Throughout the millennia, we have idealised a mother’s love, holding up this devotion as the height of feminine virtue. M3GAN takes the ideal to its extreme, before demanding to know why we’re so afraid of the thing we allegedly hold so dear – she may be made of silicon and microchips, but her mama bear ferocity is not a technological quirk. It is something we come to expect and, at the same time, fear in real women.

This gendered fear runs throughout the film, as feminine ideals are juxtaposed with dangerous reality. Four-feet tall and designed to look like a tween girl, M3GAN comfortably fits in with a virgin mother archetype: a caregiver uncomplicated by adult sexuality, the innocence of girlhood as guaranteed as her dedication to her ward.

Over the course of the movie, though, the sanctity of this pure, maternal love – one of the old-fashioned values we have held on to in these modern times – is perverted. Her efficient, single-minded devotion becomes something repellent. It delivers bad results, and it needs to be moderated. We scoff at her understanding of love, the same way we sneer at overbearing “helicopter parents” who would organise away their children’s lives.

How M3GAN explores our fear of the OG fangirl (aka a girl’s eternal devotion)