Spider-Man: Brand New Day Actually Choreographed Fights for Those Villain Montage Moments [EXCLUSIVE]
Jean Grey is the main antagonist in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but before he crosses paths with the mutant, Peter Parker encounters a cornucopia of Marvel Comics villains. Many of these battles are depicted in a montage sequence early in the film, giving audiences a taste of what Spider-Man has been up to since the emotional ending of No Way Home. The montage is a visually stunning way of reacclimating moviegoers to Spidey’s corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even recreating classic covers from the Marvel vault. Though these fights are only on screen for a few brief moments, the filmmakers went the extra mile when staging them during production.
In an interview with ComicBook, Peng Zhang, the second unit director and stunt coordinator on Brand New Day explained how they filmed the villain montage, saying that the moments highlighted in the film are from the script, but “we can’t really shoot a still image.” He continued, “So we want to make sure that moment is blending into our action. So as you can see, all those montage moments are not freezing, just posing … So when we did it, we always choreographed a fight so that moment is a part of it. So that way, even as we are using a very short amount of the screen time, you still believe that every move makes sense.”
Zhang added, “Actually, for me, that’s actually one of the hardest parts to do it. Because you can just pose it and you don’t believe that’s real. And then sometimes we do something like really, really cool, but you’re still missing that moment.”
Brand New Day‘s Approach to the Villain Montage Paid Off
It undoubtedly took a lot of time and effort to put together the villain montage in Brand New Day. If each fight was choreographed, that means the team essentially designed a mini set piece that would only be on screen for a handful of seconds at most. It’s challenging enough to choreograph something like Spider-Man’s fight against The Hand or showdown against the Hulk, but those are at least substantial scenes within the context of the movie. The villain montage was just a fun bit included to highlight the four-year time jump between No Way Home and Brand New Day and include as many Marvel Easter eggs as possible. Knowing it’d make up such a small part of the run time, the filmmakers could have looked for an easy way out, but they knew that wouldn’t be the right approach.
Choreographing multiple fight scenes was arduous, but it was the smart thing to do. The idea behind the montage was to feature splash images that evoked the spirit of Spider-Man comics as Peter squares off against various super villains in his day-to-day life. It’s easier to get that desired splash image within the rhythm of an actual fight sequence as opposed to trying to capture it in isolation. The actors have established momentum, easily selling that they’re in the thick of an intense battle. Something might have seemed off if Cretton was only filming the exact splash image, but this allowed the montage to come together much more naturally.
Hopefully, we’ll get to see more of these action sequences when Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits home media later this year. It’s common for those releases to include fun bonus features like deleted or extended scenes, so perhaps there could be a whole section of supplements dedicated to the full villain montage fights. That would be a treat for fans and would also be a great way to highlight the incredible work Zhang and his team did to make the montage (one of Brand New Day‘s many highlights) a reality. The Brand New Day stunt department deserves to have everything they put on film available to watch.
Of course, it’s possible that even if full fights were choreographed, that doesn’t mean all of the fights were finished in post-production (visual effects shots, etc.). Time is a valuable resource when making a franchise tentpole like Brand New Day, so if Cretton knew only a brief image from each villain fight would be making the final cut, it wouldn’t have made sense to tax the visual effects artists even more by asking them to complete and render shots purposely designed to be left on the cutting room floor. This means if we ever do see the full villain montage fights, they may not be as visually stunning as the images in the final film, but it would still be nice to watch.
