Thanos wasn’t the first Marvel villain to do the Snap. A decade before Avengers: Infinity War, X-Men: The Last Stand’s villain used a similar attack.

Thanos’ Snap in Avengers: Infinity War split superhero movie history in two, but an X-Men movie had already featured a similar moment more than a decade earlier. Many villains have threatened the world in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s timeline, and the X-Men have faced a wide variety of enemies in Fox’s X-Men movie franchise, but two villains stand out due to their immense power and their impact on the Avengers and the X-Men: Thanos and Jean Grey.

Both the Avengers’ battle against Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and the X-Men’s confrontation with Jean Grey in X-Men: The Last Stand seem like a matter of destiny. Thanos teased his plan since The Avengers‘ post-credits scene, and Jean Grey’s Dark Phoenix persona began coming to the surface during the X-Men’s battle with Magneto in 2000’s X-Men. However, this isn’t the only similarity between these two Marvel villain powerhouses. While their abilities are different, they used the same attack in their respective movies, only eleven years apart.

X-Men The Last Stand’s Jean Grey Did The Snap A Decade Before Thanos

Jean Grey’s Phoenix Force Turned Many People And Objects Into Dust

In 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey came back from the dead in an adaptation of Marvel Comics’ Dark Phoenix Saga. Similar to her comic book counterpart, Jean Grey gave in to violence and began destroying everything in her path. Her first victim was Cyclops, who got turned into dust by Jean’s uncontrolled Phoenix power. Soon after, Professor X himself succumbed to Jean’s mystical power in the exact same way. And in X-Men: The Last Stand‘s final battle, Jean Grey disintegrated mutants, soldiers, vehicles, and buildings before Wolverine killed her.

Contrary to the extraterrestrial nature of the Phoenix Force from the comics, X-Men: The Last Stand explains that Jean Grey’s inner power is “the Phoenix” , which takes control of her body.

Jean Grey’s telekinetic powers in X-Men: The Last Stand make her seem much more powerful than the MCU’s Thanos, who needed six Infinity Stones to perform the Snap; and even then, he almost died in the process. However, Thanos was able to wipe out half of all life in the universe, and his wits allowed him to outsmart all the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy to achieve it. Although it’s possible that Jean Grey could have turned half the planet into dust had the X-Men not intervened, she didn’t have the mental clarity to set those goals.

Why X-Men: The Last Stand’s “Snap” Didn’t Work & Infinity War’s Did

Thanos’ Snap Had A Better Set-Up Than Jean Grey’s Dark Phoenix Transformation

Jean Grey’s disintegration powers are more brutal than Thanos’ Snap. Whereas the Snap erases each person’s body and soul from existence, Jean’s telekinetic attacks rip their victims apart piece by piece. However, Jean Grey’s victims don’t have nearly as much dramatic weight as the Snap’s. The casualties in X-Men: The Last Stand‘s final battle are either nameless characters or minor antagonists, and Jean Grey’s murder of Cyclops and Professor X had little to no emotional set-up. Thanos’ Snap, on the other hand, was preceded by the Avengers’ increasingly desperate efforts to stop him, which concluded in a tangible, universe-wide catastrophe.

Jean Grey’s transformation into the Dark Phoenix was teased by X-Men and X2: X-Men United, but the franchise’s overarching storyline never seemed to be heading in that direction. X-Men: The Last Stand followed up the “mutant vs. humans” conflict from the previous two movies, but developed the Dark Phoenix storyline in parallel, leading to an overstuffed and aimless plot that didn’t do either storyline justice. Avengers: Infinity War‘s tragic ending was the main destination of the MCU’s entire Infinity Saga, and all previous movies set the foundation for Thanos’ Snap, one way or another.

How X-Men: The Last Stand Almost Killed The Fox X-Men Universe

X-Men: The Last Stand Led To The Franchise’s Multiple Retcons

Not only was X-Men: The Last Stand a rushed adaptation of Marvel Comics’ Dark Phoenix Saga, but it also caused the X-Men franchise to go in a very different direction. X-Men: The Last Stand was heavily criticized for its poor treatment of main characters like Cyclops, Professor X, and Jean Grey herself. Other characters such as Juggernaut, Callisto, Angel, and Psylocke either had unrecognizable origins and powers or simply had no place in the story. And instead of fixing the previous two movies’ overblown fixation on Wolverine, X-Men: The Last Stand gave Hugh Jackman’s hero an even bigger role, pushing every other character to the wayside.

In order to leave X-Men: The Last Stand behind, Fox’s X-Men franchise created new continuities, starting with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which failed just as much as X-Men: The Last Stand, or even more. Once again, the X-Men franchise soft-rebooted with X-Men: First Class, and then X-Men: Days of Future Past went back to the original timeline to retcon X-Men: The Last Stand out of existence, at least symbolically. Jean Grey and Thanos may be similarly evil and powerful, but the difference in reception between X-Men: The Last Stand and the record-breaking Avengers: Infinity War proves the importance of a coherent script.