Why is Jean Grey the Worst?
It happened during the last episode of the Netflix show of the Umbrella Academy that I realized something.
Spoiler for Season 1 of Umbrella Academy
Vanya Hargreeves finally comes to the realization that she is just as super-powered as her siblings, if not the most super-powered being in the known universe. Being relegated as the useless, seventh child of the Umbrella Academy she was insecure, introverted, and lacked the assuredness of her siblings. It’s not until she realizes her power that she lets loose, unshackled by her lack of self-esteem. She is unbridled. An uncontrollable revenge machine. The literal embodiment of hysteria. This felt oddly gendered to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.
Once I was done with the episode, a trailer of the latest misfire in the X-men franchise played, while I looked for season reviews on YouTube. I wanted to know if anyone else felt the way I did. No one did. Once I was done with the trailer, I realized something. Jean Grey in the new X-men: Dark Phoenix movie and Vanya Hargreeves is the same trope, The Hyper-Powered Inept Woman.
Full disclosure: I have never liked Jean Grey. Since I was a child watching X-men the animated series, she’s rubbed me the wrong way. I think it was the fact that she was at the center of so much of the drama in the show despite being completely inept and aggressively boring. Jean Grey is the Taylor Swift of the mutant world, bland, beige, and everywhere. So boring she doesn’t even get her own code name. She was the center of the comic book world’s longest most frustrating love triangle between Scott Summers (code name: Cyclops) and Logan (code name: Wolverine). Everyone knows she makes more sense with Scott, if Xavier’s School had a prom, they would be the couple that wins King and Queen each year they are nominated. She is also the live-in nanny of Charles Xavier, who has over the years kept her powers suppressed against her knowledge. It was Charles’ opinion that Jean wouldn’t be able to handle her powers, that she was perhaps too weak, too female, too much of a waif to be able to harness it.
Charles isn’t exactly wrong. *For the sake of argument (and sanity), we will just focus on the X-men films and not the comics. During a scene in X-men: Apocolypse Charles finds Jean knee deep in the worlds worst nocturnal emission, causing chaos in the dormitory. Charles knows the cosmic force that has latched itself to Jean’s psyche, the Phoenix, and chooses to gaslight her into believing it’s not real. It’s clear Charles views himself as her protector, or father figure or perhaps is afraid of her potential as a more gifted mutant and aims to keep her at a controllable level. But the point is that he has no right to keep Jean in that prison and deny her the truth, robbing her of the ability she would have to defeat her own issues. Once the Phoenix force breaks out Jean has none of the tools to be able to fight it, she’s at the mercy of her own immature and underdeveloped abilities, the result of Charles stunting her.
We’ve been here before. I loathe to think about the fact that this is not one but two X-men movies dedicated to Jean Grey’s lack of ability to not fuck everything up. The mis-titled X-men: Last Stand (2006) and the upcoming X-men: Dark Phoenix, both movies had Jean Grey embodied by the Phoenix force and both will focus on a team of more interesting people trying to get her to fucking chill. I will also state, we have had two movies focused on Jean Grey’s migraine headache’s and not a single one on Storm, a literal Goddess, who has been second in command of the X-men for decades. I digress.
Jean is the most powerful mutant, an omega level, but when was the last time she could shoulder that responsibility? In the comics, if she’s not busy getting kidnapped, or cloned, she’s “out of control” and needs someone to sacrifice themselves for her. I mean I also go out of control and destroy everything good in my life once a month, but you don’t see me being the center of attention. She is not an asset to the team, she is a liability. Why is she even there? The team has a psychic in Xavier and many more have been part of the team off and on through the years. Why focus on Jean?
