Just when you thought the movie industry couldn’t get any shadier, it’s emerged that there was a fake script meant to get Halle Berry to return as Storm in X-Men: The Last Stand (X3).
Berry has been diplomatic about it but there are a few interviews where her discontentment is evident. And, apparently in response to this, the “original” X-Men: The Last Stand script gave her a scene where she got to shine. Sort of.
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According to Matthew Vaughn, who was originally going to direct X3, Berry was given a fake script, which saw Storm, solo, using her weather powers to save an African village. “Africa. Storm. Kids dying of no water. She creates a thunderstorm and saves all these children”, explains Vaughn in this interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
However, according to Vaughn, this script was to be ditched the moment Berry signed up for X3. When he queried this, he was apparently told “..this is what she wants it to be, and once she signs up, we’ll throw it in the bin.”
That, ultimately led to him quitting the film, to be replaced by Brett Ratner. And while Storm, played by Berry, does end up as the headmistress of Xavier’s school for mutants, that’s the most she has to do in the movie.
Berry has never publicly discussed this alleged bait-and-switch but we imagine she was fuming when she found out. If true, it’s astonishing she actually went through with the movie, contract or no contract.
Berry played Storm in the original X-Men and briefly returned to the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Unfortunately, Storm was generally underutilized, at least compared to her comic appearances. Aside from being one of the first black female superheroes, the comics classed her as an Omega-level mutant, which puts on her a par with Jean Grey, Professor X and Magneto. In the movies, she was just.. there.
