Dastardly, deadly and digital

Hollywood’s new favourite villain

In films from “Mission Impossible” to “M3GAN 2.0”, AI is the bad guy

Jul 03, 2025 01:53 PM

Barbaric Barbie

YOU CAN glean a lot about America and the world from whom Hollywood chooses as its baddies. During the cold war, the villains were often rogue Russian generals; during the war on terror, they were jihadists from the Middle East. Lately, however, Tinseltown has turned its attention to technology. It seems Hollywood’s screenwriters are “doomers” when it comes to artificial intelligence, believing it poses an existential threat to humanity.

In the past only a few big movies grappled with the idea of monstrous tech—among them Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the “Terminator” and “Matrix” franchises—but now lots do. In the two most recent “Mission: Impossible” instalments, Tom Cruise’s indestructible (human) secret agent tangled with an evil AI called “The Entity”. Films such as “Afraid”, “Companion” and “The Creator” have debated whether real humans or simulated ones are deadlier. Even “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl”, a claymation caper from Aardman, featured a sinister robotic garden gnome.

Ask anyone in the TikTok generation to name their favourite AI baddie, though, and they are bound to pick the titular anti-heroine of “M3GAN”, a tongue-in-cheek science-fiction slasher film about a sentient life-sized doll. Much of the film’s macabre appeal comes from the contrast between the robot’s innocent appearance and its capacity for gruesome murder. This contrast was encapsulated in a clip of M3GAN dancing before grabbing a blade. The scene went viral and helped the film to box-office success in 2023: it grossed more than $180m worldwide, from a production budget of $12m. A sequel was inevitable. So was its title: “M3GAN 2.0”.

The conceit of the first film was that a product designer, Gemma (Allison Williams), built M3GAN as a playmate for her orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw). Programmed to protect Cady, the android took the task to homicidal extremes, and so, one killing spree later, it was consigned to the scrapheap. In the sequel, Gemma’s technology has been stolen by a defence contractor and used to develop another, even more destructive, military-grade robot called AMELIA. The only person—or non-person—who can defeat it is a refurbished, upgraded M3GAN.

“M3GAN 2.0” (pictured) is something of an upgrade, too. Both films are written and directed by Gerard Johnstone, but he does not repeat the first film’s creepiness, nor its meme-worthy dancing. Instead of turning out another horror film, he has made an over-the-top satire, skewering the world’s dependence on technology.

The sequel finds sly humour in everything from mobile-phone apps to self-driving cars and voice-activated virtual assistants in the home. (A sequence in which a squad of armed robbers is foiled by automated kitchen drawers may yet go viral.) It is gleefully silly, but also one of the only Hollywood films this year to take a clear-eyed look at humans’ reliance on tech. Viewers will not want to live with M3GAN. But, this film implies, they cannot live without her either. ■