Last week saw Paramount announce t꧒hat Halo, its live-action adaptation of the Xbox shooter, has been canceled after just two seasons. This isn't especially surprising — the show never found a groove or a big, engaged audience — but, shouldn't it be surprising?
How Could Halo Possibly Flop?
In video games, there are only a handful of franchises with the name recognition and cultural clout that Halo commands. Sure, it isn't at the apex of its popularity right now. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Halo Infinite failed to get the aging FPS series back to the top of the multiplayer shooter heap, now occupied by younger contenders like Fortnite, Valorant, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Apex Legends. But its legacy is strong and it remains Xbox's flagship franchise, even if Xbox as a whole has limped along in a diminished state for several generations now.
The Halo TV Show Was So Close To Getting Things ꦍRiღght
While its second season massively improved things, it still wasn'🔯t enough.
But this is Halo. It defined console first-person shooters, was hugely popular, and is as important to Microsoft as Mario is to Nintendo. It's in the upper echelon of video games. There are only a few series that can claim to be as important. So it's kind of wild that the Halo TV series has been unceremoniously canceled after two seasons. A live-action adaptation was kicked around for decades and, in the end, it suffered the same fate as So Help Me Todd.
Look, I'm rarely rooting for the creative people working on a TV series or movie to fail. There are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:rare exceptions, but generally I want Hollywood to continue to make good, commercially successful projects. I want the industry to thrive. So, while I'm rarely rooting against a specific project, I am often rooting against trends. And with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Super Mario Bros. Movie dominating theaters last year, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us gunning to the top of HBO viewership, we've been in serious danger of video games becoming the next comic books: the source text du jour for idea-less Hollywood executives. I love video games, but as someone who also loves original movies, mid-budget movies, and movies for grown-ups, video games taking over for comics would be creative poison.
It isn’t that I dislike movies and TV shows based on video games. Since the trend kicked into gear back in 2019-2020 with the releases of Pokémon Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog, I’ve enjoyed a few (The Last of Us) an𓆏d ignored the o♛nes that didn’t interest me (Twisted Metal). But, since the ‘80s, Hollywood has been increasingly hot for IP. This started out as a growing investment in sequels in the wake of blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars. The superhero trend, which started gathering steam in the late ‘90swith the success of X-Men, Blade, and Spider-Man, kicked into overdrive with the twin 2008 blockbusters The Dark Knight and Iron Man. Since that fateful year, we’ve seen movies increasingly cater to the tastes of 15-25 year old guys, with the elevation of superhero movies and mega-franchises to the near complete exclusion of all else.
Halo's Failure Points To A Future Where Nothing Is Certain
This started to change in 2023, as Barbie and Oppenheimer signaled a shift for Hollywood, promising a future where female audiences and grown-up audiences would turn out for fresh (if not entirely original in either case) movies. But, the movie that landed between Barbie and Oppenheimer at the global box office last year warned of a different future. The Super Mario Bros. Movie pointed to more of the same, with slightly different source text. Five Nights At Freddy was also a big hit that fed the feeling we were heading for a wor꧟ld where everything is basically the same, but with cameos from Cliffy B, not Stan Lee.
Halo’s failure calls that wisdom into question. If Halo isn't a sure thing, is anything? It points to a more hopeful perspective that may seem, initially, hopeless: there are no sure things. Marvel can flop (The Marvels), DC can flop (The Flash), big, starry prequels can flop (Furiosa), original movies can flop (The Watchers), horror lega-sequels can flop (The First Omen), and TV shows based on some of the most popular video games of all time can flop. Nothing is a done deal, which means that everything is risky. And when movies based on comic books or video games or half-century old IP can flop, there's no downside to greenlighting something entirely new.
Can Video 🥃Game Movies Sustain A Superhero⭕ Movie-Length Trend?
Superhero movies were the most consis𒆙tent 𒁃box office hits for 15 years. Will video game adaptations have the same longevity?
