‘M3gan’ and The Villain Shuffle

M3ghan’s not the bad guy in this story.

It is a fact that any entity that wears this outfit will murder you

M3gan (Amie Donald and Jenna Davis), the murderous android doll toy from the film, er, M3gan, is a triumph of design. From the resting bitch face of her oversize head to the layered nightmare of her flight-attendant-older-aunt inspired wardrobe¹, you know for a fact that this thing is going to murder everybody the moment you see it². And that’s great, since this is a horror film and it’s essentially what you’re paying to see.

M3gan’s a mesmerizing creation, her every squint a dark delight and the out-of-sync nature of her lips and voice a feature, not a bug³. It’s a slick film, and it succeeds in one very important way: It makes M3gan so monstrous, so obviously deranged and dangerous it’s easy to assume that she simply must be the monster, the villain. And, of course, she is the crazed force of darkness that winds up murdering a whole bunch of folks. But she isn’t the villain, though you’d be forgiven for thinking she was⁴.

Aunt Gemma for The Loss

This is the expression of an adult wondering if there is any way to legally murder children. I know because I’ve seen it on my own face many times.

M3gan is a force of nature. The script wisely skips any effort at explaining the artificial intelligence and algorithms working inside M3gan’s head, and even lampshades the fact that even Gemma (Allison Williams), the scientist who designed it, doesn’t quite know how she works⁵. Therefore she simply exists, she is a creature who behaves entirely according to her design. M3gan can therefore be the monster of the story, but she can’t really be the villain. A villain has to be responsible for the terrible shit that happens⁶. If you locked a small child in a car with a vicious animal, no one would blame the animal for what happened, they’d blame you.

Here’s how we know that Aunt Gemma is the villain: We get Gemma’s reasoning for her decisions. Gemma doesn’t really want to raise a surrogate daughter, has little interest in being a mother figure, barely mourns the death of her sister and brother-in-law. Every single decision she makes right up until she realizes that she’s unleashed a murderous little doll demon on the world is to push her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw) as far away as possible so Gemma can continue her pin-neat, serial-killer-lite lifestyle without interruption⁷. Gemma doesn’t really give two shits about Cady, she just wants to shut her up for a while⁸, and only becomes concerned about the consequences when Cady becomes hostile and then bodies start to drop.

In contrast, M3gan herself is a black box. All we know for sure is that she is dangerously committed to protecting Cady in that standard demonic monster way violent sociopathic entities are always trying to ‘protect’ the young, weak, and innocent: By killing anyone who so much as makes her lip quiver⁹. M3gan, it’s implied, has no inner life to speak of, and therefore no motives. She simply is. She lashes out at enemies the same way a bear does, because it’s what she does under the right circumstances.

If You're Smart, We Can Both Come Out of It as Heroes and We'll be Set Up for Life.

What’s that? Burn it all? Everything? Yes, yes, that makes sense.

This is a fairly common situation in horror movies, which frequently deal with forces of evil that either don’t care about human life and or are incapable of even noticing it. A lot of horror deals with creatures or entities that unleash destruction without hate or because it’s personal, in the same way a hurricane floods your house without any understanding that you are a sentient being who deserves not to drown¹⁰. In films like Aliens, for example, is the xenomorph the villain, or is Burke? The former is just behaving as its genetic code instructs. The latter is the one with motivations.

It’s Aunt Gemma all the way down. It’s her shitty code that apparently includes both murder and TikTok dance subroutines, her lack of common sense when it comes to standard product testing and safety, her irritation with being saddled with a mopey, mourning little kid, her checked-out decision making that results in all this death. The one time she connects with Cady on any level beyond shut up and go the fuck to sleep is when she’s showing her the primitive android in her garage, because that allows Gemma to prattle on about her projects and interests¹¹. Somehow I get the impression that if M3gan had simply murdered Gemma immediately the rest of the film would have been a music video of M3gan and Cady dancing and making delicious meals¹².

The distinction between a monster and a villain isn’t always necessary—in most narratives they’re one and the same. That can obscure the real villain when you’re not close-watching a film and you’re just there to enjoy the murderous android hijinx (are there any other kind of android hijinx¹³?). But knowing that M3gan is the monster and not the villain allows you to enjoy her¹⁴. Enjoy her killing people, or at least excuse it the same way I excuse my cat, Prince Harry, when he messily murders some innocent bug or small bird—just like M3gan, it’s just Harry’s nature¹⁵.

Of course, the killer android thing is so obvious now it’s right up there with staying in an obviously haunted house: You can’t watch a movie like this without shouting “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU IDIOTS” at the screen at least twice. I mean, the first time I saw something like a real-life M3gan doll I would set it on fire, then set the house on fire, then begin tramping my way across the country like Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk as the “Lonely Man Theme” played on repeat and I’d never sleep again, convinced that the killer android was coming. Wouldn’t you?

Next week: Everyone on The Bear is good at something and it’s just fun to watch.

1. Costumer Designer Daniel Cruden deserves all the awards for coming up with outfits that ping every instinctual alarm bell in the human psyche.

2. The fact that no one in the film’s universe thinks this doll is creepy AF and insists that it sleep inside a locked safe in another building is the hardest suspension of disbelief lift in the universe.

3. In the same way my lack of pants and constant expression of mild confusion is a feature, not a bug, because it stops people from striking up a conversation with me.

4. Here’s where I admit that if I’d had a murder-capable life-size doll as a kid, my childhood would have gone very, very differently.

5. I experience this every few months when I mix the dregs of all my liquor together into a cocktail I call The Shrug. Sometimes The Shrug is absolutely brilliant, and I have no idea how that happens.

6. That’s my secret, Cap: I never accept responsibility for anything.

7. If we’re making bets on Hollywood celebrities who turn out to be serial killers, Allison Williams is way high on my list.

8. This is also my approach to children, who I regard as feral animals until proved otherwise.

9. This is also the dynamic between me and The Duchess: Make me cry and you will suffer.

10. Or the way I walk right past friends and family in public without acknowledging them because I walk around in a delightful fantasy world all day long. Don’t take it personally, and be assured I am having a marvelous time.

11. One relates. The surefire way to ensure I remember your party fondly is to let me talk about my writing for an hour straight without interruption.

12. Strangely, I would watch this movie.

13. I suppose there could be android sex hijinx, but that’s less horrifying and more … sad.

14. Good thing, too, because Hollywood can’t help ruining a good thing so there will be a sequel.

15. It is also Harry’s nature to ride me around like I’m a draft animal: