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M3GAN levels up for her return to the big screen, and her high-tech wardrobe had to match.
Costume designer Jeriana San Juan rose to the challenge for M3GAN 2.0, taking on a mission to preserve the killer robot’s sassy personality that was cemented in the original, which became a viral sensation in 2022.
“It really was about expanding and maturing that image a bit. In the first film, she’s designed as a doll, as a robot companion for a little girl,” San Juan tells PEOPLE. “How is M3GAN going to mature was really at the forefront of our questions. It was just an incredible adventure and so fun.”
The project was unlike other assignments for the Emmy-nominated costumer, known for her work on films like On Swift Horses and The Mother, plus series like Halston and The Sinner.
Says San Juan, “When I work with actors to develop costumes, it’s so much of a conversation and collaboration between performer and director. But creating M3GAN, in a lot of ways, there was no input from a performer. That was a unique thing in creating this.”
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Read on for San Juan’s breakdown of M3GAN 2.0’s flashiest fashion moments, and discover more about the highly anticipated sequel with exclusive content only on the PEOPLE App.
Training Jump Suit
During a training sequence midway through the film, M3GAN sports a blue jump suit to practice her Wing Chun moves.
“The inspiration for that really came from ’70s Kung Fu movies,” says San Juan. For the character’s first outfit of the movie, it “really was a way to start the reinvention of M3GAN by reinterpreting the stripe in her bow from the first movie and turning it into an athletic stripe that runs down the side of her jumpsuit. It was a way to pop off with a whole new vibe.”
Cyberpunk Disguise
For the sequence in which M3GAN has to infiltrate a tech convention, she goes undercover as one of the dancing performers. A robot disguised as a human dressed as a robot — keep up with us!
“It’s meant to be this super-meta statement about what humans think robots look like,” says San Juan. “We wanted it to feel a little kind of clunky and obtuse and sort of a vision of the future in a retro way.”
The designer pulled references from Robocop and The Jetsons, plus late-’80s and ’90s Mugler for the look.
“I wanted to go to town with the concept of something that kind of fetishizes technology on some level. And my mind went to those late-’90s Mac bubble computers and the see-through tech of the Y2K moment.”
The pink surfaces shows a system of circuit boards and microchips underneath — which actually worked and ran on a battery. San Juan says the costume is “probably more complex than even a Marvel superhero” outfit.
“We could remotely control how bright or dim it became because it’s a circuit board of lights that’s working underneath the surface,” she says. “Then it also had to be able to fight and jump and take a hard fall and had to be worn by the many M3GAN [actresses].”
BASE-Jumping Wing Suit
“Do not try this one at home,” warns San Juan of the daredevil BASE-jumping wing suit. “This one was designed just for the movies. People will not be able to fly if they recreate this.”
“We had initially designed all sorts of crazy campy things. The reason this became a navy blue wing suit is ultimately because we wanted to ride this very nice edge between realistic horror and comedy. It’s a very careful balance,” says San Juan. “And in this moment of this A.I. robot teenage doll jumping off of a mountain, the idea of her ultimately dressing for tactical function and being able to disguise herself at night by it being a dark blue and blend into the sky was really what drove it.”
Still, San Juan was able to “get a little campy” with the goggles, which she calls “fun, blown-out and ’60s-looking.” The glasses are “one-of-a-kind, for sure.”
Finale Cat Suit
For M3GAN’s final showdown with her advanced A.I. nemesis AMELIA, she dons a leather cat suit, similar to a motorcycle suit — and complete with a set of six-pack abs.
The team wanted something that “felt very badass and formidable. Something that feels like it supports her on a tactical level to optimize her movement and what she’s meant to do, but also sort of incidentally be cool.”
“The side panels are treated with this kind of smocking effects to accordion the fabric so it sort of makes sense that a robot would be able to pull this on,” says San Juan, who adds that she took inspo from ’60s and ’70s sci-fi looks.
“And I did indulge in the little abs. Her quilted abs were a way to just throw a little kick of style meets function,” she says. “She’s a badass and she’s tough.”
AMELIA’s Final Robot Look
Retro futurism and cars from the 1960s shaped the aesthetic of AMELIA’s robot embodiment.
Additionally, “the idea of making her chrome and following these art deco lines was really the goal, to create something that feels futuristic but also sort of nostalgic at the same moment. The clear visor and the ears and the shape of her head really came out of incorporating those ideas.”
Oh, and she’s got spring-loaded wedges on her heels. Where’d that come from? San Juan literally asked an artificial intelligence bot what it would wear.
“One of my first things I did for this project was find a way to get on A.I. and ask it what it would wear if it was human,” she says. “Its answer to me was ultimately that it would optimize movement as much as possible to achieve its objective. It talked about wearing shoes that would optimize running and walking. So these shoes really were inspired by this idea that her heel would have a spring so that when she ran, she would be able to spring forward and run faster than any human ever could.”
M3GAN 2.0 is in theaters now.