Jean Grey is a male fantasy, not only because of her looks (comics writers have a thing for red-heads) but because she is a massively powerful mutant who still needs the help of men around her to do anything. She is constantly being saved by the merry-go-round of Charles, Scott or Logan, men no where near her level. She is the ultimate anti-thesis to feminist icons like Captain Marvel. Jean never aims to lead or be in control, she never uses her power for her own needs (unless manipulated to do so), she serves the team, and is overwhelmed by her own power. Captain Marvel, on the other hand, is unapologetically strong, and throughout her movie she pulls against the restraints of her power and tries to exercise herself freely. She is not afraid of what’s inside her because she knows that whatever it is, it is a part of her, and a part of her to use as she sees fit. She is confident in her identity and she knows she’s too smart and too strong to just listen to someone else. Jean is the hot girl in the movies who doesn’t KNOW she’s hot, making it easy for the nerdy guy to get with her. Jean needs help. She needs a man to help her control herself and get something off the top shelf. It makes you feel like to be with Jean Grey is to be the envy of everyone around you but also still the “man” of the relationship. Her role in relationships volley between romantic, matronly, and familial, you’ll be hard-pressed to find scenes in the movies where Jean is just friends with another woman. Who are Jean’s female friends? Certainly not Storm, Kitty & Rogue are more like younger sisters, and Jubilation Lee (aka The Girl with Them Hands: Jubilee) share minor scenes together. Jean Grey has been in six movies and there is no clear definition of her character. Who is Jean? What does she like to do? What is she like when she’s relaxed? What is her type of man? What do people think of her? These very basic questions are never developed, yet she is the center of most of the films. Her abilities are feared, she is envied, her body is coveted but all Jean Grey wants to do is go to her Pure Barre class, eat Halo Top ice cream, and watch the Bachelorette. She’s basic. Powerful yes, but also a weaponized basic.
All of this is not to say that Jean Grey shouldn’t be in the movies. I know how I come across. This is all to point out the fundamental miss development of her character. Jean spends most of her time on screen panting, sweating and squeezing her eyes shut. If some of that time was spent to understanding her relationship to the team, especially her relationship to Storm who gets most of the responsibility in the movies and none of the credit or screen time. It’s odd that the two female leads of the team don’t spend time together, they don’t rely on each other and don’t have their own developed relationship. Although if I were Storm I would also stay away from that red drama bomb. How many bottles of cocoa butter do you think Jean exploded with her mind before Storm moved to the opposite side of the house? Jean needs better development. Her personality cannot be that she’s unable to control her own power, that’s not a character attribute. Her personality cannot also be that she’s the girl in the world’s most awkward thrupple (Who’s on bottom? Who’s on top? Do the claws get in the way? What if Logan knocks Scott's glasses off when he starts cumming?).
The Hyper-Powered Inept Woman is a lazy trope. It’s writing that makes it seem like women are not attuned to power and unable to handle it, even when that power is inside them the whole time. It’s time that writers and creators get more comfortable with a woman who not only embraces her power but celebrates it, unwilling to shove it in the back pocket of her personality. Jean has to have her power exorcized in order to live a regular life. She has to murder all the men she loves to even get there. Jean gets all F’s on the Bechdel test. There doesn’t need to be any more movies focused on Jean’s inability to be strong, we get it. Jean Grey herself could use with more scenes of her using her powers without straining herself like she’s starring in a Midol commercial. After almost 10 years, her personality is still undefined, and along with it any reason to care about her. I know what’s at stake for the Phoenix saga because I’ve read the comics, but I don’t understand in the context of the movies. I hate to be this person but, look at the way Avengers: Endgame is handled. We the audience, understand each character and their stakes. Okoyo has dedicated her whole life to the service of the regency of Wakanda and now her King and countrymen are dead. Tony just began to be somewhat of a decent person and shifted his priorities from his company and his profits to the people in his life like Pepper Pots. Steve has never felt at home on this world but has given himself one purpose to stay alive, defending every human on Earth and now he has failed. Thor just watched the only world he has ever known be destroyed and moved his people off world, only to see them slaughtered, he has failed as their King and leader. These people have lives, personalities and we know the stakes. Jean and the team meanwhile, don’t want her to turn full Phoenix because… bad. It bad. If she turns Phoenix then Scott will never lose his virginity. Storm may never finally figure out what to do with her hair. Charles might not ever try that new membership he got for Hair Club for Men. These are travesties.
It’s been over a decade for Jean, the writers and filmmakers have failed her. They have relied on her weakness and the conflict of having a woman who is so powerful and also so incompetent. That’s the single motivator for X-men: Dark Phoenix, what is going to happen when an ingenue gets power. That’s not a movie I’m interested in. I’m hoping that the end of this movie has the timeline completely scrubbed and the reset button hit on the franchise. I’m hoping the Phoenix just erases everything, including my memory of these movies. Then we can begin again with a Jean Grey in control of herself, comfortable with her powers and with a definable personality.
Shout out to @biboenvivo on tumblr for compiling all these gifs.