Flight of the Hand: How Stunt Coordinator Peng Zhang Created “Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s” Dazzling Ninja Battle

Editor’s Note: The story contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day

“This movie has been one of the best experiences I’ve had,” stunt coordinator and second unit director Peng Zhang tells The Credits about working on Spider-Man: Brand New Day. “The stunt department was very united, and everybody worked together very, very well.” A tightly knit team wasn’t the only requirement for Destin Daniel Cretton’s record-setting blockbuster that sees Tom Holland’s web-slinger clash with foes old and new to save New York City. The real assignment was choreographing action that carried the story without letting the audience feel the machinery behind it.

“We did talk about how to make this a grounded action film,” says Zhang, who worked with Cretton on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the Disney+ series Wonder Man. “We built up a lot of movement for Spider-Man based on it feeling like a Spider-Man move. We didn’t want to rely on CG.” The trick then was sneaking in cooler moves without making it look like Peter had traded hanging out with MJ (Zendaya) and Jacob (Ned Leeds) for weekends at a kung fu monastery. (The reason MJ and Ned don’t know Peter in Brand New Day is the spell that Doctor Strange cast at the end of No Way Home to erase Peter from their memory to keep them safe.) To keep it fresh, Zhang notes it comes down to the story set pieces. “A human being has two legs and two arms, so all the movements really depend on what kind of concepts we have.”

Those bigger moments came in the way of Spidey slinging through the city to stop a machine-gun firing tank barreling through the streets. One of the sequence’s concussive highlights is when he sees two cars simultaneously hitting the front, flipping through the air, a stunt Zhang mentions almost didn’t make it in. “Everybody wanted to cancel it, but our car team is so excellent. The street we chose is very narrow, and they knew exactly where to land.” Another was Hulk’s arrival. The challenge here was selling the physics of the giant rage monster, who reaches perhaps his most colossal proportions ever in a key sequence in Brand New Day. Instead of solely relying on computer-generated fists flying across the screen, a practical model was built on set so that the weight of every hit had a realistic impact. But the most visually stunning? A showdown between Spider-Man and The Hand, a clan of high-flying ninjas that have fallen under the telepathic control of a certain someone.

“This sequence has some great references behind it. A couple of years ago, I saw a dance show with 20 dancers, and they were all unified as one peacock. I always had it in my mind, maybe I can do an action scene like this, and I never had a chance until Destin brought this up,” says Zhang of the sequence that pits Spider-Man against this swarm of ninja adversaries. “So this is how we came up with these 20 ninjas working as one person, almost like a bird or unifying a phoenix…[an Easter Egg right there, for those super MCU-heads] the center ninja [the character Snow, played by Fan Xiaoshuang] as the head, the others as wings on each side so they are fighting as one thing.”

In shaping the camera language to complement the choreography, second unit “A” camera operator Dan Gamble says, “We are talking about the teamwork in which the ninjas were all working together to attack Spider-Man. These fast, dynamic moves that the stunt team was performing almost meant the camera could slow down a little in these moments. Peng loves creating a three-dimensional action scene where camera and performance change levels, moving around action fast, closing in on the action and repelling wide in one move, and changing heights. This creates perspective in the area it’s happening and makes a pretty amazing action sequence.” 

The biggest challenge was making sure the action expanded the story without leaving audiences feeling like they wandered into another movie. “Because I’ve worked with Destin on projects before, I know how important any action, any shot, and whatever you do, has to be part of the story. So we do a lot of tests because we don’t want to make second unit look like a second unit. We want to make second unit be part of Destin’s movie,” notes Zhang. “It’s very important that the camera style, the pace of the action isn’t standing out, so the communication with Destin was very important to understand what he’s looking for.”

In creating the camera style, Gamble adds, “The operating for that sequence was very different to the rest of the action. This was mainly shot with the Stabileye Arkos, which is a handheld gimbal that allowed me to move fast, slow, high, and low to wrap around the action and reach the specific marks whilst also keeping it smooth. We also had to use techno cranes and the steadicam throughout, but the main star camera-wise was the Arkos.”

The fight only gets worse for Spider-Man, as he absorbs bigger and heavier blows; it escalates to a full-on vertical brawl, giving the stunt team room to create more birdlike visuals. “Each movement is very meaningful, either attacking or defending,” says Zhang. However, the action never loses sight of the story’s deeper concerns, especially the wall-crawler’s internal struggle: his choice between being Peter Parker or Spider-Man.

“We had to tell the story of these weapons having great effect on his powers and strength; the struggle that he feels when he looks up at the guns makes the viewer scared for him,” says Gamble. “We had to show these moments through the camera to tell this story, and that moment when the eyes go black and he stops the sword is huge! The close-up, and his eyes now black, tell us Spider-Man is going to kick ass.” Zhang added, “I think the best part is the way we designed the action to really serve the story well. One thing we both like is a lot of the time we want to represent something by your eye. You see it, you feel it, and you’re impressed with the actual move. It’s not cut, cut, cut, and then you make something.”

The massive effort was pulled off, in part, by Zhang’s team that included stunt coordinators Leonard Woodcock and Marlow Warrington-Mattei, action unit stunt coordinator Christopher Clark Cowan, fight coordinator Xiang Yang Xu, rigging coordinators Dan Brown and Anthony Genova III, vehicle supervisor Kieran Clarke, stunt riggers Ben O’Hanlan, Liam Medlyn, and QuanJun Su, along with 56 stunt performers – Luke Scott and Anthony Baniaga serving as doubles for Spider-Man. 

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in theaters now.

Featured image: Spider-Man battles The Hand in Columbia Pictures SPIDER-MAN™: BRAND NEW DAY.