Robot goes rogue: Sophisticated, but not new

Robotic doll M3GAN (played by Amie Donald, voice by Jenna Davis) is brought home to give company and protect an orphaned Cady (Violet McGraw).

Robotic doll M3GAN (played by Amie Donald, voice by Jenna Davis) is brought home to give company and protect an orphaned Cady (Violet McGraw).

M3GAN

English (Theatres)

Director: Gerard Johnstone

Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald

Rating: 2.5/5

“I thought we were having a conversation”. This line from ‘M3GAN’ captures the dichotomy of human ambition, and a trope overdone in films — We want robots to evolve and think, behave and talk like us, but when they do, we get scared.

During dinner with her aunt Gemma, eight-year-old Cady throws tantrums about eating. M3GAN, a child-like doll powered by Artificial Intelligence, sides with Cady for she is programmed to be her caretaker and protector. But Gemma, who’s built M3GAN, doesn’t appreciate the interruption and orders her to “switch off”. M3GAN gives back, ‘I thought we were having a conversation’, leaving Gemma unsure and insecure of the machine she has built to be a companion for kids, just a few days from her much-awaited launch on TV.

Except for this, or when M3GAN sings Sia’s ‘I’m bulletproof, nothing to lose/ Fire away, fire away’ as a lullaby, or she looks superior than other toys in Cady’s room, or she twerks, somersaults, hails a self-drive car and turns her neck sinisterly to kill humans coming in the way of her and Cady, the movie is barely riveting.

Worse, it’s confusing. It has been positioned as a sci-fi but also a horror. When a boy bullies Cady, M3GAN gets on her fours to hound him like a zombie. In a fight scene later, we see the invincible side of her. What is M3GAN now? A superhero! If not for the cliffhanger at the end, you forget who M3GAN is – a Model 3 Generative Android.

Despite the misses, the movie does make you think. Perhaps why machines-are-taking-over movies are still thriving.

Gemma brings Cady home after her parents die in a car crash. Being a loner and workaholic who’s incapable of even taking care of plants, Gemma boots M3GAN to life as a proxy guardian, sibling, and friend for her niece, who is both distraught and screen-addicted. That M3GAN is pronounced as Megan, and that she looks like a sophisticated middle-schooler in satin bow, double-breasted coat, tights, and purple shades, except for her creepy, unblinking puppet eyes, Cady forms an instant connection. So deep that she can’t live without this device! Sounds familiar?

Discussions on ‘Will M3GAN robot dolls become a reality?’ have begun but I am missing Vicki, the frock-clad robot from the American sitcom ‘Small Wonder’. She did not act out of ‘her algorithm and protocol’; she did not scare us.