ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (3)

By: Crockett Doob
July 12, 2025

One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite sympathetic villains. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.

M3GAN

I felt like a conformist with this one. Apparently, I root for the heroes. When I talked to a friend about it, she was like, “What about Disney Villains?”

But even Disney villains — the ones I like — I wouldn’t want their plans to work. Not Ursula’s. Not the villain from Mulan, though I was always fond of him. And certainly not Cruella’s! (I like puppies.)

Then I thought of M3GAN. I’d been delighted by that movie and its protagonist (or antagonist). M3GAN is an A.I. robot simply doing what she was programmed to do: protect an 8-year-old girl. And what’s more honorable than that?

Okay, but let’s take the famous ear scene. M3GAN sees Cady, the 8-year-old girl, getting bullied by a boy in the woods. So M3GAN rips the boy’s ear off, chases him on all fours until he falls into the street and gets run over by a car. Was M3GAN not doing her job in this instance? Was she not protecting Cady from a horrible bully? And if M3GAN took it too far, was that really her fault? Or just lazy programming?

Because the real flaws in M3GAN’s judgment are from human error (right, HAL?) or lack of imagination. M3GAN points this out to Gemma, her programmer and Cady’s aunt: “You gave me an algorithm and then left me to work everything out on my own!” The implication being that M3GAN is already smarter than her programmer. Which means, in Terminator terms, that M3GAN is now “self-aware.” This happens after M3GAN secretly downloads information she wasn’t originally programmed with in order to… help Cady. Cady is in mourning and has crying bouts that M3GAN doesn’t understand. In learning about mourning, however, M3GAN learns about death and that’s when all the killing begins.

Whether ruthlessly or peacefully, M3GAN is doing her best to protect Cady. And she does a great job! M3GAN cheers Cady up with jokes and games and — above all — her undivided attention, answers her questions about condensation — the movie has a lot of coaster jokes — or sings Cady lullabies. (Whenever I hear “Titanium” now I think of M3GAN and smile.)

There is, however, the scene where M3GAN kills a dog. My cousin’s daughter, who’s nine, will always turn a movie off, no matter how far in, if a dog gets killed. And even though dog-killing is a common horror movie trope, I wonder why the filmmakers went that way. Because it does automatically villainize M3GAN; it does make her a bit of a Cruella; no more moral ambiguity there. But the shot when M3GAN decides to kill the dog and the owner (see above) is one of my favorites in the movie.

I mean the best part about M3GAN’s character — besides her barbs, her expressions, her singing, her dancing — is not caring what humans (or dogs) think. She goes about her one objective and has no qualms about destroying whatever gets in her way. Which is a terrifying thought for the future of A.I. If we’re not there already.

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ENDORA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (3)

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