M3GAN (2022) is going to have Staying Power

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One of the dumb movies of 2022, but it's not that dumb. It has a sense of humor closer to Robocop than Chucky (e.g., the viciously satirical advertisements). The film doesn't go on for too long. The child actors are surprisingly competent. The film actually explores issues of automating human interactivity, turning AI loose to teach itself, and the vulnerability of children to Turing-capable machines. The least interesting aspect of the film is the by-the-numbers killer-machine plot that plays out like "Kenner's Macbeth," but even this is done competently enough to hold the interest of the audience. I think this one is going to have staying power.



Making M3gan look like the Olsen sisters (especially most-rising star Elizabeth)... stroke of genius or overly obvious?
Didn't really occur to me when I watched it. I did, however, notice that when they wanted M3GAN to be scary, her hairline would shift upwards. By the end of the film as her mask slips, figuratively and literally, we see a monstrous image of an un-child with a bald head and distorted face. Is there no truth in beauty?










Yep, it's a pretty close match. Don't let SookieStackhouse see this film...



Hilarious on the Olsens.

But yeah, I, too, thought it was a blast and very entertaining. Not everything has to be ‘deep’ (though the point about adults using tech to make kids **** off is perfectly apt).

Definitely will have staying power imo. The ‘demo’ scene made me very fleetingly ashamed of my entire career in comms, because, yup, been there.



Something about the wide shot where you can see the legs is extremely freaky. Something about it not being a full-size mannequin or doll-sized is plunging my sanity right down to the bottom of the Uncanny Valley.

Guess I might have to watch this.



Something about the wide shot where you can see the legs is extremely freaky. Something about it not being a full-size mannequin or doll-sized is plunging my sanity right down to the bottom of the Uncanny Valley.

Guess I might have to watch this.
It’s meant to be child-sized (which even sounds wrong).



The legs look slightly too long for that, which is maybe just that one photo, but I actually think that's a great idea to make the whole thing feel slightly off/unsettling.



From the videos I've seen; it's just a regular child actress playing Megan's body (with the customized mask over her face for the long shots).

At first I thought the "dance" was somehow CGI-influenced, but they say it was just the actress doing a Tik-tok dance (which, although the filmmakers realized was completely random to the scene, kept it in because it was so freaky looking).



From the videos I've seen; it's just a regular child actress playing Megan's body (with the customized mask over her face for the long shots).

At first I thought the "dance" was somehow CGI-influenced, but they say it was just the actress doing a Tik-tok dance (which, although the filmmakers realized was completely random to the scene, kept it in because it was so freaky looking).

Yep.






Sometimes the simple effects solution is the best effects solution. If your conceit is that it is "robot trying to look like a kid," then it is quite easy to have a real kid try to look like your robot. The shoe fits (and should fit).

Ironically, the fact that it could be CGI adds to the visual unease. In the old days, you knew it was a man in a suit. It was almost always a man in a suit, because if it wasn't, it would be really obvious stop-motion animation of a cheesy puppet. Today, we don't know how much of M3GAN is real (just a kid with a mask) and how much is CGI, which is not unlike our position in the movie--we don't know how much M3GAN is a simulation and how much she is an intelligence. Uncertainty about the nature of her "unreality" adds to a theme/mood of the film.



That's a good point, not being sure which effects are practical and which aren't does add a little something to it, even if I'm struggling to articulate what that something is or why it would matter. It does remind me of something else I noticed years ago, though: It's especially creepy when something simplistic and supernatural is trying to trick you.

I was reading a plot description of a film (I won't say what it is since the following is sort of spoilery), and I read that some spirit had asked to be buzzed into an apartment building, and how after the buzzing it had immediately knocked on the door of the apartment upstairs that had let it in. Just reading that gave me shivers. It was so confusingly and unexpectedly freaky that I had to think more about it, in the same way I feel an obligation to analyze any extreme reaction I have to anything.

The best I could come up with is that it was particularly scary to encounter something that's sort of intelligent. Intelligent enough to form syllogisms or low-level strategies, but which lacked the very human traits of tact, nuance, and basic social skills. It occurs to me just while writing this that this might be because we don't encounter anything like that in reality: we encounter animals, and we encounter devious people, but there really isn't anything occupying the middle-ground, so it's inherently unsettling because we clock that level of intelligence as being automatically other-wordly. It's an uncanny valley not for appearance, but for reason itself.

That, and the suddenness of the action also suggested a vociferousness that's scary for much simpler reasons, too.

Anyway, this reminds me of that: that the terror almost comes from the filmmakers and not necessarily the character, and the upsetting feeling of knowing someone is trying to trick you and doing a fairly good (but not perfect) job.



That's a good point, not being sure which effects are practical and which aren't does add a little something to it, even if I'm struggling to articulate what that something is or why it would matter. It does remind me of something else I noticed years ago, though: It's especially creepy when something simplistic and supernatural is trying to trick you.

I was reading a plot description of a film (I won't say what it is since the following is sort of spoilery), and I read that some spirit had asked to be buzzed into an apartment building, and how after the buzzing it had immediately knocked on the door of the apartment upstairs that had let it in. Just reading that gave me shivers. It was so confusingly and unexpectedly freaky that I had to think more about it, in the same way I feel an obligation to analyze any extreme reaction I have to anything.

