Changes: Jean Grey

Revision as of 15:52, 20 October 2014

"Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward."

―Jean Grey ^[src]

Jean Grey aka Phoenix is a class 5 mutant who has telepathic and telekinetic abilities and is a very powerful and dangerous. She also is in a relationship with both Cyclops and Wolverine.

Biography

Original Timeline

20 Years before X-Men: The Last Stand

Magneto and Professor X arrive at the Greys' home, on 1769 in an unknown street where they meet a young Jean Grey. The powers of the little girl are beyond imagination, and, while Lensherr wants to use them, Xavier fears them and decides to create mental blocks to restrain them. During her sessions with Proffesor X, Jean devoloped a dual personality - one being her usual self who can control her power and the other being her powerful and uninhibited side which called itself in Jean's sessions with the Professor the Phoenix which emerges when she loses control of her powers.

X-Men

"Mutants are not the ones mankind should fear."

―Jean Grey ^[src]

Jean Grey is one of Professor X's first students and one of the first X-Men. After years of school together, she begins a relation with her teammate Cyclops.

When Wolverine and Rogue are attacked by The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and saved by Cyclops and Storm, Jean Grey is the one who cures them once in the X-Mansion. When Wolverine awakes, he's confused and feared and attacks Jean before fleeing. When Professor Xavier has explained to Wolverine the situation, he comes to Jean for making his excuses. The two have a talk, with Wolverine putting Jean's power to a test and teasing her, thus provoking Cyclops' jealousy.

When Xavier is made unconscious by Mystique's poison, Jean uses Cerebro to track down Rogue and Magneto, but her powers aren't powerful enough to use it and, even if she manages to locate them, the machine drains her out making her faint, and erasing the mental blocks Xavier built for restraining the Phoenix.

Snapshot - 66 — Jean using her powers against Toad.

When the X-Men arrive on Liberty Island to fight the Brotherhood, Jean fights against Toad, yet Toad turned the tables on Jean spewing a thick phlegm-mucus-slime onto her face in which she struggles for oxygen and is found by Cyclops to much of his horror, he saves her by blasting the encrusted slime away. Once on the top of the Liberty Statue, Jean is captured by Magneto with the other X-Men, but manages to break free using her powers and Scott's. She then uses her telekinesis to send Wolverine to Magneto's machine, so freeing Rogue moments before Brotherhood's plan is accomplished. After the mission, she gives cure to Xavier, assisting him until he's healed from the poisoning. With Magneto captured and the Brotherhood disbanded, Jean can restart her usual life in the school as a teacher.

X2: X-Men United

"She did make a choice, Scott. It was you."

―James Howlett ^[src]

Jean Grey has restarted her life as it was prior to Magneto's threat, but something has changed: her powers has increased drastically since the day she used Cerebro, and Scott is starting to get worried about their extent: when Jean has some nightmares, infact, she's powerful enough to shake the entire room.

After Nightcrawler's attack to the President, Jean and Storm are sent to track the mutant and bring him to Professor X. Just for testing her new abilities, Jean drives the X-Jet with her powers, thus making Storm worried about her conditions. The two X-Girls find Nightcrawler in an abandoned church and learn from him that he was forced to attack the White House while under some kind of mind control. Nightcrawler joins the two, and they all together comes back home. On the way to the X-Mansion, Jean and Storm discover that the school has been attacked by William Stryker's men and that the students are prisoners of Weapon X. Intercepting a call from Wolverine, Jean and Storm picks up him and three students (Rogue, Iceman and Pyro) just before they cause too much damage to the Boston police. In flight, the X-Jet is attacked by two F-16s, and Jean uses her power to destroy the missiles they have launched, with her eyes starting to glow with a strange red light. One of the missiles manages to hit the jet, and the X-Men are saved by Magneto, who offers an alliance against Stryker. During a briefing, the former enemies share the respective informations about Stryker and his group, and decides for an attack to the Alkali Lake base. Jean finds the location of Stryker's bas by reading Nightcrawler's memories. Jean finds out that the base is underground at Alkali lake.

In the base, Jean fights with a brainwashed Cyclops, and she manages to defeat him surpassing the limits of her powers, becoming surrounded by a red, fiery aura. After the battle, the X-Jet is damaged and can't leave the place before the dam bursts. Jean makes a decision, and leaves the jet: using her powers, she stops the flood and raises the jet on the water, then she activates the main engines and makes her teammates flee, just a moment before releasing the flood on herself. All her teammates believe Jean's dead, but, deep under the waters of Alkali Lake, a phoenix-shaped light begins to glow.

X-Men: The Last Stand

"Don't let it control you."

―Charles Xavier ^[src]

Depressed by Jean's death, Scott Summers goes to Alkali Lake to mourn his loss. Once here, he releases a powerful optical blast in the lake, and the ray breaks a telekinetical coccoon built from the Phoenix at the bottom of the lake. Jean Grey lives again, and reaches her beloved on the shore. She takes his glasses, managing to control Scott's power with hers, and the two share a kiss, looking one in each other's eyes for the first time. During the kiss, Jean abandons herself to instinct and accidentally kills Scott. Worried for Cyclops, the other X-Men arrive on the shore, finding Scott's glasses floating in the air with stones and logs.

