I don't really remember a time in my childhood that was dominated by toys: Sure I had a Barney doll and some animal toys as a really young kid, but I didn't do anything with them except make the purple dinosaur and the brown bear fight each other, which explains my later-in-life infatuation with mixed martial arts and combat sports. I think I just skipped the whole toy phase and went straight towards liking ball sports and board games, or cards, then video games and TV. Even now I don't see much that a kid in the 1990's could have done with toys, especially toy dolls and action figures: they can't really move, there's only so much a kid can imagine with the toys until the TV version that talks and flies around is better. And nowadays, with the Internet, smartphones, iPads, and screens everywhere? Forget it, I really have to wonder how Mattel and Hasbro can stay in business with their predominantly toy-based businesses. Even as a camp counselor at a summer camp, my job was to create games and activities, sing songs with kids as young as 4 or 5 years old all the way up to 9-10 when they'd totally phased out toys, I really didn't see toys as necessary towards having a good time for these kids.
The movie M3GAN kind of changed my understanding a little bit as to the attachment a child can have towards a toy, and how toys can develop over time. The movie is about a creepy blonde-looking AI doll (looks kind of like the Olsen twins) who can respond to how its assigned child is doing, whether the child is sad, happy, looking for advice, spout science facts, etc., but eventually the AI becomes too obsessive and controlling and intent on removing all threats to the child. It's more of a Terminator-like movie warning about the dangers of reliance on AI and future of robots, except M3GAN is much creepier than the actual Terminator, who you knew was a bad guy just from the red eyes and robot skull (and even in the human form Arnold Schwarzenegger looks pretty intimidating), whereas robot M3GAN was designed to look sweet and comforting to a child, but in the way that clowns and evil dolls (like the Bride of Chucky), it gets turned around in drastic ways. Especially with the real-life ChatGBT coming out over the holidays along with the M3GAN movie release, it's a good time for everyone to understand what the role of robotics and AI will have in our lives, and how to put limits on AI so that they don't consume our lives (a big theme of M3GAN was how AI could replace the parental role for a child where eventually parents won't be needed anymore- I haven't finished the movie yet) which I'm sure parents are already feeling now with losing the war of attention to screens, where kids can get everything they need on their phones, even emotional support and science facts as to why water forms on the outside of a cup of water even though it's not coming from inside the cup.
Ultimately, the horror and scariness of M3GAN didn't ring 100% true to me because of the whole "kids don't have toys nowadays" thing. (Maybe different people have different backgrounds, maybe girls growing up have more inclination to bond with a toy doll). It's a good thing for the Toy Story movie series that it wrapped up all 4 of its movies last decade, because I think toys have seen their last hurrah (I can't imagine a boy nowadays loving cowboys and astronauts and slinky dogs for much more than just a year when there are real cowboys and astronauts they can interact or be like on screen). The real horror of M3GAN is the impact of AI, and the doll's villain role could easily be seen as the smartphone in our current society: when kids rely 100% on AI, will they need food? Need schools to learn? Need parents to tell them what to do? That's the real horrifying thought, scarier than the movie ever could be.
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