Spider-Man swoops into Beijing to promote his second solo cinematic outing, Xu Fan reports.

Merely two months after he appeared in the smash hit Avengers: Endgame, one of Marvel's most iconic superheroes will swing back into Chinese theaters for his second solo big screen outing.

Spider-Man: Far From Home, the latest flick from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will be released in China in multiple formats, including Imax 3D, on June 28-four days earlier than North America.

With English actor Tom Holland reprising the role of Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, for the fifth time, the new film follows on directly from Endgame and we see Peter still mourning the passing of his mentor, Tony Stark.

The young web-slinger leaves his neighborhood in Queens, New York, to travel to Europe for a school vacation, where he meets Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio, a superpowered being who says he comes from an alternate Earth.

Teaming up with Beck, Parker is determined to stop four monsters, known as Elementals-each of which represents one of the four elements of earth, air, water and fire-setting him on the path to his biggest challenge and most epic adventure yet.

Last week, Holland, American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who stars as Mysterio, and director Jon Watts visited Beijing to promote the upcoming film. During an event to warm up local fans, Gyllenhaal sang a song to celebrate the birthday of one attendee, while Holland sent his best wishes to Chinese high-school students striving to earn high scores in the national college entrance exam.

Speaking about the new film, director Watts says it is used as "a sort of entry point to explore how all the world has changed" after Avengers: Endgame-the epic culmination and 22nd film of an 11-year-long Marvel Cinematic Universe story arc which began with 2008's Iron Man.

"The events of Endgame are just so massive and world-changing. Half of the world disappeared and came back again. This poor kid (referring to Parker, a teenager) has lost his mentor, Iron Man, and is just trying to figure out how he fits into this new world," says Watts.

"To me, that is immediately something we've never seen before," he adds.

As the new film marks an expansion of the footprint of Spider-Man, who mostly tackles villains in New York, one of the biggest hopes for domestic fans is that Spider-Man will travel to China in the future.

When asked if this was likely, Watts quickly replies: "Oh, yeah. Why not? The thing that's fun for me is to get Spider-Man out of his comfort zone and to take him to places where we've never seen him before. So really, anything is possible."

Compared with Marvel's other superheroes, Spider-Man-who made his first comic book appearance in 1962-is more widely regarded as a friendly neighborhood hero.

"I have always tried to enter the Spider-Man stories from as real an emotional perspective as I can," says Watts, adding that he takes Parker as "just one of us" and "the most relatable person" in Marvel's complicated universe, which also features heroes rooted in mythology or hailing from faraway fictional planets.

Echoing the director's words, Holland says: "Tony Stark is a billionaire, Thor is a god and Captain America is a biologically-altered super soldier. Peter Parker, though, is just a kid."

He explains that, as most of us have high school experiences, such as talking to their crushes for the first time and being late doing homework, the Spider-Man films are "basically about grounding this fantastic character in the fantastic MCU and making him as real as possible".

Recently turning 23 years old, Holland also reveals that the best part of growing up with his character is that he has been able to travel around the world, especially mentioning his visit to the Great Wall during his 2017 tour to China.

For Gyllenhaal, a star credited for hits such as Brokeback Mountain and Nocturnal Animals, his new screen role of Mysterio "kind of relates" to himself.

"There are a lot of similarities between us. He has been struggling with a lot of different things and he has his regrets," says Gyllenhaal.

Unlike the depiction in the Marvel comics that Mysterio is a super-villain, Gyllenhaal notes that his character shows heroic qualities in the new film and he enjoys the idea of Mysterio and Spider-Man becoming allies.

Speaking about his first impressions of Holland, Gyllenhaal recalls how surprised he was by the young actor's physical ability, which he says was exemplified by Holland easily leaping over a trampoline and landing on his hands when shooting a scene in which he was fighting the monsters.

"I couldn't believe it. It was as if the real Spider-Man had flown into the scene," says Gyllenhaal, with a big smile.