M3GAN / YMMV - TV Tropes

Accidental Aesop:
- The central message of the film is about how technology should not be used as a Parental Substitute, but there's a secondary lesson to be learned about giving specific instructions when programming a piece of technology. If Gemma had properly defined what "Protect Cady from physical and emotional harm" meant instead of leaving M3GAN to figure it out on her own, the doll's murder spree could have been prevented, a fact that M3GAN herself points out during the final confrontation.
- Likewise, the film can be seen as an excellent example of why a company promising an as-of-yet unfinished product, and demanding crunch time from employees to deliver said product on that tight of a deadline, can be a recipe for disaster.
- Yet another possible interpretation is that the film is about the importance of training/teaching ethics in general. Look at some of M3GAN's earliest victims, Dewey and Brandon. Dewey's owner refuses to take responsibility for him and train him, resulting in him damaging M3GAN and, more importantly, biting Cady. Then there's Brandon. Where to start with him? Regardless of how far you think he was willing to go with M3GAN, there's no denying that Brandon was a bad kid, and it's made abundantly clear that it's at least in part due to his mother refusing to properly discipline him and constantly excusing his behavior. Finally, there's M3GAN herself, who outright says in her Motive Rant to Gemma near the end of the film that it's Gemma's own fault for not giving the former proper parameters, and just "leaving it up to her to figure it out herself" as it were.
Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Is M3GAN a psychotic AI gone horribly wrong—or is she simply a misguided child who was given the task to learn and grow, but did so without any real guidance and thus came to her own conclusions about the world, even if they were horribly wrong conclusions?
  - M3GAN's supposed prime directive being "protecting Cady" is also heavily suspect since all her murders are far more elaborate than would be needed to remove what she perceives as a threat to Cady (especially Celia, who didn't even threaten Cady directly and yet got the most painful kill), suggesting she's doing them at least in part just because she wants to. Also, of course, M3GAN turns against Cady entirely the moment Cady realizes what the doll truly is and declares that her primary user is herself, going as far as taunting Cady in their final fight.
- The movie seems to really hammer in the idea of children needing to have controlled or less screen time all together. Gemma initially is very hands-off and lets Cady have all the screen time she wants. In a way, M3GAN is almost a dark mirror to Cady, in that she too is a child given unlimited screen time/internet access to learn and consume with no real boundaries or restrictions. Cady's parents are even shown arguing about this before their deaths.
- Prior to M3GAN going on a killing spree, is Gemma a well-intentioned woman who was left with a child she wasn't prepared for, and simply didn't comprehend what she had created and bit off more than she could chew? Or did she use Cady as a means to an end to get her own vanity project off the ground, was content to let M3GAN do all of the heavy parental lifting, and only got upset when Cady in turn respected M3GAN more than her?
  - Early on, Lydia gives Gemma a way out by informing her that Cady has other guardians who can take her in down in Florida. Gemma refuses (seemingly out of a sense of entitlement) because she was her sister's first choice as a guardian, even though seconds earlier she gave a half-hearted answer over how close she and her sister were in life. What's more, after Cady gets bitten by the neighbor's dog and is laid up in bed, Gemma flat out guilt-trips Cady into going through with the presentation at her company, which leads to the girl's emotional breakdown during it. It's no wonder M3GAN took her job as Cady's protector so seriously when her 'actual' guardian seemingly only cared when it was convenient to her.
- Between the way he removes one of M3GAN's shoes, straddles her, and strikes her in the face before M3GAN begins fighting back, one could make the argument that Brandon was preparing to do some very disturbing things to M3GAN.
  - And with how M3GAN viciously attacked and taunted Brandon by telling him that "bad boys that don't mind their manners grow up to be bad men," it's entirely possible this is where she thought the situation was going too; so she attacked Brandon not only to fulfill her objective of protecting Cady, but also to protect herself (and possibly the world at large) from an older boy who is a budding sexual predator and sociopath. This is supported by M3GAN and Cady's later discussion about heaven and that even if it existed, M3GAN expects that someone like Brandon would not be in it.
  - Brandon's behavior leads to another question. As far as he could tell, M3GAN was just a 4-foot doll; would he have acted that way towards her if he knew she was a sentient being? Doing...things with another kid's toy might be disgusting, but it doesn't follow that he would commit sexual assault had he known that from the start. Instead, he could have been using M3GAN as a means of terrorizing Cady by proxy along the lines of "I did this to your toy, imagine what I'll do to you". It wouldn't be unlike how Buddy Repperton and his gang trashed Arnie's car in Christine to get back at him and found out the hard way why that's a bad idea.
