Although 2023’s M3GAN doesn’t seem to have much in common with 2016’s Don’t Breathe, M3GAN 2.0 looks likely to pull off a horror franchise trick that the earlier hit series could not achieve. By the time M3GAN’s ending rolled around, the movie’s тιтular robot doll was well and truly destroyed. However, you can’t keep a good horror movie villain down, and, sure enough, the original movie’s unexpected success meant that M3GAN 2.0 was soon announced.
Despite M3GAN’s box office success, it was initially tough to see how the series would justify the тιтle character’s return. After all, M3GAN ended with the killer doll torn to pieces and, even if her AI were somehow rebooted, it was tough to imagine how she would regain access to the original movie’s heroine, Cady. The franchise’s creators came up with an ingenious answer to this plot problem revealed in M3GAN 2.0’s trailer. This time, M3GAN is the unlikely heroine as the original movie’s cast relies on her to stop another, even more lethal super-powered AI.
M3GAN 2.0 and Don’t Breathe 2 Turned The Original Horror Franchise Villains Into Heroes
M3GAN and Don’t Breathe’s Sequels Redeemed Their Iconic Villains
If this approach sounds familiar, that could be because another killer robot horror franchise pulled off this twist before. 1984’s The Terminator depicted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 as a ruthless villain, but when the character proved to be one of the most memorable elements of the original blockbuster, he was reprogrammed to be the hero of 1990’s sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day. However, that is not the only time a franchise tried to pull off this switch with its second outing, and a more recent horror sequel took an approach that was even more similar to M3GAN 2.0’s switch.
2016’s Don’t Breathe was a tense, relentless home invasion horror with a killer twist. Stephen Lang’s blind veteran was the movie’s villain, not its hero, and the clueless criminals breaking into his home were the protagonists. Until Don’t Breathe’s twist ending, viewers could have been forgiven for thinking that Lang’s antihero was more likable than the criminals breaking into his home. However, the movie’s ending revealed that he had taken a drunk driver hostage in his basement after they accidentally killed his daughter years earlier, and was trying to artificially inseminate her to even the score.
Don’t Breathe 2 Failed To Redeem Its Villain (But M3GAN 2.0 Can Pull This Off)
Don’t Breathe’s Villain Was A Far Nastier Character
Both Don’t Breathe and M3GAN were unexpectedly big sleeper hits upon release, and both movies were praised by critics, who admitted that they went in with low expectations. Don’t Breathe’s surprising moral complexity and absurdly tense set-pieces impressed most reviewers, while it was M3GAN’s campy horror and gleefully nasty sense of humor that won over critics. Crucially, however, even M3GAN’s unrated version was nowhere near as unapologetically nasty as Don’t Breathe, which became an issue for the series in its 2021 sequel.
M3GAN was a teenage robot with a sᴀssy atтιтude, whereas Don’t Breathe‘s villain was a rapist.
As such, MEGAN 2.0 is likely to have a more successful time rehabilitating its former villain than 2021’s Don’t Breathe 2. That sequel fared fine at the box office, but alienated critics by turning Lang’s odious villain into a John Wick-style action hero. M3GAN was a teenage robot with a sᴀssy atтιтude, whereas Don’t Breathe‘s villain was a rapist. As such, viewers understandably winced at Don’t Breathe 2’s depiction of Lang’s character as a tough badᴀss who was fighting to protect a young girl, whereas M3GAN 2.0’s reinvention of M3GAN should have no such problems.
Why Don’t Breathe 2 and M3GAN’s Franchise Trajectories Were So Similar
Both Horror Movies Were Unexpected Sleeper Hits
Both M3GAN and Don’t Breathe were much more successful with critics and audiences than their creators anticipated, which made their sequels a challenge. M3GAN cost $12 million and earned a staggering $181 million despite being released in January, which is traditionally a graveyard for releases that aren’t expected to fare well in cinemas. Similarly, Don’t Breathe cost $9.9 million and earned over $157 million, making a sequel a foregone conclusion. While M3GAN 2.0’s story seems like a surprising new direction for the series, this is mostly due to facing the same issue as Don’t Breathe.
In both cases, the sequels took things in a totally new direction to capitalize on the unexpected success of their predecessors. Since Don’t Breathe and M3GAN were such unlikely hits, their sequels could afford to take their respective series in bold new directions. In the case of Don’t Breathe 2, turning the original movie’s villain into an unexpected antihero required a lot more rehabilitation than the sequel offered. However, M3GAN 2.0 can sidestep this mistake thanks to the campier tone of M3GAN, meaning the sequel won’t fall victim to the Don’t Breathe franchise’s curse when the sequel arrives in May.
