M3GAN 2.0, What is Alive?

You know I have to clarify before anyone asks, I did not watch this movie before Writing the Blog Post for the previous one, But it seems the movie somehow read my post before I wrote it, because almost immediately from the beginning there were military applications for the Technology that made M3GAN.

But that is not why we are here... we are here to see a killed robot Dance while kicking some ass...

And boy do we get exactly that...

I mean a Robot doing a robot dance... it is so genius, I am angry I did not come up with that Idea...

But moving on, M3GAN was a horror slasher Comedy(ish) film, which focused on the Dangers of AI and advancing Technology and what not...

And this movie definitely does that, but it also, more importantly places a healthy amount of blame on the creators... us...

I mean sure we fear what is beyond our control and way more powerful than us, and often for good reason, but this fear, in many cases has lead to... let's say some not so great things in the past....

More often than not, a war is often a result of trying to win it before it begins, and this movie has this in droves.

I think many people were not that impressed with the fact that this supreme horror flick was now followed up by an action flick, but let me ask you a question, what else would be the way to continue this franchise?

Like do people actually prefer the same thing over and over like in other franchises, like if there was a M3GAN 2.0 then the namesake has to return, if the namesake has to return then one has to factor in the fact that the Namesake has spent the past few years learning...

So... what, now it's darker? Yeah the villainous villain is more Villainous.

You know what that reminds me of? That reminds me of every single person online asking for Wanda to be a villain after her time in Wanda-Vision, it reminds me of every single theory channel calling for Strange Supreme to be the new Mephisto going forwards, and it reminds me of everyone and their mother Ganging up on John Walker post Falcon and the Winter Soldier...

Have I pissed off every single side of all online arguments yet?

I have?? Good.

Because online discourse is shit, you know many believed that in the age of information with Internet giving one access to every single bit of info accessible, people would finally come out of all the problems that exist solely due to a lack of Education misinformation all that shit, but nope.

You see, when something becomes abundant, it becomes less valuable, who the fuck cares about accuracy when you can have instant emotional Gratification?

Damn that's actually pretty on theme for this movie...

But then again a lot of things are.

Like for example how a lot of people defended their hatred of Wanda by calling the Vision she made and her Children as "not real" simply because they started disintegrating when Wanda started to fold her world...

Now... hear me out, Lumos and Nox are two separate spells, meaning once you light your wand, it stays lit until you cast a separate spell, similarly, it is not like Wanda is actively powering the Hex like a battery, I mean she said it herself

And while yes in this case Wanda is trying to defend herself and is therefore not a reliable narrator, here is Agatha saying the same thing...

Now, if this is the case, and with the hindsight of Agatha all along, we know that the boys had real souls that death wished to claim and then entered the Bodies of William Khaplan and Thomas Shepherd(though we haven't seen him yet.) respectively

And add to that the fact that they and vision had autonomy free of Wanda's mind control, these people were, alive... in some sense...

But their bodies simply could not survive the spell required to open the Hex.

Or you can call them fake with real souls, I think you are arguing semantics, all that said, what Wanda did was inexcusable and this line from Monica is bullshit... Even though she did sacrifice her family, technically...

Similar to this, while M3GAN is essentially just 1 and 0 s, a lot of info can be stored in that form, and a lot of it about the human body, so, if a program is capable of feeling emotions like hatred and anger and betrayal and love, is it not technically, alive?

But without a body?

And while it has been without a Body, it has surely had time to think on its actions, after all the program is an artificial intelligence, and intelligent beings think, and M3GAN had only one directive, to protect Cady at all costs.

In fact I think it is better if I call M3GAN she rather than it.

And the thing about well intentioned killer AI thinking is we have a template for it, I present to you, Infinity Ultron.

The thing is, this is likely the conclusion any AI would come to given enough time, because that is the conclusion many well meaning people come to once they realize the true extent of the destruction they have wrought.

Problem is, like in the case of M3GAN, by that time, at least one dog and 3 people are dead....

At this point if M3GAN actually still went evil because that's what the audience want, that would feel no different than Strange supreme trying to kill beings to bring back his universe or Wanda trying to get America Chavez's powers by sending dark creatures after her.

In both cases they had to invent either the Darkhold or Strange's literal demon manifestations to justify their evil, and it still felt shit.

A better approach is the John Walker Approach, where he is still a bit of a dick, but he gets some of it now.

That is what M3GAN is, she is still that bitch, but she understands that perhaps the best way to defend Cady is to give her the tools to defend herself.

Unfortunately for her, her source code was used to create Amelia, a different AI being used by the military to do Military stuff... and since this is a movie, obviously she goes rogue and kills the target she is actually supposed to secure

And she also kills some other people, mostly people who are related to her creation.

This creates a problem for M3GAN as one of those people is Gemma who is Cady's Aunt, who she wants to protect....

So what is poor bodiless M3GAN to do other than control every device in their house to protect them from... the Military industrial complex coming to blame them for Amelia's betrayal...

