Although the automatic correlation to make with M3GAN is that it’s a mere pale imitation of the Child’s Play movies (particularly the 2019 one), at the core of the story is “the Baby Boom narrative.” Directed by Gerard Johnstone and written by Akela Cooper, M3GAN wields the same Nancy Meyers trope established in this seminal 1987 film from her oeuvre. One that screenwriters Jack Amiel and Michael Begler would also emulate in the 2004 Garry Marshall-directed film, Raising Helen. In Baby Boom, the career woman at the center of the story who suddenly gets an unexpected child plopped in her lap is J. C. Wiatt (Diane Keaton). As a high-powered management consultant, this is the last thing she could possibly want or need. The same goes for her investment banker boyfriend, Steven Buchner (Harold Ramis), who has as little interest in the burden of a child as J. C. (deemed, offensively, “the Tiger Lady” at her workplace—because any successful woman would be given such a belittling nickname, no?).
The “bequest” of the child, named Elizabeth, came from a distant cousin. And, as such, J. C. feels no real sense of obligation or guilt about giving her up… at first. Naturally, as this is a Charles Shyer-Nancy Meyers movie, J. C. finds herself growing quickly attached to Elizabeth despite her lack of maternal aptitude, as well as the upheaval this baby is causing in J. C.’s professional life. Not to mention her romantic one, for when she tells Steven she wants to keep the baby (“Papa Don’t Preach”-style), he essentially says, “Fuck that, I’m out.” Nonetheless, it’s an “amicable” split and J. C. goes about the grueling task of balancing the dual roles of mother and supposedly indispensable employee, which is something women have been expected to manage ever since “equality” became “a thing.” A “rock n’ roll, deal with it” attitude foisted upon women by the men who aren’t expected to perform any such feat (except in “comedic” 80s movies like Mr. Mom and Three Men and a Baby).
Well, J. C. isn’t quite “dealing with it”—not in the way her boss, Fritz Curtis (Sam Wanamaker), finds satisfactory anyway. The same goes for David Lin (Ronny Chieng), the boss of star roboticist/toymaker Gemma (Allison Williams) in M3GAN (a.k.a. Model 3 Generative Android). Except David’s dissatisfaction is expressed before the arrival of an unwanted and unexpected child in Gemma’s life: her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw). While she’s supposed to be perfecting a new prototype for Perpetual Petz (sort of like a Giga Pets concept meets a Furby aesthetic, but far more sinister), she has instead been working on a more advanced project in the form of Megan, an AI-powered doll that blows up right in her face (literally) when she’s caught by David running tests on it with her coworkers and collaborators, Tess (Jen Van Epps) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez). Having secretly spent one hundred thousand dollars of company money to work on it, Gemma drops further down the workplace shit list when her now-deceased sister leaves her only child in Gemma’s care right at this time.
Indeed, just as it was in Raising Helen, Cady’s parents die in a car crash. In such a way, mind you, that gives one cause to believe that their stupidity in not putting chains on their tires might have been Darwinism at work, if you catch one’s drift. At least in Lindsay (Felicity Huffman) and Paul Davis’ (Sean O’Bryan) case, it wasn’t their fault they were mowed down by another car (minding their own business when another vehicle jumped the center divide and crashed into them). In Cady’s parents’ case, it definitely was, as they chose to remain at a standstill in a snowstorm without pulling over to the side of the road. Cady, who was in the backseat trying to take her seatbelt off to save her Perpetual Pet, remains unscathed. And yes, her unhealthy attachment to an inanimate object is far more disturbing than the one Helen Harris’ (Kate Hudson) youngest niece, Sarah (Abigail Breslin), has to a hippo stuffed animal (named, what else, Hippo). In truth, her clinginess to this simple, “analog” hippo smacks of a far simpler time, when AI wasn’t a factor in the manufacture of “toys.” Now merely tech devices in disguise. That Gemma was the one who gifted the Perpetual Pet (which, as mentioned, she designed herself for Funki, the Seattle-based toy company where she works) to Cady not only indicates that she had no idea how annoying it would be to a parent subjected to it, but also serves as a foreshadowing of the Frankenstein to come. For that’s what Megan is: a monstrous creature of Gemma’s own making.
And yet, she might not ever have continued focusing on the project were it not for the unwitting urging of Cady, who sees another prototype named Bruce from Gemma’s college-era robotics days and regards its capabilities in awe. When Gemma explains that advanced toys like these are impossible to market because of how expensive they would retail, Cady off-handedly notes, “If I had a toy like that, I don’t think I would ever need another one.” Bring on the “determined” scene of Gemma magically being able to finish her creation anew (no explanation as to where she suddenly got all the “extra” supplies to do it). And voilà, Megan. An Olsen twin-looking creep (though Johnstone stated she was meant to be modeled after a combination of Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Audrey Hepburn and Peggy Lipton). But Cady seems to like her. Mainly because she’s far more interested in paying attention to Cady than Gemma is—still set in her “selfish” (i.e., liberated) ways to the point where we’re given a scene of Gemma and Cady sitting across the table from one another with the latter totally desperate to be noticed by her aunt as she concentrates on some work through her phone—a total inverse of the dynamic we’ve become accustomed to seeing between parent and child. Or “guardian” and child. But it is Megan who swiftly takes over the role of caretaker for Gemma, who really can’t be bothered. Sure, she had the chance to foist Cady onto her grandparents in Florida (Helen’s nieces and nephew also have grandparents in Florida, theirs in Miami as opposed to Jacksonville), but perhaps we’re supposed to believe something like guilt was too powerful of an emotion for her to do such a thing. So yeah, Megan turns out to be a great unpaid nanny to pick up the slack where Gemma can’t (read: doesn’t want to).
