5 hours ago
2
No one likes a try hard.
Despite creating the viral dance scene for “M3GAN,” director Gerard Johnstone exclusively told The Post that he didn’t try to replicate that when making the new sequel.
“The point of the first movie was to kind of suggest to the world maybe we shouldn’t be on TikTok and Instagram all the time, and maybe we should spend more time with our children,” Johnstone explained. “So the fact that it blew up on Instagram was really fun, but it was kind of like a bit of a two-edged sword.”
“Look, as a creative person and as a person who thinks of movies as art, I want the movie to sell, but I don’t like making a movie to sell if that makes any sense,” the filmmaker continued.
“I don’t think about things that will become viral. I think if you pander, audiences can sniff it out. So I never wanted to do that.”
However, Johnstone wanted certain scenes in “M3GAN 2.0” — namely the moment where M3GAN sings the Kate Bush song “This Woman’s Work” to Gemma (Allison Williams) — to stick out to the audience.
“People love the dance so much, and they love the song so much. I knew that I had to do those two things,” he said, “but I had do it in a way that no one is expecting.”
Johnstone also spoke about how the sequel has a different balance of horror and comedy than the original.
“The movie has a certain tone and a certain character to it,” he shared. “And I think obviously this one leans much more comedy than the first one did and makes no apologies for that. But when you have M3GAN stepping out of the shadows and now she’s front and center… by the time Gemma traps M3GAN in this toy robot, we know what movie we’re in.
“But at the same time,” Johnstone continued, “I think the jokes are always that much better when you tell them with a straight face. You’re always writing sort of a fine line between kind of tension and comedy and not doing anything that goes too far and sort of steps over that line and goes into farce.”
M3GAN, now turned to the good side to defeat a new killer robot named AMELIA, has no shortage of iconic moments in the sequel. But one scene in particular stands out to Johnstone.
“I don’t know if this was one is my favorite, but the one that comes to mind is the mechanical M3GAN scene,” the director told The Post.
“I think it’s a really sweet, kind of heartwarming scene. It’s when Violet [McGraw]’s kind of getting to the heart of the unresolved issues she has around M3GAN and questions whether or not M3GAN does really love her or she’s just a program carrying out its objective and she’s a bunch of ones and zeros.”
“The idea for mechanical M3GAN was a really late addition to the script,” Johnstone revealed.
“It was not there initially, and it was only in pre-production I had this idea that if M3GAN really wants to get a body and needs Gemma to get her body, we should see why. And it turns out she can’t do this on her own, and the version she’s in is quite ridiculous. So yeah, that was a fun, magical scene to do.”
Johnstone said Williams’ final monologue about the relationship between humans and technology was an important element of the movie, as well.
“That’s why it is so gratifying to make these movies because they do sort of exist on one track,” he explained. “On one track, it’s just like absolutely pure popcorn entertainment and on the other, it is getting to say something about the times that we’re living. It’ll be awesome if people do sort of take that away with them.”
“M3GAN 2.0” is in theaters now.
English (US)