Brand New Day Stunts: Video Games, Jackie Chan and 420fps

It’s the part of the film nobody talks about, and yet it explains why it feels different from the ones before it. The fights in Brand New Day were built using an unusual method, borrowed from video games and from Asian action cinema.

Here’s how those sequences were designed, and what that changes on screen.

When the video game enters the writers’ room

It’s the most revealing anecdote about how the film was made, and it comes from the stunt team itself.

Screenshots as a reference

The stunt performers play the character’s video game adaptations. While playing, they spotted moves — swing combinations, landings, dodges — and took screenshots.

Those images were then brought into the work meetings with one simple question: can we do this for real?

The lead actor has since taken up the same line. It’s an interesting reversal: for twenty years, the games copied the films. Here, the film copies the game.

Why it works

The character’s video game adaptations spent a decade solving a problem cinema handled badly — how a body moves through a city while clinging to surfaces, with what inertia, what rhythm, what trajectories.

Taking over their solutions therefore means inheriting years of research. The moves feel right because they have already been validated by millions of hours of play.

We devoted a whole article to those adaptations and to what they brought to the character: all the Spider-Man video games.

Who actually choreographed these fights

Two names shape the film’s action work, and both come from Asian cinema.

A coordinator from another Marvel film

Stunt direction and the second unit were handed to a professional who had already choreographed an earlier feature from the studio, known for its bare-handed fights.

That choice isn’t neutral: it steers the film towards a legible fighting style, filmed in longer takes, where you follow the bodies instead of enduring a choppy edit.

Jackie Chan’s team

The actor and director said publicly that his stunt team was working on the film, and that he was handling the action direction.

It’s a very recognisable school: precise choreography, the set used as a partner, physical gags woven into the fight, and a refusal of the overly short shot. If some sequences struck you as more ‘legible’ than in the previous films, that’s where it comes from.

What that changes in practice

A fight choreographed by that school is filmed differently: camera further back, wider frames, fewer cuts. The viewer sees what is happening instead of guessing at it.

That’s consistent with the rest of the film’s directing choices, which the critics broadly praised for their restraint.

420 frames per second: the constraint nobody imagines

Some of the film’s slow-motion shots were filmed at an extreme frame rate, and that creates a problem audiences never suspect.

What that frame rate means

A film is usually shot at twenty-four frames per second. At 420, you capture nearly eighteen times more frames — which allows a one-second action to be stretched across almost twenty on screen.

Technically, it demands a considerable amount of light: the higher the frame rate, the less light each frame receives. These shots are therefore filmed under massive lighting.

The acting problem

The director put it bluntly: at that frame rate, it becomes almost impossible to act.

The reason is mechanical. Every movement, however tiny, is multiplied. A blink lasts an eternity, an expression forming takes seconds on screen. The actor therefore has to hold almost everything still while keeping a legible intention.

It’s a constraint closer to mime than to acting, and it explains why those shots are rare and short.

What was done for real

The film systematically favours the practical effect whenever it can, and it shows.

Thrown weapons

The projectiles used by the ninja clan were genuinely thrown, with no digital addition. That choice demands trained throwers and reinforced safety, for a real visual gain: an authentic trajectory cannot be simulated perfectly.

We cover this faction and its role in the film in our article on The Hand.

Practical sets

The fight sequences rely on hard-built sets — streets, subway platforms, interiors. The stunt performers therefore work on surfaces that react to impacts, which changes the way a body falls and bounces.

We go into where all of it was built in our article on the final trailer breakdown.

The set as a fight partner

It’s the signature of the action school the team comes from: you don’t fight in a set, you fight with it. A pole, a railing, a car door become elements of the choreography rather than obstacles.

This approach requires solid, predictable sets, so built ones — which explains the production’s investment in practical streets rather than digital backdrops.

What stays digital

Flight across the city, great heights, impossible scales. The film’s rule is consistent: what happens at street level is real, what happens above the rooftops is manufactured.

Filming a character who almost never touches the ground

It’s the central technical problem of every adaptation of this character, and each film answers it differently.

The wire, always and forever

Most of the aerial movement rests on controlled wire systems, able to accelerate, brake and rotate a body along a programmed trajectory. The wire is then erased frame by frame.

The difficulty isn’t lifting someone, it’s giving them weight. A suspended body with no inertia looks instantly fake, hence the importance of the choreography: the stunt performer has to act out the constraint the wire cancels.

The question of the gaze

The mask removes all facial expression. The actor can therefore only act with the body — the tilt of the head, the tension in the shoulders, the position of the hands.

It’s a constraint the video game adaptations had already solved, and it’s one of the reasons their movement served as a reference: they spent years making a faceless character legible.

Rhythm rather than speed

A common mistake is to speed things up to suggest power. The film does the opposite: it slows certain key moments down, even if that means filming at extreme frame rates, to let the viewer register what is happening.

