
X-Men Psychic Knife - H 2015
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When Olivia Munn brings fan-favorite character Psylocke to the big screen in next year’s X-Men: Apocalypse, she’ll be bringing everything that comic book readers love about the telepathic superhero: her purple hair, her ninja moves and, it seems, the focused totality of her psychic powers: the psychic knife.
New videos of Munn training for her role in Bryan Singer‘s follow-up to last year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past have appeared on Instagram, showing Munn going through the motions while holding two objects: a long sword and a mysterious second blade, which doesn’t map onto her comic book appearances at all — unless it’s a stand-in for something else entirely.
Psylocke’s psychic blade was a relatively late addition to the character’s repertoire; it didn’t appear until years after the character’s 1976 debut, or even her 1987 addition to the Uncanny X-Men series. Indeed, it only appeared after she had been transformed from a Caucasian supermodel to an Asian assassin — really, don’t ask — that the psychic blade appeared; an illustration of the character’s shift from passive strategist to more aggressive warrior, it was an ability that writer Chris Claremont described as “the focused totality of [her] psychic abilities” so often that it became a running joke amongst fans.
While the training videos don’t guarantee that the smaller object Munn’s holding is definitely the psychic blade, it’s both the right size and (rough) shape, and Munn’s handle on it suggests the comic book visual. Here’s hoping that we’ll get to hear her say the classic dialogue before she gets to use it on an unsuspecting opponent.
X-Men: Apocalypse opens May 2016. Watch Munn training, complete with blades, below.
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