MEGAN 2.0 Review

MEGAN has returned! This time, she’s ditching her horror roots and going full action movie hero. Let’s find out whether it was for better or worse in our MEGAN 2.0 Review!

I admire when movie franchises take bold chances to pivot between genres after a successful previous film. It doesn’t always work, but what it does do is keep the franchise from getting stale. This should have been the case for MEGAN 2.0. Instead of MEGAN being this unstoppable force that keeps coming back movie after movie to get her revenge, the enemy becomes the ally. Unfortunately, this somehow stripped MEGAN of most of her appeal and left us with a mixed bag.

Story

The story in MEGAN 2.0 follows the main characters of the first film, led by Coder/Toy Designer Gemma (Allison Williams) and her adopted niece, Cady (Violet McGraw). Gemma has become a public advocate for the moderation of technology usage after the events of the first film. A new robot named AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) has been developed for government exploitation. The only problem is that she is now on a warpath and has eliminated her creators. Now, Gemma becomes concerned that she and her team may be next, as the inspiration clearly came from MEGAN.

MEGAN makes her return as a pseudo-spirit of sorts, beginning to communicate with Gemma through her TV and smart home. This is when MEGAN reveals that she wants back into a body so she can protect Cady while also offering to help battle AMELIA. This leads us to a batcave-like area underneath Gemma’s smart house, where the team preps for battle and MEGAN regains her body.

Friends?

It’s jarring to see how much MEGAN has completely changed from the last movie to this movie. There wasn’t as much tension between MEGAN and Gemma as I had expected following the events of the first film. That’s not to say that there isn’t any, it’s just not a focal point as I thought it might be. The intention is for MEGAN to protect Cady, but I thought they could have focused more on the strained relationship between the creator and AI after the brutal battle in the first film. Instead, it’s passively touched upon a few times, and they’re just forced to work together. I felt like a tease of MEGAN trying to kill Gemma once or twice would have been a nice touch.

Gemma & Cady’s Relationship

I have to touch on this because it was infuriating. Gemma is such an unlikeable character to me. There were so many times while watching this movie that I found myself thinking, “Please stop talking.” She’s such an overbearing aunt at times. She’s mean and angry in a way that completely turned me off from a lot of her scenes. I know that’s the direction they were trying to go, but it felt overwhelming. What I did appreciate was that it made the development of her character that much more satisfying when she realizes Cady doesn’t need to be coddled.

New Tricks, Less Bite

MEGAN definitely brought some new tricks to the table in MEGAN 2.0. You’ll see her using a wingsuit in one scene while taking control of a car in an ode to Knight Rider (complete with the theme) in another, while saying, “hold onto your vaginas!” She’s still full of one-liners and personality, and that holds up the movie when it fell a bit flat for me in the middle.

While MEGAN is still entertaining, I felt like she lost a lot of her edge in this movie. She became more of a comic relief than something to be feared, which felt weird when she was supposed to be the opposing force to AMELIA, who is taking down everyone in her path. The positive I can take from that is that we saw her character develop into something with emotion and real motivation behind her actions.

Final Battle

The movie does manage to redeem itself a little bit in the final 20 minutes. There’s a twist that you’ll probably see coming a mile away that blows everything wide open. MEGAN manages to face off against AMELIA in what is a brief but entertaining fight scene. Despite the buildup of AMELIA throughout the entire movie, she didn’t feel particularly powerful when it counted the most. I don’t feel like we saw enough of her in the film for her to really feel that terrifying. It’s after this battle that you really know the whole “trying to kill each other” thing between Gemma and MEGAN is just water under the bridge now. There is still room left for a sequel, but I’m unsure where they could really go from here.

Conclusion

This was one of the hardest reviews I’ve ever written. MEGAN 2.0 was such a mix of highs and lows that it’s hard to nail down the correct score. This movie took away most of what made MEGAN so interesting as a character in the first movie. This just made things feel like a cheap copy of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The film has some charm, and the character development for everyone involved is actually quite good. It’s just not what I was expecting from a MEGAN movie, and that’s going to turn off plenty of other people who wanted to see this movie.