Upon reflection, there were evident warning signs about “M3GAN 2.0.” The most notable was that Akela Cooper, the screenwriter of the original “M3GAN” movie, is no longer participating. Initially, she was attached as a writer for the sequel’s production, but her role in the final film has been minimized to a “story by” credit, which she shares with Gerard Johnstone. Johnstone, who directed but did not write the first “M3GAN,” is credited solely for the screenplay of the sequel.

While I can’t say for certain why Cooper departed “M3GAN 2.0,” I can highlight that she is a perceptive critic of the current AI trend. Her perspective was what made the first “M3GAN” far more insightful than a typical campy killer doll movie needed to be. Consider that the series’ production company, Blumhouse, is collaborating with Meta on AI movies and recently hosted special screenings of “M3GAN” where audiences could engage with a chatbot version of M3GAN (portrayed by Amie Donald and the voice of Jenna Davis) via their phones.

Given this context, and considering the content of “M3GAN 2.0” itself, it’s quite easy to surmise what may have occurred behind the scenes. If the first “M3GAN” was a “Don’t Create The Torment Nexus” narrative, its sequel seems to serve as Torment Nexus propaganda. In today’s scenario of Big Tech marketing detrimental AI tools as unavoidable, the movie’s message could actually be detrimental — a point that might be overlooked if it was more entertaining. Unfortunately, it may be the most disappointing sequel since “Wonder Woman 1984.”

On paper, “M3GAN 2.0” has some solid storytelling instincts. It picks up the sequel teases from the ending of the first “M3GAN” – M3GAN’s body’s been destroyed but her AI has escaped into Gemma (Allison Williams) and Cady’s (Violet McGraw) smart home and her schematics have been stolen. Of course an even more dangerous robot — AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) — is gonna get built with those schematics, and of course they’re gonna have to bring our favorite sassy dancing killer back to fight the new threat. As sequel pitches go, “the ‘Spy Kids 2’ version of ‘Terminator 2′” ain’t a terrible one.

In practice, that “Terminator 2” set-up becomes a bit of a mess. AMELIA has a few satisfying kills early on but can’t hope to match the intimidation of Robert Patrick’s T-1000. She also ends up weirdly less important than you’d expect, with a plot piling on multiple twist villains. One of the twist villains is so stupid that it could have been funny, if not for the distraction of the hideously miscalculated decision behind the other group of twist villains.

The genre switch-up to an action movie comes with a complete abandonment of the funhouse horror elements that were key to the first movie’s success. AMELIA has a creepy walk in her introduction scene — a scene that’s scary for unintended reasons given it takes place amidst war in Iran — and there’s some mild spookiness when M3GAN makes her presence within the smart house known, but otherwise this movie is absent any attempt at scares. Inevitable disappointment from fans of the original could have been mitigated if the fight scenes taking the horror’s place were any good. They’re not.

Of course, the appeal of “M3GAN” arguably rested more on its humor than its horror, and “M3GAN 2.0” does make an effort for laughs. Sometimes it succeeds — Jemaine Clement is hilarious in a minor role as an Elon Musk-type tech billionaire, and M3GAN herself retains her amusing sassiness (including some choice deployment of her limited PG-13 F-bombs). But a lot of the jokes are old. We’ve already seen M3GAN dance; when she dances again, what was effortlessly camp the first time now feels cheap and obligatory. We’ve already heard M3GAN sing; when she sings this time, the song choice is funny but the gag runs too long. There’s also a dispiriting meanness to a lot of the writing — it’s one thing for M3GAN to insult everyone, but giving Cady the same attitude is just annoying.

“M3GAN 2.0” is too tiring to sustain enough laughter for even an ironic recommendation. It’s 18 minutes longer than the first movie but feels even longer than that. The final act is such a huge thematic and storytelling misfire that whatever redeeming value could be found in earlier parts of the movie is overshadowed by the frustrations of a sequel that not only rejects the original’s message but actively tries to shame anyone who agreed with said message. Universal seems to be banking on the camp factor turning “M3GAN 2.0” into a Pride Month blockbuster, and in a year where corporations are largely turning away from supporting the LGBTQ+ community, I want to be happy someone’s at least trying to market to us, but doing it with this movie feels almost like a hate crime.

All the nonsense around AI in the real world hasn’t killed my fondness for fictional robots. Good stories about sympathetic robots are really human stories — stories of people who process the world differently (“Murderbot,” Data in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”), of people who aren’t treated as fully human (“Ex Machina,” “Blade Runner”), of people’s conflicts between free will and following expected “programming” (“The Iron Giant,” “The Wild Robot”). It was totally possible to do a “M3GAN’s the hero now” movie without turning into propaganda for the real world AI evangelists. So it pains me to say that the team behind “M3GAN 2.0” has failed in that task.

“M3GAN 2.0” opens in theaters on June 27.