Director Jon M. Chu has never infused his Chinese heritage into a film the way he does in Now You See Me 2. It's not overt, but Chu made certain choices in an effort to challenge those who may have come to see magic to also re-examine their understanding of what it means to be Asian or to be seen as "foreign."

For example, the movie kicks into action when the Four Horsemen, the troupe of magicians introduced in the first Now You See Me film in 2013, are outsmarted by an unknown third party and are forced to flee their own stage in New York. They narrowly escape capture by leaping into a giant tube on a rooftop... and, much to their surprise, somehow end up on the other side of the world in China. None of them speak the language or have firsthand experience with the culture.

“Originally in magic, white magicians would dress up as Asian people to create this [sense of] exoticism,” Chu told BuzzFeed News in early June at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills. He made the conscious decision not to portray China and its citizens the way they so often are in Hollywood. "What I don't want this to be is, Oooh, this mysterious land of these aliens," he said.