2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand has one hell of a backstory, not the least of which was a director swap that found Matthew Vaughn being swapped for Brett Ratner. But why did Vaughn leave such a high-profile project, especially when it would have helped really get his career going? It comes down to Halle Berry and a phony script.
Halle Berry was lured back into the role of Storm (aka Ororo Munroe) after the script she was given showed her character tending to and saving children in Africa. Vaughn made the revelation about the swapped scripts last year, saying he made his own last stand to leave the X-Men movie once he found out that version that was being given to Berry was just a studio ploy to get her to sign on, at which point they would ditch it. To this, Berry is forever grateful. Posting to social media, Berry wrote, “Ya just never know the shady sh*t going on behind ya back! Thank you Matthew Vaughn for bringing the dark to light.” She added, “Hollywood is really political and odd. I went into an executive’s office, and I saw a script that was a lot fatter. I was like, what the hell’s this draft? They said, ‘don’t worry about it.’” At this point, we have to assume that the original X-Men script Berry was given didn’t have the infamous “toad line” in it…
On the matter of the fake pages of The Last Stand that Halle Berry was given, Matthew Vaughn said he liked the idea of giving Storm that standout moment but was told by the studio that “it was the Halle Berry script. ‘She hasn’t signed on yet, but this is what she wants it to be. So once she signs on, we’ll throw it in the bin.’ I said, ‘Wow, you’re going to do that to an Oscar-winning actress? I’m out of here.’ So I quit at that point. I figured I was mincemeat.”
With Vaughn gone, The Last Stand landed on Ratner, then between Rush Hour movies. To many, The Last Stand remains the worst movie in the entire X-Men franchise – which is really saying something! Berry – who has said she is open to playing the character again – would play Storm once more in 2014’s Days of Future Past, having not been invited to Deadpool & Wolverine.