A movement you understand is more impressive than a fast one. That’s the founding principle of the action school the team comes from.

The comic covers recreated

A detail long-time readers spotted straight away.

The opening sequence recreates several famous covers of the character, shot by shot — poses, framings, compositions. It’s a statement of intent placed before the story has even begun.

The director has mentioned an even more ambitious goal across the whole film, with a list that doesn’t entirely match the one you can identify on screen. In other words: there are probably more references than the audience has picked up.

Recreating a cover is a technical exercise in its own right. An illustration allows impossible proportions, viewpoints no camera could ever take and bodies twisted beyond what is doable. Translating that into live action means choosing what you keep — the silhouette, the framing, the light — and what you give up.

That’s also why those shots last a second or two: they work as still images slipped into the movement, not as sequences.

Our article listing the easter eggs and hidden references goes through these nods in detail.

What the stunts say about the character

Choreography is never neutral. The way a hero fights says what he is, and this film’s has changed from the previous ones.

A fighter who has become efficient

The earlier films showed a young man who improvised, took the hits and won by luck as much as by talent. Here, the moves are clean, economical, without hesitation.

That’s consistent with the time gap the film sets up: four years of daily practice, alone, necessarily produce someone more capable. The choreography tells that ellipsis without a single line of dialogue.

A violence that unsettles

The flip side shows up in the sequences where Peter loses control. The same precision becomes frightening the moment it is no longer held back, and the film uses that deliberately.

A clumsy hero who hits too hard causes an accident. A technically flawless hero who hits too hard causes something else — and that’s what the directing is trying to make you feel. We cover this shift in our article on Peter’s mutation.

Loneliness, right down to the fights

A rarely noticed detail: Peter never fights as part of a team in this film. No backup, no coordination, no tactical exchange. Every confrontation is faced alone.

It’s a choreography constraint that follows directly from the subject, and it makes some sequences longer and more laborious — deliberately.

The questions everyone asks

Does Tom Holland do his own stunts?

Partly, as on the previous films. Actors on this kind of production perform a significant share of the ground and wire work, but the most dangerous stunts are left to specialist doubles.

The shoot was in fact halted after an incident, which we document in our article on his injury on set — a useful reminder that these sequences carry a real risk.

Why do the fights look more legible?

Because they are choreographed by a school that favours the wide shot and duration. Fewer cuts, a steadier camera, whole bodies in frame: the viewer follows the action instead of reconstructing it.

Does the film really borrow from the video games?

Yes, and the stunt team owns it. The screenshots served as a movement reference, not as a storyboard: the idea was to physically reproduce gestures designed to be played.

How long does a fight sequence take?

Weeks of preparation for a few minutes on screen. The choreography is first rehearsed in a room and roughly filmed, until it is signed off. It is then adapted to the real set, then shot over several days from multiple angles.

The ratio is staggering: one minute of finished action can represent a month of cumulative work across all the teams involved.

Do stunt performers get injured often?

Serious incidents remain rare given the number of takes, precisely because the job consists of removing chance. But the risk never disappears, and this shoot was a reminder of that.

Are there a lot of digital effects?

As many as in any production of this scale, but distributed differently. The digital work comes in mainly above the roofline and on the urban backgrounds, less on the bodies and the immediate sets.

The jobs the audience never reads in the credits

A two-minute action sequence mobilises trades the viewer never identifies, and on which the whole result nevertheless depends.

The stunt coordinator

He designs the choreography, picks the doubles, calculates the trajectories and signs off every take on safety grounds. He is the one who translates a directing intention into gestures that can be executed without hurting anyone.

On this film, that role is combined with second unit director — the unit that shoots the action while the first films the dialogue scenes. That combination gives a rare consistency between what is designed and what is filmed.

The riggers

They are the ones who install and operate the wire systems. Their work is invisible by definition: if you can see it, it has failed. A believable aerial move depends as much on their calibration as on the stunt performer’s delivery.

Specialist doubles

Several different people can double the same actor depending on the type of stunt — falls, fights, aerial work. Each brings a speciality, and the edit assembles those fragments into a single performance.

That’s also why an actor can ‘do his own stunts’ while being doubled: both statements are true, applied to different shots.

What to take away

Stunt performers who play video games and bring back screenshots, an action team out of Asian cinema, slow motion at 420 frames per second where the actor can barely act, and thrown weapons genuinely thrown.

This isn’t making-of trivia. It’s what explains the film’s particular feel: you see bodies moving by consistent rules, in sets that exist, filmed wide enough for you to understand what is happening. Plenty of comparable productions do the opposite.

What remains is the funniest reversal in the whole story. For twenty years, the video game adaptations tried to look like the films. They put so much effort in that they ended up solving problems cinema had never handled well — how this body moves, with what inertia, along what trajectories. Today, it’s the film taking screenshots of the game to work out what Spider-Man should look like in motion. The pupil has become the reference, and the result shows on screen.