite as focused as it aims to be, often favoring spectacle over satire, though some fight and heist scenes are inventively staged.

Still delightfully unnerving, M3GAN hasn’t lost her edge—and she’s even gained some extra wit. She undergoes the familiar arc of learning to feel slightly human toward a team that (understandably) doesn’t trust her. Self-awareness has always been this franchise’s charm, and the cast sells a world where tech culture and killer robots go hand in hand. (You won’t believe which real-world corporation houses the film’s evil robo–MacGuffin, but it delivers one of the sequel’s biggest visual laughs.)

Shifting genres doesn’t inherently hurt a movie, and when M3GAN 2.0 drills into the messy, co-dependent relationship between M3GAN, Gemma, and Cady, it finds some genuine humanity amid the silliness. But attempts to replicate the original’s meme-ready worldbuilding—complete with another dance and a singing scene—don’t quite compute. . If anything, modern tech bros are far scarier than whatever murder technique M3GAN might dish out, though hardly as charming.