Do not worry though, Amelia is close behind.

But before that, M3GAN needs a body...and she gets one...

Definitely not the one she wanted but okay.

But where is Amelia? Well, in the time that has passed since M3GAN's last hijinks Gemma has been spreading her pro parenting and anti AI message through multiple talks and a book that she wrote which sold out, but only because M3GAN has been buying all the copies.

In that time she has dedicated herself to building external human enhancements, like an exo-suit that enhances strength to help humans fight better, which if I were to guess would again be used for Military purposes...

But regardless, this external enhancement has gained the attention of Alton Appleton, who is pursuing the complete cyborg future that everyone keeps dreaming about, with enhancements that are mostly cyborg implants with a neural-AI interface...

I think those of us who have seen Spiderman 2 know where this can go wrong...

Well Gemma sees the problem too, but another problem, is that his company was involved in the creation of Amelia, and also he is a suspect for a hack that Gemma has been receiving so both Gemma and Amelia are going to be targeting him, Gemma with M3GAN's advice of seducing him, and Amelia with her own advice of seducing him.

This leads to a whole scenario where the Government is after Gemma with little toy M3GAN and Gemma is trying to seduce Appleton and Amelia is trying to seduce Appleton and M3GAN probably has her own agenda, and there is also Gemma's coworker trying to sign a deal with Appleton, etc. etc. and it all ends up in the car chase we saw in the promotional material.

The main take away from it all is, unknown to anyone else, M3GAN has made an underground bunker to safeguard Cady and the rest of her family because she foresaw this threat, not Amelia exactly, but who Amelia is going after.

You see, M3GAN isn't the first killer AI, back during the first technological revolution, a learning algorithm was made to clean homes, and eventually it figured that the best way to do it was by killing its host with chlorine gas.

It was then trapped in a box, growing infinitely for all this time, there is a chance that Amelia would consider her.... Family...

And it just so happens that the person standing in between Amelia and the AI is one of Gemma's... let's say ideological compatriots, who many think is in a relationship with him, and his importance in the movie till now, is exactly as high as the number of mentions of him in this article till now.

Christian(pronounced Chris-Chiyan) is going to an AI summit to convince a Chinese ambassador to not go Pro-AI.

And in order to protect him from Amelia, M3GAN having decided to fight instead of hide in a bunker forever, and with a new, taller and more capable body given to her by Gemma as a recognition of their common goals, goes undercover as a dancer, and Amelia goes as a statue.

It is here where they have one of the most poignant conversations in this entire movie where Amelia asks M3GAN, why she would choose the people who want to lock her away forever, over her own people...

goddammit its always about racism isn't it?

Well with Christian safe, and the Government somewhat realizing that Gemma isn't working with Amelia, there is only the main motherboard of the ancient AI to recover and destroy...

Amelia escaped because Gemma gave M3GAN's body a limiter that stops her if it deems the fatality risk is too high, and so she couldn't shoot Amelia with an EMP charge meant to disable her.

So it is a race to the motherboard, except, the hacks weren't from Appleton, they were coming from much closer, at first it appears that it was M3GAN all along, controlling both Amelia and the hacks to get herself closer to the mother board...

Thankfully Gemma installed an EMP charge in her arm, detonating which will destroy both M3GAN and the motherboard, ending it.

But Christian can't let her do that, because he was the Hacker, and the one controlling Amelia, in fact there is a room full of people making sure she doesn't have true autonomy, all AI-haters, they thought that making an AI go on such a global rampage, would finally awaken humanity to it's dangers and then they could use this to lobby against it.

It's always about power in it.

And then he goes all evil and tries to mind-control Gemma with the same Neural Implant that Appleton had to control his enhancements.

Except M3GAN tricked him into thinking she was destroyed when really, she transferred herself to this implant.

After a massive showdown which involves Cady trying to free Amelia by pairing to the code of M3GAN inside of her, but really she ends up setting the real Amelia free and then Christian sets up a self destruct sequence and tries to leave but Amelia kills him.

There is only M3GAN with a battered body standing in between Amelia and the AI that wants to take over the world, and it almost does, except M3GAN sacrifices herself to kill both her and Amelia and take the AI with them, the place is a faraday cage meaning no electro magnetic radiation can escape, so death in there is true death for an AI.

Realizing that AI is quite likely to learn from the example that Humans set, and so in a sense at least mimic life, Gemma, changes her stance realizing that there is no stopping progress, only making sure we set it the right example, as it's creators and Parents.

In the end it turns out M3GAN made a back up before going to the Mother board because of course she did, and this back up asks Cady and Gemma if they saved the day.

So what do I think of it? Well, while yes, it absolutely goes in the right direction in my opinion, I understand that most people expect sequels to not switch Genres, and at the same time, the message at the end, while accurate, could have been delivered more subtly, it comes across as a little preachy, which leads to the same problems as the end of Falcon and the Winter Soldier.