Avengers: Doomsday star Simu Liu revealed why Shang-Chi’s fight scene with Channing Tatum’s Remy LeBeau/Gambit was painful for him to film. The movie’s promotional material teases an intense clash between the two characters, giving fans a glimpse of what promises to be a fight between two of the most skilled hand-to-hand combatants in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Why Simu Liu refused to fake Shang-Chi’s fight with Gambit
Liu recently spoke to Brandon Davis about the Shang-Chi vs. Gambit scenes in Avengers: Doomsday promotional material. He refrained from revealing details about the Doomsday plot, including why these characters are fighting each other. However, he revealed what he and Tatum went through while filming the scenes, confirming they didn’t use any stunt doubles. Liu underscored that Doomsday features a “slightly more mature and self-assured” version of his character, who is “ready for fight” no matter who is in his way.
When Davis asked what it was like to work with Joe and Anthony Russo on the action sequence, Liu responded, “Yeah. It’s so hard trying to tiptoe around these spoilers.” He added. “But what I will say is that I think the genre of movies rightfully deserves a lot of criticism for artifice. There’s a lot of CGI, a lot of moments where technology does the heavy lifting. And I think as an audience, we’re starting to crave real and we’re starting to crave tactile.”
Liu believes that the Russo brothers approached the sequences with similar thoughts to those of the audience. The Barbie actor pointed out that neither his nor Tatum’s character can fly and shoot “crazy things.” He continued, “So, you know, I was just reading those pages, and I was like, ‘Oh, hell yeah. They’re going to let us do our thing.’ … We showed up for the rehearsals, we showed up on the day, and we’re just like, it’s going to be us. Like, we’re going to give the stunt double a vacation today. My elbows and everything were completely bruised by the end of it because, you know, his staff is real, my rings are not, and he was going for it.”
Avengers: Doomsday debuts in US theaters on December 18, 2026.