A little distant, they find Jean, fainted, and, surprised, they take her back to the X-Mansion. Once there, she tries to seduce Wolverine, but when he refuses her and tries to know about Scott, she expolodes: after attacking Logan, confused and angry, she escapes the Mansion and comes back to her childhood home. In here, she's reached by both the X-Men and The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, who start a fight while Xavier and Magneto try to convince Jean to join their respective sides.

When Xavier tries to block her powers again, the Phoenix gets enraged and unleashes all her might, making everyone fly away, destroying her home and killing Professor X. Confused and saddened by her mentor's death, Jean follows Magneto to his hideout. Wolverine follows them and tries to talk with Jean, but the Phoenix personality is strong and sends him flying in the woods.

Magneto believes he can use the Phoenix's powers for his aims, and brings her with him to Alcatraz Island to destroy Worthington's facility. During the battle that follows X-Men's arrival, Magneto tries to make the Phoenix join the battle, but she's not interested, not even when Magneto is depowered by the Cure. Wolverine almost manages to make Jean's personality resurface, but the human soldiers intesify the fire on all the mutants, Phoenix included, so unleashing her rage.

The Phoenix starts a massive attack on everything and everyone, destroying Worthington's facility and killing human and mutants on her way. While everyone is forced to escape, only Wolverine manages to go near her, since his healing factor prevents her from pulverizing him. When the Phoenix angrily asks him: "Would you die for them?", Logan replies "Not for them. For you." In that very moment, Jean resurfaces for a moment and begs Wolverine to stop her. In tears, declaring his love to her, Wolverine stabs Jean Grey, killing the Phoenix and putting an end to the destruction. Jean's grave is put near Scott's and Xavier's, so reuniting them in some way.

The Wolverine

"It's too late"

―Jean Grey^[src]

Jean appeared to Logan as a hallucination, usually in his dreams making him feel guilt for the part he had in her death and for all of the other deaths he had caused.

New Timeline

X-Men: Apocalypse

To be added

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Due to Logan traveling back in time and altering the past, Jean and Scott are no longer dead and are still active within the X-Men.

Character traits

Jean is a gentle and motherly woman, responsible and with some leader abilities. She is in love with Cyclops, but she does not dislike flirting with Wolverine, both of them representing two different aspects of her own personality, the loyal and noble one and the savage and animalistic one.

Phoenix

As the Phoenix, her personality had changed completely, and she becames a violent and confused person, always abandoning herself to emotions and instinct.

Powers and Abilities

Jean Grey is a very powerful mutant, who possessed vast, potentially limitless telepathic and telekinetic abilities.

Phoenix

As the Phoenix, her telekinesis is powerful enough to move the single atoms, so it gave her the possibility to literally disintegrate anything. Her telepathy is such that she has the ability to exceed even Charles Xavier in mental power.

Relationships

Jean Grey

Charles Xavier - Mentor.
Scott Summers - Fiancée and teammate
Wolverine - Friend/Lover and teammate
Ororo Munroe - Friend and teammate.
Henry McCoy - Friend and teammate.
Kurt Wagner - Ally
Marie - Student and teammate.
Bobby Drake - Student and teammate.
Peter Rasputin - Student
Katherine Pryde - Student
Erik Lehnsherr - Enemy.
Raven Darkholme - Enemy.
Sabretooth - Enemy.
Toad - Enemy.
William Stryker - Enemy
Yuriko Oyama - Enemy.
John Allerdyce - Student and turned enemy turned Ally.

Phoenix

X-Men - Enemies
Brotherhood of Evil Mutants - Allies

Appearances/Actresses

Original timeline (4 films)
- X-Men (First appearance) - Famke Janssen
- X2: X-Men United - Famke Janssen
- X-Men: The Last Stand - Famke Janssen and Haley Ramm
- The Wolverine - Famke Janssen
New timeline (2 films)
- X-Men: Apocalypse - TBA
- X-Men: Days of Future Past - Famke Janssen

Behind the scenes

Some of Jean's scenes in X-Men were originally written for the character of Beast, were cut from the final version.
According to Bryan Singer, he conceived the idea of Jean Grey's death mid-way through production. During the filming of the museum scene, he privately met with Famke Janssen to discuss the concept of Jean dying at the end of this film, with the allusion to her return as Phoenix in the next sequel. Janssen enthusiastically agreed.
Famke Janssen did much research on Dissociative Identity Disorder (split personality) in order to make her performance with Hugh Jackman in the medical lab more realistic.

Trivia

In the comics, Jean Grey turns into the Phoenix while possessed by the cosmic entity known as the Phoenix Force, while in the movie the Phoenix is just a second personality. Similar to the film, in the Ultimate Marvel comics storyline, the Phoenix is treated as a secondary mutation instead of a cosmic entity.
It is implied in X-Men commentary that Jean's inexpert use of Cerebro caused her transformation in Phoenix.
Some parts of Jean's storyline in X-Men: The Last Stand are loosely based on the Dark Phoenix Saga by Chris Claremont and John Byrne.
In the comics, Jean and Scott eventually married and in an alternate future had a daughter, Rachel.