So . . . yeah.
Gorgeous Acadamey Award-winner Halle Berry will land with a resounding thud ONCE AGAIN as Storm in director Bryan Singer's upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past. Storm is one of the most dynamic and powerful superhero personalities, one of modern fiction's most bad-ass heroines and arguably the closest Marvel comes to having a "Wonder Woman," and Halle Berry has a fucking OSCAR and hasn't to my knowledge been kicked in the head by a mule, so—WHY IS SHE SO BAD AS THE BEST FEMALE CHARACTER IN COMIC BOOK MOVIES???
Storm's a nearly six-foot-tall African mutant princess with white hair and blue eyes. Her history is long and rich and full of epic details—she's both a "goddess" and comic books' most fabulous mohawk. For an actress who's, you know, not comatose, there's a lot to play! Storm's a leader but also a trained sneakthief; she's connected to primal Earth energies or whatever and wears head-to-toe black leather.
Granted, they couldn't write the character. But ...still. Halle Berry was at the very top of her game for 2000's X-Men, between triumphs as Dorothy Dandridge for HBO and Monster's Ball a year later, for which she won Best Actress. The woman CAN act, but she's consistently been one of the worst elements in a not-great franchise. And now more than ever the X-Men films need to be able to stand up to Disney's Avengers films, which are generally kicking the Fox films' asses in terms of quality, especially the writing and acting.
Naturally, Singer is doing a ton of press about his return to the franchise and a lot of what he's promising is to more or less repair all the chopped-up continuity from the past couple movies. It's a reunion project, bringing back Anna Paquin's Rogue (raising the film's Oscar-winning actress total to three, with Jennifer Lawrence), as well as Hugh Jackman as Wolverine to blend with the "new" cast from First Class. So, maybe it was unrealistic to expect the production to ...correct that initial casting mistake. A friend has cast a bright ray of hope into the darkness, suggesting that because of the Days of Future Past storyline, it's possible that Storm's presence will be little more than a cameo, and that the action will center more around Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde and the younger mutants.
Would it be so terrible to have replaced Berry? She's never seemed particularly invested in the character or the world she inhabits as Storm. If, perhaps, we see an ...older Storm during the time-travel parts of Days of Future Past, casting another actress wouldn't have been that difficult. Finally all those who claimed Berry had robbed Angela Bassett (who's got the fury and the looks) or Iman (who's got the class, the height, the natural accent, and the looks) could've been vindicated, as both actresses are beautiful women of a certain age who would bring needed power and gravitas to future-Storm.
If the slate were wiped and an all-new cast of younger actors were cast to bring the original films' characters back in time to Days of Future Past's seventies setting, who could improve on Berry as Storm? Scandal's KerryWashington is beautiful, white-hot, and has the acting chops. She's awfully tiny, though. Danai Gurira is amazingly fierce as Michonne on The Walking Dead and is Zimbabwean-American. Am I wrong to think she might be MORE exciting as Frenzy, should we ever meet her on screen? Fans looooooooove that ZoeSaldana, who didn't let being Puerto Rican and Dominican stop her from taking on sci-fi's most famous African American female role, Lt. Uhura. Would she be a better young Storm, or is this a role only a black actress should play?
Anyway, it's all moot as it appears Berry has officially announced she's joining Days of Future Past. We'll have to content ourselves with the better casting over on the Avengers side of the Marvel U and hope there are some more thought-out choices made with other X-characters on future films. Getting Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage for Bolivar Trask is a possible game-changing choice. One wishes we could look on seeing Storm on screen again with similar excitement.
Just imagine!
