Joss Whedon: Crappy actors mess up my great lines

[Vlad!]

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/24238

Turns out that my least favorite line of dialogue in X-Men (and possibly ever) was penned by none other than Mr. Joss Whedon, who claims that the line was fine and it was Halle Berry's delivery that makes it sound so stupid. Well, I can buy the part that Halle didn't improve the situation, but let's face it. It was a bad line.

The part of the interview I'm citing is several questions in, but the whole thing is fairly interesting.

[enemy anemone]

I can kind of imagine the way he meant it to be delivered and can buy that it doesn't sound so bad that way, but it doesn't sound like Storm. more like Mal.

[spacebrat311]

In the interest of full disclosure, Joss wrote a full draft of X-Men, and that was one of the only lines of dialogue not altered, making for one of two moments of his script left in the finished film the other being the "how do I know you're the real one?" "you're a dick." "Ok." exchange. If you can imagine the way a Joss Whedon character would deliver the line (waaaaaay differently), it significantly improves the line, but still does not make the line fit with the tone of the rest of the script, which was completely altered after he was off the project. Basically once the script surrounding the line was changed, the line should not have stayed, but since it did, it was forced into the more deadpan tone of the rest of the film, and fell right on its ass.