No, Cyclops Does Not Have Heat Vision
Recently, a war broke out on social media over the divisive X-Man Cyclops. The nature of the [...]
Why Can't Cyclops Control His Powers?
Cyclops should be capable of controlling the flow of energy through his eyes – or closing his eye portals if you prefer – but instead, the force beams are constantly in an "on" state.
This began as the result of a head injury as a child and was believed to be a permanent physical trauma. However, Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men series revealed that the damage from the head injury did actually heal and that the reasons Cyclops powers won't turn off are psychosomatic, brought on by the pressure of being chosen by Professor X to be leader of the X-Men at a young age, a fear of losing control and hurting others, and the emotional trauma of his childhood.
Cyclops can block his eye beams by simply closing his eyes. The reason that his eye beams don't simply tear his eyelids off is that Cyclops' body has a personal psionic field that covers his entire body, making it immune to the effects of his own eye blasts.
When Cyclops came to the Xavier Institute, he discovered that the material ruby quartz resonates at a similar frequency to his own psionic field. By wearing glasses or a visor made out of ruby quartz, Cyclops is capable of keeping his eyes open and keeping his eye beams in check.
prevnextHow Do Cyclops' Powers Work In The Movies?
The depiction of Cyclops' powers is sometimes inconsistent, and that applies especially to the X-Men movies.
While adult Cyclops' powers were shown pretty consistently, depictions of young Cyclops in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: Apocalypse have shown the remnants of whatever Cyclops blasts with his eye beams catching fire, implying that there is some heat involved.
While this is likely an oversight by the filmmakers, it could be head-canon as having to do with extreme friction, or perhaps have something to do with the intensity of Cyclops' powers when he was young before he trained as an X-Man and learned to control them better.
prev