How much longer will black people have to wait to be noticed as the heroes they are?
Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn has never hidden his distaste for Hollywood’s most dubious practices. Over the years, he’s been quite candid about his work with the X-Men franchise at Fox and the times when he had to abandon assets entirely. But a recent anecdote told by Kingsman’s director at New York Comic-Con might be the most shocking yet, not only because it shows even more behind-the-scenes drama, but because it reaffirms an unstated fact about Hollywood’s most overlooked stories.
It was industry politics that forced him to quit X-Men: The Last Stand, after finding the fake script that Fox executives intended to send to Halle Berry. “I asked him, ‘What’s that?’ Draft?’ They said, “Don’t worry about it. “So I grabbed it, opened the first page and it said, “Africa. “The children die without water and Storm creates a typhoon to save all those children.
This false opening was meant to appease Berry, who played Storm in X-Men and X2 but had not yet signed on for the third film. It’s conceivable that Berry would seek a larger role: Storm is something of a goddess, after all, and since she’s occasionally marginalized in movies, Berry had any and all rights to ask for more. However, according to Vaughn, Fox and Marvel didn’t have the goal of playing along.
“Once she signs, we’re going to throw it in the trash,” Vaughn recalled of one executive. “I said, ‘Wow, are you going to do this to an Oscar-winning actress?I’m getting out of here. ‘”
Despite betting on one of the most productive characters on the property, Halle Berry was never assigned the role of Storm.
Berry’s Oscar win in 2002 was meant to open doors for others like her, but it barely moved the needle. “I think about that a lot because there’s no place for someone like me,” the actor admitted to Variety. That doesn’t stop him from fighting for a place. In between his appearances in the X-Men films, Berry sought out as many action roles as possible. She gave the impression of being the Bond Jinx woman in Die Another Day and was almost given a spin-off. for the character. When that failed, he went toe-to-toe with Catwoman. Of course, we all know how it turned out, but it was born out of clever intentions and a preference for paving the way for black women in genre films.
“Since I didn’t do Jinx, I even thought, ‘This is a wonderful possibility for a woman of color to become a superhero. ‘Why don’t I check that?'” he recalls. Catwoman wasn’t the catalyst we were hoping for: although she now has a following, she didn’t do Berry’s career much of a favor. After a series of boring thrillers, he began the renaissance of his career by preparing for a role. She and Vaughn even had the opportunity to work together more than a decade later, in Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
With the Kingsman movies, Vaughn prepares Halle Berry to play the hero she wants to be.
Slowly but surely, the industry is catching up to Berry. Circumstances have even stepped up for actresses to follow in her footsteps. Lashana Lynch stole the show in the new Bond film, No Time to Die, as well as The Woman King. The latter has seemed like a watershed moment for decades, and there’s a clever explanation why; However, even this movie has fought an uphill war when it comes to getting the popularity it deserves.
Marvel is another studio struggling to recognize Black heroines as viable assets. It wasn’t until 2023, with the release of The Wonders, that a Black woman found herself in the spotlight, and with a Black director on camera. Others are Still Years Array It’s especially frustrating when faced with probably immortal franchises like Mission: Impossible or The Expendables; even Indiana Jones. White male action stars have the ability to paint until they are no longer physically capable, while women of color still struggle to see themselves portrayed with dignity and autonomy.
The Hollywood that Vaughn left in 2005 still influences the culture in many ways. Indeed, progress is being made, albeit marginal, but the X-Men drama turns out to point to a much bigger challenge in genre films, one that may yet succeed more than not.