Periodically in Hollywood, there appears an actor “doesn’t use a stunt double” (“does his own stunts“: how many times have you heard that?). Certainly for anyone who dares this approach, there is the Tom Cruise model to keep in mind, unrivaled for courage, acrobatic prowess, and meticulous preparation. It seems, however, that even Tom Holland doesn’t joke around, according to Peng Zhang, stunt coordinator on Spider-Man: Brand New Day. He doesn’t entirely dispense with doubles, though…
Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Tom Holland’s Physical Abilities Have Made Things Easier
Peng Zhang, second-unit director and stunt coordinator on several Marvel productions, is very happy when he works with athletically gifted actors capable of tackling many action scenes without necessarily being replaced by a stunt double. Even though in a film like Spider-Man: Brand New Day with Tom Holland the lead often wears a mask, something that could better conceal the substitution, it wouldn’t always be the same: “When it’s Tom performing the action scene, even with the mask, you realize he’s acting during the moment of action. In reality we take advantage of what Tom can do. When we plan something, since Tom is so good, we don’t hold back. We don’t say: okay, this one Tom does, let’s think of something easy. The things we do with him in the action scenes are the same as what his stunt double or anyone else would do. We raise the bar quite a bit. And he didn’t even have much time to train, yet he always manages to pull it off. It’s a fortune to have an actor able to physically do stuff like this.”
Is there a particular scene that made the stunt team sweat? The ninja fight: “Why did we choose to shoot the sequence in a real location, a genuine prison, one of those no longer used? It was challenging to manage the wires, because everything there was concrete and steel. […] There was no computer graphics and it wasn’t even a set. […] It would be difficult enough in a studio, but when you’re there, the people handling the cables can’t even see the fallers suspended, because they have to stay somewhere else. […] Fortunate that in the end we pulled it off.”
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