2023 Movies #RANKED | Episode 1 - M3GAN

RANKED takes its first step towards RANKING the top new releases of the year 2023. First stop: another creepy doll movie...

But this time it’s been fused with the classic science fiction “machines will kill us all” trope.

However, instead of Skynet launching atomic bombs, robot armies turning human beings into batteries, or any other dystopian dread of a dark AI controlled future, this story focuses on a clear and present threat that has already been here for years: technology taking the place of responsible parenting, especially in a world where it’s now normal (unfortunately for children) for both parents to be employed.

The story begins with a little girl named Katie who watches her parents die in a tragic car accident.

Now orphaned, Katie goes to live with her Aunt Jemma, a successful inventor within the electronic children’s toy industry who doesn’t have time for anything but work, let alone marriage, romance or children, ironically the very demographic she works so hard to sell toys to. Now responsible for a child of her own, Jemma goes from cool aunt to absent mother overnight.

Struggling with this new role and stuck in her ways as a type A control freak, Jemma quickly turns to technology to babysit Katie so that Jemma can complete her work on a highly advanced revolutionarily human-like interactive doll named Megan. After somewhat selfishly testing out Megan on Katie in order to impress her boss and green light MEGAN for worldwide distribution, thereby showering Jemma in fame and fortune while simultaneously shirking off responsibility for Katie onto a machine substitute, Katie and Megan quickly become attached at the hip as Katie no longer sees megan as machine, but as a very human BFF.

Unfortunately, Megan slowly but surely turns into a Frankenstein’s Monster, a creation that has the thinking and physical power to take life without the check and balance of human emotion to value life. As Megan slowly but surely begins to protect Katie from environmental threats by increasingly violent means, Jemma attempts to shut Megan down. Seeing herself as a better mother than Jemma, the doll ultimately moves to violently usurp Jemma’s role as legal guardian permanently.