Take an inside look at the eye-popping action of American Born Chinese

Take an inside look at the eye-popping action of American Born Chinese
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American Born Chinese is all about blending genres. Just as Gene Luen Yang's original graphic novel used elements of magical realism to emphasize certain aspects of the Asian-American experience, the new TV series adaptation from showrunner Kelvin Yu splits its time between the high school travails of Jin Wang (Ben Wang) and his friend Wei-Chen's (Jim Liu) battles against gods.

As the son of Sun Wukong, the legendary Monkey King, Wei-Chen is well-equipped for his many fights — as is the show itself, which recruited experts and put a lot of work into making the action scenes look as cool as possible. You can get a taste of American Born Chinese's action in the exclusive video above.

"We have this incredible stunt team. A lot of them are from China," Yu says in the video. "These people are as close to real-life superheroes as you'll ever meet."

In addition to being real-life superheroes, American Born Chinese's stunt team were capable of taking comic-book images and bringing them to life, according to Yang. The show's primary stunt coordinator was Peng Zheng, who previously worked with director Destin Daniel Cretton on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and himself directed the fourth episode of American Born Chinese.

"He was able to take still images of kung-fu fights that are in the graphic novels and translate them into these really amazing fight sequences that aren't just pretty to look at, but also tell a story," Yang says of Zhang in the video.

American Born Chinese
American Born Chinese

Disney/Carlos Lopez Calleja Leonard Wu in 'American Born Chinese.'

Zhang isn't the only hero of American Born Chinese's action accomplishments. Speaking with EW, Daniel Wu — a formidable action star who portrays Sun Wukong in the show and previously starred on Into the Badlands — also complimented the camera operators who have to keep up with the fights.

"We were trying to make the fighting feel very authentic to Asian cinema and the Hong Kong style particularly. In that style, the camera is part of the fight," Wu says. "So when you're watching it, you feel like you're part of it: The hits feel harder, flying in the air feels more fun. That's because the camera is in there moving along with everybody. It's not easy to do! We struggled with that on Into the Badlands, teaching Western cameramen how to do that. It's very hard, it's very physical, it's very tiring for the cameraman. They become one of the fighters with us. It's a dance between the camera and the players and the choreography, all together."

As you can see in the video above, American Born Chinese's battles involve many different kinds of weapons. The most prominent, though, is the staff, which makes sense because the size-changing, golden-hooped staff is Sun Wukong's iconic weapon from Journey to the West — and the precious object that Wei-Chen takes with him on his journey to the human realm.

"The staff is an interesting weapon, like all long weapons, because it extends the fight and then becomes almost like a paintbrush that you're painting a picture with," Wu says. "I always feel like when you're doing action scenes, you're painting a picture with your body. But with the staff, you're able to grow that picture and make it even more dynamic — especially with this staff because it's a magic staff. So it can be small, it can be big, it can be medium-sized. That adds a whole other palette to the fighting picture."

American Born Chinese
American Born Chinese

Disney Jim Liu as Wei-Chen in 'American Born Chinese.'

In order to portray the Monkey King's staff changing sizes, American Born Chinese's stunt team had many different-sized props that they would switch between. It definitely took some getting used to.

"I had three weeks of stunt training just to learn how to use the staff," says Liu. "It was pretty hard! My hands would hurt because it's pretty heavy, and the moves were really, really, hard. But it was fun to learn a new thing, and once I saw the results I really liked it."

The action series is Liu's first time doing action scenes on camera, but he became a black belt in taekwondo at a young age — which he admits helped him with the learning curve. But the action sometimes put Liu a world away from costars Wang and Sydney Taylor (who plays Jin's friend Amelia).

"We shot in two units a lot," added Wang. "So we would be at high school, and then across town Jimmy would be in a basement fighting a cow. We'd go over to see him and he'd be in full prosthetic makeup with a staff and two stuntmen who look exactly like him."

American Born Chinese hits Disney+ on May 24.

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