Watching Spider-Man fight the Hulk looks like the sort of thing that should happen quickly. Hulk smashes. Spider-Man moves out of the way. Several buildings lose their deposits.
But behind the scenes, things became far more complicated. Spider-Man: Brand New Day visual effects supervisor Jerome Chen has revealed that the team spent roughly a year developing the film’s battle between Spider-Man and the Hulk. Yes, an entire year went into creating a fight that audiences watched in a matter of minutes.
And here I was thinking Peter Parker had the difficult job. Chen said the filmmakers produced around a dozen versions of the battle before settling on the one that appeared in the film. The biggest problem was not simply deciding how much destruction Hulk could cause. They had to answer a far more difficult question.
How does Spider-Man stop the Hulk?
We all know that punching him is not particularly helpful. Hulk becomes stronger as he becomes angrier, which makes fighting him the superhero equivalent of arguing with someone in the comments section. The more attention you give him, the worse the situation becomes. The filmmakers eventually realised that Spider-Man could not win through strength. Instead, he had to understand the person trapped inside the enormous green body.
Hulk may destroy buildings and throw vehicles, but he does not deliberately hurt innocent people. That part of his character gave the team a way to resolve the battle without suddenly pretending that Peter could overpower him.
According to Variety, Chen oversaw a massive visual-effects operation for the film. The finished movie contains just under 2,000 VFX shots and moves between practical stunt work, physical destruction, digital characters and completely computer-generated environments. Sometimes, the filmmakers switched between the real Spider-Man and a digital version within the same shot. Which means Tom Holland may have started the movement, but his collection of pixels had to finish it.
The team also changed Hulk’s appearance. They gave him broader shoulders, longer arms, larger hands and a less brightly coloured complexion. His skin contains more texture and imperfections, while his greying hair makes him look closer to a middle-aged Bruce Banner who has clearly had enough of everyone.
But the most interesting part of this story is not the technology. It is the time.
Audiences often complain when visual effects look unfinished, and sometimes rightly so. But it is easy to forget how much work hides inside a few seconds of superhero chaos. Somebody had to plan every punch, rebuild damaged sets digitally and decide exactly how Spider-Man’s body should react when Hulk throws him through something expensive.
The battle may look spontaneous on screen, but the reality is that, nothing about making it was.
So the next time Hulk smashes a wall and Spider-Man narrowly escapes, remember that the characters required only a few seconds to cause the damage.
The visual-effects artists spent a year cleaning it up.