The best I could come up with is that it was particularly scary to encounter something that's sort of intelligent. Intelligent enough to form syllogisms or low-level strategies, but which lacked the very human traits of tact, nuance, and basic social skills. It occurs to me just while writing this that this might be because we don't encounter anything like that in reality: we encounter animals, and we encounter devious people, but there really isn't anything occupying the middle-ground, so it's inherently unsettling because we clock that level of intelligence as being automatically other-wordly. It's an uncanny valley not for appearance, but for reason itself.

That, and the suddenness of the action also suggested a vociferousness that's scary for much simpler reasons, too.

Anyway, this reminds me of that: that the terror almost comes from the filmmakers and not necessarily the character, and the upsetting feeling of knowing someone is trying to trick you and doing a fairly good (but not perfect) job.
On that note: the dance before the attack seems at first glance random, illogical and bizarre... but when we figure that Megan is compounding different (and apparently conflicting) programming and she is an A.I. that is constantly learning, we have to consider that she's also learning to be a little girl (primarily from the examples of her charge).

So the idea that she'd do a little dance before attacking someone her program identifies as a threat (rightly or wrongly) ends up making a kind of sense as this is the kind of thing a child might do.



It's especially creepy when something simplistic and supernatural is trying to trick you.

It's an uncanny valley not for appearance, but for reason itself.

the upsetting feeling of knowing someone is trying to trick you and doing a fairly good (but not perfect) job.
In horror, something is so often just not-quite right. Wait, did that shadow just do something weird? Did my reflection vary ever so slightly from my movement?

In world red in tooth and claw, it makes sense that we're wary of minor mismatches. A concealed predator will initially be perceived as something merely "not quite right." And that is terrifying; it's that dimly flickering warning that you're about to be lunch (and you becoming slowly aware, perhaps just a moment too late to save yourself).





Thus, I think we can make the case that this unease is quite primal. Going to red alert when something is not quite right is how we protect ourselves from predators.



That not-quite right moment is a moment where reality itself is in question. What the hell is that? I cannot be seeing what I am seeing, right? Horror takes us through the looking glass, that moment of being not-quite right sliding into the full on upside down rationality is overtaken by the boogeyman, the predator emerging from the bushes to strike.

Horror plays with sight, sound, temporality, and even reason (as you noted) to nudge us into sensing that things are not-quite right. With mundane horror, a false smile is a sign of foul intent. In fantastical horror, that knock on the door immediately after the buzz-in is a sign that something not quite right indeed(!!!) has come calling for you. It's all the same thing in terms of the formal property, however. We're being not-quite tricked by someone or something.

Some films lack courage and engage in endless foreplay, working up to the moment, but not really having the moxie to dive into the very premise of the film (e.g., Unbreakable is like that awkward kid on a date who is terrified of moving his hand from the shoulder to more adventurous regions). At a certain point, we need to know if that twitching in the grass is a lion or just a trick of wind and light. Other films, don't earn the moment at all and just blunder into the action without securing the buy-in of our irrationality in that moment of transcendent and awful wonder (that moment that Spielberg so often captured in his classic "Oh my God!" shots).



Some films are quite confident and really pour on the coal after they earn our irrational fear. ALIENS cuts loose and never really slows down after building tension and warning us that things are not quite right at the shake-and-bake colony on LV-426.

Other films linger in the suspense and make moves to escalate and de-escalate the terror. The classic jump scare is an escalation with immediate deescalation. It offers fear without the consequence of having to advance the action--we are returned to looking for movement in the bushes after a random house cat inexplicably leaps at our face.

Horror, like all fiction, is a seduction of rationality. Or rather it is soporific designed to lull the rational gatekeeping part of our mind to sleep. Mundane fiction merely needs to lull us into believing that what is happening is happening. Supernatural Horror and fantasy, however, must convince us that the impossible is happening. Indeed, we are drawn to it because it is impossible. It fills us with awe. We want to believe. The spell, however, is tenuous. At the moment that the impossible seems impossible we wake back up. The spell, broken. Thus fantastical horror has to nudge us into the upside down by using the cheat-code of our animal instincts. It uses ancient signs of danger, provoking the R-complex into action, stimulating us to accept the possibility of imminent horror. Consider this line from Jacob's Ladder.

That's what they called it. A fast
trip right down the ladder.
Right to the primal fear, the base
anger. I'm tellin' you, it was
powerful stuff. But I don't need to
tell you. You know.

And that is what these uncanny moments in horror do. They prime us to go through the looking glass by rousing the reptilian brain. It's the fast trip of that shiver we feel when something ain't quite right. When the seduction/soporific has done its work, it is only then that we can move into the full terror of Dracula's Castle.



"Tell Me. Do You Bleed? You Will."
Seeing Jason Blum dressed up like M3gan kind of makes me want to hate this. But, we'll give it an honest day in court Tuesday.



The unrated HD digital code if anybody wants it: U2WFNDZ70RYSWLQ2



Bailed out. Too boring.
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Bailed out. Too boring.

I didn't say that you had staying power, so bailing out is still consistent with my prediction.



I went in with zero expectations and had a lot of fun with this movie. Would absolutely watch a sequel.