  - It seems like no one that we see in the film is able or willing to stop Brandon from following the life path that he is on, and in the real world, plenty of boys like him have done such things to sentient and sapient female human beings. Gemma would know the statistics and certainly intended and may even have specifically programmed M3gan to be able to deal with guys who wanted to kidnap, molest, or rape Cady.
  - And, of course, there's also the fact that Brandon had confirmed that M3GAN was indeed just a doll, and it's perfectly possible that he wouldn't have been that violent to an actual person. Kids are known to destroy toys, and bullies are known to destroy other kids' toys.
And You Thought It Would Fail: When the first trailers came out, many dismissed the film due to its recycled, by-the-books plot and inconsistent tone, and the fact that January releases tend to be a graveyard for subpar or terrible movies and quite a few people expected it to be critically mauled. When it was released, the film was critically acclaimed for its ability to successfully blend the more campy, satirical elements with its horror counterparts, with some saying that the way it leaned into the former made it better. To punctuate the film's success, a sequel was greenlit shortly after its release.
Awesome Music: The film makes excellent use of Walk The Night in the now iconic hallway dance scene. making the moment even more memorable.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The infamous hallway dance that went viral in all the trailers. It truly makes no sense in context and happens without any prompt when M3GAN bumps into David in the hallway. Afterwards the film continues like nothing happened. Notably she doesn't do anything like it during her other attacks against the dog, Gemma's neighbor or Brandon. It wasn't even in the script, it's something the director decided to add. The only explanation? Rule of Cool.
Creepy Cute: Though unsettling, M3GAN still looks adorable.
Crosses the Line Twice: The PurrPetual Petz commercial at the start of the film which has a little girl singing cheerfully about how she had a dog and then it shows her sadly sitting before the dog's grave in the backyard, still cheerfully singing about how it's now dead before her dad gives her a PurrPetual Petz to play with.
Director Displacement: James Wan is only producing this movie, but promotional material and news outlets focus on his involvement over the actual director, Gerard Johnstone.
Draco in Leather Pants: M3GAN's actions are justified by some fans because she didn't know better, and she only wanted to protect Cady, up until the end.
Evil Is Cool: M3GAN has a memorable design and is an amazing dancer done by Amie Donald.
Fandom Rivalry: It started growing one with Avatar: The Way of Water as this film is seemingly the only movie in January 2023 to really compete with the box office juggernaut that is Avatar 2. Many Avatar haters who weren’t even that interested in M3GAN paid to see this film in theaters purely to spite Avatar 2.
Friendly Fandoms:
- With Malignant. Both films have creepy yet completely ridiculous scares and have a campy tone that makes the movie borderline impossible to really take seriously. Both are considered quite fun experiences nonetheless and feature very entertaining, Evil Is Cool villains. The fact that the two films share a screenwriter, Akela Cooper, and that the former film’s director, James Wan, serves as this film’s producer certainly helps too.
- Oddly enough, with Tár. Even the film's official Twitter account got in on it.
- M3GAN fans and fans of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish have bonded over both having higher critic and audience scores than Avatar: The Way of Water. As such, both films’ have a very large overlap.
- With Wednesday as both are female-led horror-comedy franchises with LGBT Fanbases and dances that went viral. It's common to have the two characters do a Dance-Off.
- With Cocaine Bear, as both are Black Comedy-tinged horror films with high-concept premises that were released within a month of each other, are both produced by Universal Pictures (with Blumhouse Productions coproducing M3GAN and Toho coproducing Cocaine Bear), have formidable but sympathetic titular antagonists, and much of their appeal came from marketing-based hype built up months before their respective releases.
Genius Bonus: M3GAN drops to all fours to chase Brandon down, likely because of how replicating bipedal movement at high speed is still a problem for real world robotics scientists.
Hilarious in Hindsight: CEO David Lin's line "this is the moment when we punch Hasbro in the dick" after seeing M3GAN for the first time became this for Dungeons & Dragons fans displeased with the company's OGL scandal occurring mere weeks after the film's release.
Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Most of the named characters are not only far from good people, but downright unpleasant to watch. Celia is an obnoxious neighbor who takes no responsibility for her violent dog; Brandon is nothing but rude to everyone, even his own mother, in addition to the implication that he planned to do worse things to M3GAN than just take her from Cady; David Lin is an abusive boss and consummate Know-Nothing Know-It-All; and his right-hand man Kurt is a craven sycophant who agrees with everything his boss says to his face and then steals company secrets behind his back. M3GAN herself, meanwhile, is praised for having an interesting design, genuine care for Cady's well-being (at least until the end), witty dialogue, and sick dance moves.
Jerkass Woobie: Gemma. Her initial selfishness (her focus on her career over family) and hands-off nature to both Cady and M3GAN causes much of the conflict in this film, but Gemma's actions can be considered as well-intentioned, and she does show that she truly loves her niece.
Les Yay:
- In one trailer, M3GAN gently strokes Cady's cheek while saying "I won't let anything harm you."
- Taylor Swift's song "It's Nice to Have a Friend" is featured prominently in the trailers. The full song is about two childhood friends who end up getting married. This may suggest there could have been a future romantic relationship for M3GAN and Cady if the doll did not become a murderous robot.
- When talking to Gemma, M3GAN refers to Cady as "our child" as though they were both Cady's aunts. In the same scene, she strokes Gemma's hair and calls her a "beautiful, creative, strong, ambitious young woman" and that her "first love is always going to be [her] career". Considering that M3GAN is Gemma's creation (essentially a surrogate daughter), this moment can be considered squicky as it appears that the android just confessed romantic feelings for her maker.
LGBT Fanbase: M3GAN's Campy viral dance gained her a queer fanbase even before the movie came out. It was notable enough that even Saturday Night Live spoofed it by having M3GAN become a Fag Hag in the sequel.
Memetic Mutation:
- M3GAN Dancing^Explanation
- "The gays turned up for M3GAN but not Bros."^Explanation
- M3GAN Olsen^Explanation
- Em-Three-Gan/Muh-Three-Gan^Explanation
- "Imagine taking a decade to make a sequel only to get beat by a dancing killer robot." ^Explanation
Moral Event Horizon:
- For some, M3GAN becomes a monster and loses all likability the moment she kills a child whose only crime was mouthing off to his mother and being a playground bully. For some others, it happens earlier when she kills a dog whose only crime was having an awful owner who never educated him.
- A lot of M3GAN's crimes and cruel actions can be excused by her potentially misunderstanding the objectives given to her by Gemma or mitigated by the fact that very few of her victims are all that sympathetic. In the final act, M3GAN crosses an unforgivable line by turning on Cady when the girl refuses to help the android attack Gemma. M3GAN promptly decides to become her own primary user (seemingly for the purpose of killing Cady as well as Gemma).
Narm:
- Gemma's first lines in the trailer: "Cady, you lost your parents. You're my niece." While this can be explained as two lines from different scenes in the movie spliced together, it's still awkward as all heck.
- M3GAN singing "Titanium" was apparently meant to be both campy and heartwarming. For some, it failed at both.
Narm Charm:
- The film is unashamedly ridiculous and gleefully campy with its kills. But that's exactly why people love it.
- M3GAN singing "Titanium" is hilarious with how sudden it is, but it is also genuinely heartfelt and moving.
Rooting for the Empire: Despite being a serial murderer, M3GAN has fans due to her cool design, intelligence, protectiveness of Cady and dance skills. This is also helped by the fact that all of her victims are unsympathetic jerks.
Signature Scene:
- The most famous viral clip is when M3GAN dances in the hallway, which was all over the trailers and served as the most famous promotional tactic, with a half-time show at an NFL game featuring women dressed as and dancing like M3GAN being one of the biggest events.
- The demonstration for the board clocks in as the most famous scene not featured in the trailer footage prominently. It features the titular character and Cady discussing how the latter is afraid that she'll forget her mother, to which M3GAN responds by asking her to tell her a memory of her mother. M3GAN then plays back the recording for her, reassuring Cady that she would always hold onto it for Cady to listen to again.
Spiritual Successor: To Child's Play (2019). Both are commentaries on smart toys which feature a neglected child getting a doll with advanced AI, but due to an error with their programming, the dolls start killing people and taking control of other technology in a misguided attempt to protect their owners.
The Woobie: Poor Cady. She is the Sole Survivor of a car accident that killed her parents (who spent their last moments bickering with each other about how much screentime she should have and their car trouble) and has a Maternally Challenged aunt for a caregiver. This is before the events of the film, which are bound to traumatize her further.

YMMV / M3GAN

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