Allison Williams | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

The new movie M3GAN – is about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Robotics. The science fiction story of this film is rather ridiculous, formulaic and of course, we have seen this before many times. But the special effects of the 4-foot robot doll are exceptionally well done, which is why this movie is getting ratings as high as 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. This movie is also arriving at the right time, with the release of the amazing new AI website ChatGPT and some years ago the release of the AI Chess playing engine called Alpha Zero (developed by Google) – that taught itself to play chess by playing 40,000 games against itself and then easily defeated the top Chess playing engine in the world Stockfish. Alpha Zero is the most impressive AI software ever created.

AI software is here to stay and the long-time worry has always been that when a machine’s ability to learn and teach itself becomes dangerous to humanity. The thoughts about machines going rogue and destroying the world have been a topic of science fiction books and movies for decades – the most popular being the Terminator movie series. The story of M3GAN is about a toy manufacturer who is making inroads toward making more sophisticated talking dolls and unfortunately, this doll goes on a murderous tirade – which is the part we have all seen before.

M3GAN stars Alison Williams who is the genius AI robot inventor and employee of this Toy company. At the start, the unlikely possibility that a Toy company would be making huge inroads into AI and Robots is one flaw in this screenplay. The rest of this story, which involves a young girl who lost her parents in a car accident at the beginning of the movie, and then lives with the sister of her mother, played by Williams is an idea that has been done way too many times. For this reason, I am surprised at the very high ratings for this film, despite the special effects.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for M3GAN are too high 93%, with my rating only 80% and a modest recommendation.

A small plane, 2 passengers, then the pilot has a heart attack and dies. How many times has this idea been written into movies or TV shows over the years. Too many. When you get on a small plane with one pilot the odds of a tragedy are greatly increased – mainly because if the pilot can no longer fly the plane, all the passengers are doomed. Then add the danger of getting on any small plane.

The new on demand movie “Horizon Line” stars Alison Williams as Sara, Keith David as the pilot and an unknown actor Alexander Dreymon as Jackson – a name you hear screamed far too often in this movie by Sara. There is very little story here other than some up front dialogue and a trip somewhere in the Pacific in a small passenger plane, that most people would never get on in the first place. Where this film fails miserably is there are far too many scenes after the pilot dies, that nobody in the world would ever try. Nobody would have the courage to climb to the outside of a plane, tethered by a rope. Nobody would climb to the top of of a small plane like this for any reason. Not only would nobody ever try to do things this stupid, but these tasks, even in a desperate attempt to save lives are not even physically possible. So why make this movie, where the 2 main characters are so dumb?

Once again there is far too much smoking in this movie by Sara and Jackson, something I find very annoying every time I see it. This practice should be banned.

Save your money and miss this mess. I agree with the very low 4.6 rating on IMDB.