In the early 2000’s, Halle Berry was experiencing a career high with an Oscar win in Monster’s Ball and before that, a role in the then upcoming superhero movie X-men. Berry was making headlines for her role as Storm, which at the time was a big deal because there weren’t any superheroes of color, especially women. But when the movie came out, Berry was not in it as much as it was hyped(sort of like a Suicide Squad/ The Joker situation of the early 2000’s.)
The Hollywood Reporter interviewed David Hayter, the writer of the first X-Men movie who finally revealed why such a mishap happened. Hayter said:
“I’m a huge fan of Storm and I’m a huge fan of Halle Berry as that character. But in that first movie, it’s not Storm’s movie. It’s a double love triangle between Wolverine, Jean and Cyclops. And Wolverine, Rogue and Bobby. Those are the operative relationships and unfortunately because we had 11 main characters, there’s only so much screenplay real estate you can dedicate to each. I think Storm did get short shrift in the first film, but because of her Oscar and because she’s awesome, we all — the studio, Bryan, myself and Marvel — said she has to play a stronger role and because she is a really interesting character philosophically and her powers are great — and she’s Halle Berry.”
Berry went on to play the character X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, and ever so briefly in X-Men: Days Of Future Past. Her role, of course, became bigger with each film. Hayter confessed that Fox was pushing for more Berry screen time as she was establishing herself to be a power player with her ever-growing career. Storm has, however, been absent in the last few years from the X-men world. With X-men: Supernova on the way, let’s hope for a Storm appearance.
