Rewatching the first right now, and as pretty as Halle Berry is, I am wishing someone else was playing her, but I can’t honestly think of someone that could do better. Does anyone know who else was in the running? Even better, is there a website that has all of this info together, a Mr. Skin for people who auditioned for various roles? I look at wiki and imdb, but find nothing pertaining to Storm.
I think the lady who played the second in command in Firefly would do a much better job, but I doubt she was up for consideration.
Gina Torres
Storm was terribly underwritten in all of the X-Men movies. I don’t think anyone would have done much better given the material that we saw actually make the cut.
That said, my personal pick for Storm was always Angela Bassett.
Except I’ve always heard that we only saw what we saw because Berry did such a terrible job and was a big diva about the whole thing.
At the time, I remember reading that Angela Bassett was either lobbying for the role or being considered for it.
One thing I heard, which I think is funny, is that she refused to do the third film because she wanted more lines…and then Cat Woman bombed, and suddenly she was free.
I always thought Storm the comic book character was pretty lame anyway. But if you want your Mistress of the Elements a bit more “sassy” and “fierce”, I’d go with Vivica A Fox.
If they were trying to play Storm straight, it should have been Angela Bassett, which I would think fairly obvious to anyone familiar with Storm. Apparently Halle was more on board with giant comic-book movie.
I couldn’t agree more and I can’t see any “name” actress doing a better job than Ms. Bassett. Strangely enough, I looked at the IMDB’s “trivia” entry for the first movie and it says that she was offered the role and turned it down? 
I don’t know what Berry’s motivations were for accepting, (money obviously, but otherwise?), but let’s not forget that comic book movies weren’t exactly in vogue at the time the way they are now. The biggest previous superhero movie was “Batman & Robin”, and “Spider-Man’s” 400+ million dollar take was still almost 2 years away.