The 2004 movie Halle Berry was begged to avoid at all costs: “It’s going to be the death of you”
It’s easy to forget that, compared to today, adaptations of comic books did not have the same sway over audiences back in the early 21st century.
While Spider-Man and X-Men were outliers that turned into successful franchises, there were plenty of blunders along the way that were received with negative reviews, such as Daredevil, Hulk, and The Punisher. However, there hasn’t been a comic book movie that was quite as reviled as Catwoman, which was seen as such a disaster that it made Batman & Robin look like Superman: The Movie.
Although an idea for a Catwoman spinoff had been pitched back when Tim Burton had cast Michelle Pfeiffer to play Selina Kyle in Batman Returns, the project went through several stages of development before Halle Berry was selected for the titular role.
Berry was at the peak of her popularity as a movie star and had just recently become the first Black woman to ever win the Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ for her devastating performance in A Monster’s Ball. However, it seemed like there were warning signs from the beginning; Catwoman wasn’t strictly tied into a specific iteration of a new Batman franchise, and it presented a new origin story that was wildly different from what had been in the original comics.
Although she said she had many people advising her otherwise, Berry said she approached the role with enthusiasm: “Everybody around me said, ‘Girl, don’t do it. It’s going to be the death of you. It’s going to end your career’. But guess what I did? I followed my intuition, and I did a movie called Catwoman, and it bombed miserably.”
Berry has never denied the awfulness of the film, and has even managed to have a good sense of humour about it; she even became one of the rare winners to accept her prize for ‘Worst Actress’ at the Razzie Awards in person. She also said that while the film was terrible, it wasn’t a completely worthless experience.
“While it failed to most people, it wasn’t a failure for me because I met so many interesting people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise,” she admitted, “I learned two forms of martial arts, and I learned not what to do. Learning what not to do is as important as learning what to do, and I got that gift, and I got a shitload of money that changed my life.”
Berry may have been forgiven by comic book fans because she also appeared in both X-Men and X2: X-Men United, which are considered to be among the best in the history of the genre. She has also certainly put her martial arts training to good use by appearing in a number of strong action films in which she has done her own stunts, even going toe-to-toe with Keanu Reeves when she popped up for a scene-stealing role in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.
It’s also refreshing to see someone involved with a comic book film admit to their mistakes, rather than deflect blame. While Dakota Johnson has continued to claim that Madame Web was not her fault, Berry has at least managed to take the backlash to Catwoman in her stride and has shown that she is willing to move on from it.
