Within the first few minutes of Marvel’s latest film “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” viewers are introduced to a mysterious force who is able to inhabit people and control their behaviors, traveling across Peter Parker’s home of New York City by energy-jumping from person-to-person.
The jumps are mesmerizing as strangers across the city jerk and twitch while the force makes its way through their bodies. While the being is revealed early on in the film as mutant Jean Grey, played by Sadie Sink, questions remain about just exactly how Marvel pulled off the energy jump illusions — that is, until now.
Nathan Kim, the choreographer behind the mesmerizing scenes, tells TODAY.com that the energy jumps are a result of the work of over 125 dancers, along with a lot of planning and great deal of practice. Kim has recently been sharing some behind-the-scenes videos of rehearsals. And the clips have gone viral as fans are stunned to see that Jean Grey’s incredible powers are not created onscreen with special effects, but rather with the power of dance.
“I wanted to show how incredible dancers are and how they’ve been utilized in this really unique way — how they have this skill set as masters of physical expression,” Kim says of sharing the videos.
He adds that some viewers may have assumed that post-production magic was at-play, but that’s not quite how things came together.
“To just be able to see we just use dancers and timing and cool shapes and their abilities to make these things happen in a practical way — I think that has felt really exciting,” he says.
In the film, which was released in theaters July 31, Jean Grey is on a search to find her missing older sister Sara Grey. It’s initially unclear whether Jean is a friend or foe. But Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland, is on a mission to stop her from wreaking havoc. However, it’s difficult. Jean travels effortlessly by moving through unsuspecting New Yorkers. And it’s almost impossible to track her energy because she goes so undetected.
This is illustrated in the film with successive movements by commuters down a street, energy shifting through a restaurant and so many more chillingly mesmerizing scenes. But as Kim, the man behind the movements, shows in his clips, the energy jumps are actually intricately-timed vignettes with dancers and others staging it all.
Kim explains that the effort involved dancers and movement artists from Los Angeles and London. He was tasked with figuring out ways to reflect Jean’s powers. And director Destin Daniel Cretton was committed to doing so without special effects. So Kim and the other dancers got to experimenting.
“It was really important that they had the ability to look like a human being, and to take the technique and just make it invisible,” he says. “So we could see the movement and the energy and the sense of character, and not be taken out of it by people thinking that they’re looking at something that resembled too much of a dance.”
The scenes, which took months to prepare and rehearse, were inspired by some unlikely sources. Kim says that he drew from his background as a percussionist, bringing a mathematical component to the movements’ timings. He says he also looked toward nature.
“The way that organic shapes just kind of roll into each other, like waves crashing on the sea, or rocks and pebbles tumbling along the bottom of the stream — how everything sort of feels connected and ripples together — we really wanted to get that sense in the human bodies,” Kim says.
The choreographer adds that when illustrating Jean’s power, something that she was born with, the movements “needed to be connected in an organic way and not overly mechanical.”
Kim says that the project is his first big feature film— quite the splash into the movie realm. And while he says he’s often someone who shies away from the spotlight, it’s been rewarding to showcase the incredible power of movement.
“People are saying ‘We want to see what humans can do.’ We’re sort of becoming oversaturated at times by AI content and computer content and I think this, to me, feels like a little bit of a pushback,” he says. “Humans are still amazing and our abilities are amazing and let’s celebrate that.”