Director Mahmut Akay created a short fan-film starring a young version of renowned X-Men character, Jean Grey, as she struggles to get a grip on her omega level mutant powers.
Titled Grey Café, Akay described his short film as, "an abstract film about Jean Grey from the X-Men, starring Scout Taylor-Compton. It expands on our 'X-Men - Spin-off Anthology' fan film universe."
The surrealistic film starts off with a jarring first scene that sees Jean using her telekinetic powers to choke and levitate a police officer in a London café as stunned patrons watch on in fear. The scene then shifts to Jean confronting a group of thugs as they bully an innocent bystander. She chokes the thugs before the dreamlike quality of the piece really takes over, revealing just moments before in the café when the cop struck a customer in the head, followed by quick, unsettling cuts of Jean both in fear and laughing as the subjective chaos ensues. The conclusion sees Jean seemingly snapping back to reality, just before a young British man appears to communicate with her telepathically, implying that this young man is actually Charles Xavier, leader of the X-Men.
This film acts as a follow up to Akay's previous X-Men based short fan-film titled Close Shave, which follows Wolverine as he visits a London barbershop before some extreme violence ensues. Akay wrote short films Day One and Dominion, both of which premiered at London's Sci-Fi Film Festival in 2019 and 2014, respectively.
Jean Grey appeared in her first solo film, Dark Phoenix, in 2019. That along with most of the X-Men films, including X-Men, X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Wolverine and X-Men: Apocalypse, are streaming now on Disney+.
Directed and written by Simon Kinberg, Dark Phoenix stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Holt, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters and Jessica Chastain.
Source: YouTube