It is Tess who is the one to point out to Gemma that, if Megan is doing all the parenting, what are the moral implications of this “toy”? What’s the purpose of being a parent at all if you’re just going to have “someone else” do the job for you? Here, the same old guilt trip is reinstated for women who would dare to think they could “have it all.” But, as usual, they must eventually choose. Granted, at least in M3GAN, some sign of “progress” has been shown in that Gemma’s boss seems totally uninterested in Gemma’s new status as “Mom,” so much as the dollar signs the kid is providing by becoming a test subject with Megan, “pairing” with her (like any device does), as it were, so that Gemma can collect as much data as possible before rolling out the product to the public. In contrast, the bosses in Baby Boom and Raising Helen are utterly vexed by the plight of juggling motherhood with work. For, just as J. C. is expected to magically make her situation “work,” so is Helen, with no understanding from her Miranda Priestly-esque boss, Dominique (Helen Mirren). The Dominique in Dominique Modeling Agency where Helen serves as her assistant a.k.a. right-hand woman. A role that has become increasingly difficult to uphold with three kids to consider. Dominique is especially horrified when Helen dares to bring the trio to a fashion show, sucking all the glamor out of the front row. When Helen subsequently causes one of the agency’s top models, Martina (Amber Valletta), to get her face covered in permanent marker by the kids at Sarah’s school, it’s the final straw for Dominique. She cannot fucking deal with this “I have a kid to consider now” bullshit anymore. That’s how Gemma herself feels, a sentiment that eventually extends to Megan as she becomes just another “child” to concern herself over—what with Megan interpreting Gemma’s instruction to “protect Cady” as license to kill whoever she deems a threat.
With the “doll” having transmuted into a serial killer, Gemma accepts that such a “toy” (slated to sell for ten thousand dollars a pop) can’t be released. But her revelations are too little, too late, with David in full-tilt launch party mode and Cady so addicted to her “best friend” that she acts like a heroin addict in withdrawal when Gemma takes Megan away from her to try “troubleshooting.” Having been so focused on not wanting Cady to be sad (therefore, not feel anything at all) by distracting her with Megan, when Cady tells her she needs the “doll” back because she doesn’t feel so awful when Megan’s around, Gemma has the epiphany, “You’re supposed to feel this way. The worst thing that could have happened to you happened.” As it did for the Davis children in Raising Helen. By the same token, these children losing their parents is also the worst thing that could have happened to the free-spirited, independent woman forced to take them on. At one moment in Raising Helen, she demands of her potential love interest, “Pastor Dan” (John Corbett), “Do you have any idea what this has done to my life?” Pastor Dan retorts, “Do you have any idea what it’s done to theirs?” Because no, there is not supposed to be any empathy for the woman in such a scenario who, for all intents and purposes, gets fucked over with this responsibility, but instead for the children who end up “stuck” with her.
Raising Helen is the only film of the three that wants us to briefly believe that Helen might have actually come to her senses and embraced who she is as a person by forking the children over to her more responsible sister, Jenny (Joan Cusack). Afterward, Dominique “joyfully” (or as much joy as the plastic surgery will allow her to express) welcomes Helen back, noting, “Ibsen wrote, ‘Not all women are meant to be mothers.’” And yet, in Movie World, of course they are. That’s the message that always gets reiterated: no woman is so “heartless” a.k.a. career-oriented that she wouldn’t soon realize that the “reward” of having a child far outweighs any sense of gratification she might have gotten in her job. Even someone as overtly single-minded and self-oriented as Gemma.
This, too, is why, upon briefly going back to her old life toward the end of Raising Helen’s third act, Helen suddenly fathoms that it doesn’t “fit” her anymore. So we cue the scene of her half-heartedly clubbing while looking completely empty inside before she begs Jenny to let her have the kids back. Similarly, Gemma dips out on the launch David has been planning so that she can keep Cady separated from Megan and reestablish herself as the “dominant force” that Cady should be attaching to in the wake of her parents’ death—not some killer robot. A forced attachment that conveniently comes just in time for Gemma to be spared from getting passed over by Cady in favor of a non-human.
Now that she’s fully committed to motherhood with no AI help, perhaps we can try to naively believe that Gemma will be able to carry on with her work as before, even getting plenty of useful tips on successful toymaking from an actual child. But, in the end, she’ll sacrifice in the same manner as J. C. and Helen, all while telling herself that the “job” of making Cady her top priority is far more important and worthwhile. Thus, the filmic method for brainwashing the last “holdouts” against motherhood continues. Even in something as ostensibly un-romantic-comedyesque as M3GAN—for there are now more “covert” ways to sell motherhood to single, job-loving women: through techno-horror-comedy.
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