Shanghai’s skyline has long stood as a symbol of the future. Just ask the many Hollywood directors who have used the city as a backdrop for tales of artificial intelligence, time travel and high-tech espionage.

In Spike Jonze’s Her, Shanghai plays a futuristic Los Angeles, a backdrop for Joaquin Phoenix’s love affair with a computer operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson. In Looper, time-travelling hitman Bruce Willis moves to Shanghai to live for 30 years until 2074, when his younger self will arrive to kill him. In Mission: Impossible III, Tom Cruise rappels down the 88-storey Jinmao Tower after stealing a bioweapon.

With the completion of work on the 127-storey Shanghai Tower at the end of 2015, the city gained a potent new futurist symbol. At 632m, it is the world’s second-tallest building, surpassed only by Dubai’s 828m-tall Burj Khalifa.