Hey there, X-Fans! June's been a busy month which means another gap week, and this one brings another X-Talk on something I particular like about the initial movies: The practical handling of Jean Grey.
I'm a comparison's person. My mind just goes there if something is similar, typically for the exercise of it (as in, I'm not habitually looking to judge one something as superior to another, I just enjoy looking at something beside another similar something), but sometimes such things stand out to me in a more positive or negative way.
In the case of Marvel franchise movies, my mind can't help (only occasionally) thinking of Jean Grey alongside another lead, combative leather-wearing, red-head (mainly): Black Widow. And comparing them is how I'm going to get across what I mean by "practical handling of Jean Grey". Black Widow is first introduced in the MCU in Iron Man 2 as a notary, assisting in Tony Stark's signing over of his company to Pepper Potts. Nothing wrong with the position, however the scene is littered with sexual framing and objectifying, including a part where Tony is looking her up online and enlarges a lingerie modeling photo. Before I move on, let me first say, the scene suits the story and characters. Tony, at this point, is a lech. I'm not one bit familiar with Black Widow comics, but the familiarity I have with other comics I'm betting the sexualization doesn't come from the movie side of things, and the scene does include a brief show of Black Widow's fighting prowess, so we know right off the bat there's more to her than meets the eye. But the predominant lens when it comes to Black Widow I'd say is very sexual-forward. (again, that probably comes straight from the comics, but still). Compare that to the intro scene of Jean Grey in X-Men. Our first sight of her is in her capacity as Dr. Jean Grey, speaking at a ?hearing? in regards to Mutant Rights. There is zero objectifying framing - the focus is on what she's saying and how she's feeling about the response she's receiving (inherently different scenes, I know, but each the character's intro scene. This carries on with Jean's following scenes. If you want to stretch, there's some really minor showing off -for lack of a better word- of her legs when she's walking to Logan's exam table, speaking about his skeletal structure, and when she's sitting in the mechanics class, but the first is a long shot, the last she's in the background, and ultimately they all just play like regular scenes featuring a woman who's wearing a skirt. The focus is never on her body.
(even when Logan's flirting with her, there's more a sense of he's liking who he's in front of, not "what" is in front of him. Which again I'll say, speaks to character -- the two movies and the characters in them are inherently different. But still worth making the point, I think; movie makers can always choose to paint certain subjects with the same brush).
They don't even try to sneak something in with, say, Jean changing into her combat suit in a suit-up scene.
Compare that with what could be called Black Widow's suit-up scene in Iron Man 2, a.k.a. "Watch The Road". I'll let it speak for itself: Black Widow: "Watch The Road" Scene - Iron Man (2010) Movie Clip HD - YouTube
You can see at the end card of the video how Black Widow looks in her suit front-on. It's not as open as I remembered it being (it doesn't actually show anything but skin), but it is open at all - and I'm not being a prude when I point this out, I'm thinking combatively: what is uncovered is unprotected. Note also how in the "suit-up scene" Black Widow's hair had been up, but for some reason she lets it down before heading into combat, where it could get in her face.
Back to Jean Grey, she wears her suit as zipped up as the men (it's protective gear, after all), and in X-Men, her hair goes from being loose in the scene preceding their heading to fight, to up in a ponytail out of her way. (breaking away from the 1-to-1 comparison for a moment, I want to say here I also love how Jean is treated within the team. Prior to their heading to their big battle, Jean had just zonked herself out somewhat by using Cerebro for the first time, something that was previously stated as being dangerous for her to do, which scares Scott when he sees she has. But we have no scene like "are you sure you're up for this?" or whatever, which wouldn't be bad in and of itself -such a scene plays very nicely in X2 after the blackbird goes down- but could carry a protective vibe depending how it's done. There's no overprotection within the team, they're all equals. I like that).
Let me say here the practical wearing of their suits, and more largely the practical handling of a female character, also extends to Storm, Rogue etc. I mean you could say all the sexual is put into Mystique....But my focus of this piece is on the "leather-wearing, red-headed, female Marvel heroes".
The practicality extends to promotional material, as well (as far as I'm aware). Black Widow's promo shots, at least for Avengers, came under scrutiny for the body-focus, as compared to how the male characters were posed on the poster. While promo material could be used to entice you in all kinds of ways, all X-Men / X2 promo shots I've seen have been equal: the framing of the women matches the framing of the men.
Now, character-wise, Black Widow is pretty well-rounded like Jean is. In Black Widow's case, she hasn't let her programming seal away her heart, she cares about her team, is obviously smart, highly capable, etc. She's a full character; definitely not just there for some shallow purpose. But I admit, as someone who hasn't watched the movies for a little while now, the first thing that comes into my head -the "lasting impression", if you will- when I think Black Widow is her in her lower-cut combat suit (which I happened to remember as being lower and showing more. I might be thinking of a suit beyond Iron Man 2 and the Avengers).
It was in thinking about Black Widow for the sake of this composition that I remembered more of her character. It came to me pretty readily, yet the character stuff wasn't first association.
My first association of Jean Grey, in contrast, relates either to her mind or her emotions.
To note, I don't watch the X-Men movies on the regular, in fact I haven't outside of specific scenes since my first viewing (plus the commentary tracks shortly thereafter), and in so doing have noticed how incorrectly I've recalled certain things (and the way I still have to go to do Jean Grey, for one, justice. But that's a character/world-spanning topic for another time) - just to say it's not regularity that's at play here with these "lasting impressions".
Now, these things are certainly subjective, and others might view Black Widow's presentation as empoweringly "all that", personally I appreciate a perspective where the character is a person first, as opposed to the "_____".
With Black Widow, we're told in shot composition and dialogue how this character is to be seen. Which is as many things, but I think foremost, at least initially, is the "sexy badass".
With Jean Grey, we're shown this character. We see them for ourselves.
Of course all that good stuff goes out the window with Phoenix in X-Men: The Last Stand, but such is show biz! 🤦♀️
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