A few years ago, the younger members of society, who are called "Generation Z", boasted that they are the only ones who truly understand the modern world. The children of this generation, born at the beginning of the millennium until 2010, today we see them losing part of this imagined status with the advent of a new generation, the "alpha generation" of The post-2010s may look like kids, but they've already become an economic driving force in the world of entertainment.
And at the end of 2022, the new horror movie “Megan” (M3GAN) was released, with its title written in a way that combines letters and numbers, which is the method that new generations follow to facilitate the exchange of messages, but that is not the only evidence of an attempt to work on addressing adolescents and young adults, as the entire movie is part of a movement A new Hollywood woman wants to pull the rug from the electronic platforms and return Geely Z and Alpha to the cinemas, but using these platforms.
#M3GAN killer doll dance pic.twitter.com/UaY6MwuZG0
— 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝗿 (@_UniHorror) January 10, 2023
The horror of the Tik Tok generation
Megan is a killer doll with a length of only 4 feet, but for the producers of the movie that bore her name, it brought them revenues of nearly 100 million dollars, in front of a budget of only 12 million, and quickly this "Megan" became the latest addition to the world of horror, the "Frankenstein" monster of the iPad generation, A new horror icon, different from what their parents feared, such as the "Chucky" doll and others.
But just as in decades past, the fate of this modern monster rests in the hands of thrill-seeking teens, which means older horror fans may have to accept the fact that while new scary icons can still be made, they never will be. As in the past, it is time for children to have a say in shaping their nightmares, even if their means of expressing it is through short TikTok videos.
The film begins with Gemma, played by Allison Williams, a robotic engineer and game designer who takes care of her 7-year-old orphan niece Cady, and tries to form an emotional bond between them despite her constant preoccupation with her work. To help her, she works on a model for an Android doll called Megan. To provide the child with the protection and care she needs, but this assistance quickly becomes dangerous and has a special intelligence that threatens everyone around her.
The makers of the movie "Megan" did not come up with anything new in the world of horror of killer dolls. Most moviegoers have knowledge of this genre, and have watched at least clips from previous famous films, and therefore it excludes older viewers who have seen all that before, but for younger audiences. Chucky and his dolls are signs of an earlier generation.
The doll "Meghan" deals specifically with a generation that grew up on the constraints of screen time, iPads, TikTok dances and popular trends, and this movie provides a summary of their behavior and the way they see the world.
Amie Donald (M3gan) and Violet McGraw doing The M3gan Dance.
From: violetmcgraw IG.
pic.twitter.com/euHjLLbfTt
— Noc Star (@evancerclade) January 11, 2023
pre-script marketing
In 2021, a horror movie called “Malignant” was released, which did not achieve revenues that matched its budget with its cinematic presentation, but the situation changed completely by showing it on the “HBO Max” platform, so by the end of the first month of the electronic presentation, I watched the movie more From 1.6 million American households not to mention the rest of the world.
And one of the most important reasons for the spread of the film is the use of social media to promote it, and the appearance of short clips of it on Tik Tok, Instagram and Facebook, showing distinctive and rapidly spreading clips from it.
The film's producers learned the lesson and applied it quickly. Before its release, marketing for the film began and included designing a set of video clips and publishing them on highly interactive communication accounts. The campaign began through marketing companies and not ordinary users, while betting that this method would attract spectators, which is what actually happened.
The second point that indicates the extent of the ability of the teenage generation as an economic segment to control works of art is the classification of the movie "Megan" in the category of "PG-13", but the rating of the film was lowered after showing its first teaser and proving its reach to teenagers. , and therefore had to be made lighter so that they could cut tickets, and screenwriter Akeelah Cooper told the Los Angeles Times that her original movie had more terrifying and bloody scenes.
Some of the most famous horror films are rated R, meaning for adults only, such as the Saw series and The Conjuring, and this rating did not prevent films such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. of becoming iconic.
🚨 A #M3GAN sequel is officially in the works.
pic.twitter.com/PD11WzlpTU
— 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝗿 (@_UniHorror) January 10, 2023
At its core, “Megan” revolves around young people and their attachment to technology that may become fatal. The Android digital doll becomes a metaphor for the iPad and mobile phones that eliminate human interactions in favor of paying attention to the number of likes at the expense of communication sites. The film represents an invitation to reflect on the impact of technological addiction. On the emotional pathways of the brain.
But the film, during its attempt to revolutionize this electronic addiction, fell into its trap, exploited it to market itself, changed its details and deleted scenes in order to fit exactly with the requirements of the target audience, so it became closer to a mathematical process than to a work of art that expresses the vision of its owners.
The necessary question here: Is changing the classification of a movie or cutting it for the purpose of marketing through TikTok only first steps, and in the future we will see films that write scenarios from the ground up through artificial intelligence that anticipates the requirements of the largest possible segment of viewers?