Remember when Sadie Sink was first spotted on the Spider-Man: Brand New Day set? We had no idea who she was playing, and the theories were all over the place. Now that the film has become the highest-grossing project on the 2026 movie schedule worldwide, it’s common knowledge that she’s our new Jean Grey. Now, it's been revealed that deciding how to show the mutant’s powers in this iteration came with a lot of trial and error.
We’ve seen Jean Grey in live-action two other times – as played by Famke Janssen in the original X-Men movies and Sophie Turner in Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix. In Brand New Day, the filmmakers were tasked with bringing audiences a whole new version of the character that we expect to see in many upcoming Marvel movies. When CinemaBlend spoke to Brand New Day VFX supervisor Chris Waegner, he shared with us the process of bringing Jean’s powers to life. In his words:
I think what was important to the filmmakers is we did a deep dive into how to visually story tell her powers. And it's easy to rely on a magical event. It's easy to rely on some type of visuals and the classic ‘show us something we've never seen before’ type of thing. But through the full exploration in early previs and, even post-vizzy type of work we did, we started coming back to the look of letting the audience and the actors actually showcase her powers.
If you’re not familiar with the filmmaking lingo, “previs” is the process of mapping out how shots in a movie are going to look before shooting even starts. So, prior to Sadie Sink stepping on set, the Brand New Day team had to think deeply about what Jean Grey’s powers were going to look like. And rather than relying on some sort of new visual effect, they decided to lean into Jean’s powers being shown mainly through choreography like this:
In a landscape where it feels like we’ve seen every VFX trick in the book, you've got to love Brand New Day’s approach to Jean Grey’s powers. Waegner suggested there were many different iterations of them during pre-production, but ultimately, leaning heavily on the choreography accomplished by over a hundred dancers won out. As he added:
They spent a lot of time in rehearsal getting the timing just right as Jean Grey leaps from human host to human host as she's either getting away or going somewhere. And I think that kind of progression, how we worked on it with Destin and Jerome, I think in the end, it played out better because I think when going back, a year and a half later and looking at some of the early previs, you're almost spoon-feeding the audience, ‘Oh, this is where Jean Grey's going.’ And I think having these wide shots with the actual actors doing the performance, it allows the audience to kind of really focus as to what's happening here. It built this kind of intrigue or audience participation, if you will, of trying to figure out where Jean Grey’s going.
Now, Brand New Day is absolutely filled with visual effects. For example, the movie was actually filmed in Scotland, so a lot of work was put into making Glasgow look like New York City. It’s pretty cool that, in the case of the movie’s complex villain, they went for a unique and unexpected approach. Seeing the choreography come together as Jean jumps from one host to the other is absolutely memorable, and such an impressive feat by the stunt team.
The latest Spider-Man movie is now available to rent and buy on digital platforms, and will come out on physical platforms on December 15. You can pre-order it on Amazon right now. I know I'll be rewatching it just to see Jean's powers come to life again!
