X-Men: Apocalypse: Beast, Psylocke and their climactic battle

[SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN X-MEN: APOCALYPSE!!!]

The finale of X-Men: Apocalypse is a battle royale between the X-Men and Apocalypse and his Horsemen. One of the more intense (and acrobatic) encounters is between Nicholas Hoult’s Beast and Olivia Munn’s Psylocke. Munn in particular took this scene very seriously. “I knew it was up to me to be able to deliver,” says Munn. “So thankfully my fight scene was the last thing we shot. So when I wasn’t on set shooting, I was able to go and train. The producers and [director] Bryan [Singer] and everyone was so supportive. I started training six to seven hours a day from stunts to wire work and martial arts and swords. One thing you can’t cheat is sword work. The more I can do, the more I could learn, the more they had to use and the more options they had for Psylocke. I was lucky that by the time we got to shooting I had been training for so long so that anything they asked I was able to do for the most part. ”

Hoult says he wasn’t necessarily prepared for Munn’s level of training. “Olivia went to like level-seven ninja,” jokes Hoult. “And then I kind of rolled up on the day and I was totally under-prepared — I must admit on that. I was so lucky it wasn’t a fight for real or she would have definitely done me in.”

The most stressful part of the entire sequence was Psylocke’s arrival into the fight: she flips through the air and slices a car in half. This was the last thing Munn filmed. “We were literally pushing into overtime,” remembers Munn. “It’s one of those things where I know no one is gonna approve another couple hundred thousand dollars to go an extra day for me. It’s literally the last hour. I had to get on top of this really high platform and jump off, flip and land on a dime with swords and make sure I don’t face plant into the camera. And we had 30 minutes. That was a scary but very satisfying finish.”