M3GAN the grounded dangers of quickly advancing technology

M3gan came as a surprise for me, everything from the trailers to the main song that played in the marketing dolls by Bella porch seemed oddly alluring to me even though horror as a genre and specifically the slasher sub genre doesn't really attract me.

That would be strange to many of you knowing that I recently reviewed Final Destination Bloodlines but the thing about that is, while I never really watch horror movies I do have morbid curiosity, and bloodlines as a film seemed to be offering much more than just, a bunch of random people dying.

It had serious themes of generational trauma, abandonment issues and paranoia in the face of imminent death.

Basically, for me, the deaths were the least interesting parts of that movie, sacrilege, I know.

But the point I am trying to make here is that most of the times if I go to see something horror related I mostly go because there is something deeper to look into.

I mean if you didn't guess it by now, I am a huge fan of star wars and marvel simply for their deep lore.

And I think it is obvious what attracted me to M3gan, the idea of an AI realistically being a threat to humanity.

Okay no, you got me its the dancing machete scene that got me.

The thing is though an Artificial Intelligence is so known because it learns from its mistakes and its surroundings and given that most Humans focus on their own small world around them, it is far more realistic that an AI powered Robot doll be a threat to a small group of people around her and her "ward" than go on a world ending rampage like Skynet.

Look as cool as terminator is, I think people need to realise that the military only adapts something after a lot of testing and that would be the case with an AI as well, and therefore it will be quite a while after the first Artifical Intelligence of such capabilities is even conceived that it is used in anything military related.

It is, as shown in the movie, far more likely that the first AI to be a threat comes from a corporation trying to sell toys to kids, because you know, in spite of the various rules in place to protect children from corporate exploitation through advertisements, corporations still know that they are the biggest most gullible market and if they could any corporation will sell their soul to the devil if it meant an increasing bottom line.

Regardless of that random rant, the main thing that I want to emphasize is that the creator of M3gan, is neither an idiot nor a bad person, infact it can be argued Gemma is one of the protagonists of this film alongside Cady.

And her idea is actually truly impressive, and could have been great was she actually given the proper time and resources to follow all safety checks and procedures.

However, a company looking to forever increase its bottom line isn't going to see longterm is it, or perhaps it is the Humans who lack long term vision.

Who knows

Unfortunately in a corporation, for true innovation to be able to thrive it often becomes inevitable that dangers signs are ignored and safety protocols are bypassed because at the end of the day people need to save their jobs in order to live.

And so we get M3gan, a "perfect" toy meant to protect its primary user from all harm, physical all emotional.

Often one wonders what would happen if an AI went outside its primary programming and decided against what it was supposed to do, but that's not the real danger, the real risk, is if an AI takes it's task too literally and is unable to think outside of its task because of the limitations set upon it to prevent it from going rogue, and then goes rogue because of it.

M3gan becomes a killer because she was following her primary directive, and that is to protect Cady from all harm, physical or emotional.

There is also the fact that over protecting a child may lead to stunted emotional growth and that may lead further harm in the future, if either M3gan or Gemma were thinking that far ahead they would have realised that sometimes, kids just need to go through hard stuff so that they can learn to protect themselves and grow for themselves, and more importantly choose what they are okay with in order to get what they want.

But if all of those things happened then we wouldn't get M3gan dancing to distract her kill before picking up a machete, so I guess you win some you loose some.

Which is very in theme surprisingly.

There are a lot of subtler parallels in this movie like how in the beginning, Cady is looking at a tablet when her parents die in an accident, How Gemma herself is too addicted to her work and technology to have much of a social life, which in turn makes her not the best parental figure to a child who just lost their parents.

Etc. Etc.

But that's not why we are here, we here to see female Robot chunky kill some Unfortunate bloke and look stylish while doing it, and that is why like M3gan, I am going to see M3GAN 2.0 in theatre in about an hour, at 9 in the morning on the day of its release.

Wish me luck I guess....