The new international poster for the latest X-Men film The Wolverine has been revealed. It depicts Wolverine holding a katana. The Japanese kanji on the right-hand side of the poster translates as ‘life’ and the character on the left means ‘death’. The poster fairly obviously reflects the fine, knife-edged balance between life and death Wolverine is faced with and the moral choice he must make between being a beast or a man (presumably finding some middle ground in the end, though).

However cliched and overused the ideas behind the image are, they are completely undermined by the fact that Wolverine really has no need for a katana in the first place as blades naturally form in-between his knuckles (not his fingers as this poster seems to think).

The film is set in modern-day Japan, and sees Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) battle the yakuza boss Shingen Yashida (Hiroyuki Sanada) and the Silver Samurai (Will Yun Lee), a fearsome warrior with an electrified suit of armour. The story for the film is part of the 1982 Wolverine comic book by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller.