Well, it’s been about 24 hours since I posted the Halo death notice (I love that graphic of the tombstone that Rodney made for me). In my email client I have a folder called “Halo Hate” that I created almost a year ago specifically to put emails in that were from people either 1) Saying I didn’t know anything about movies or 2) Calling me various names. All in response to the fact that for some time, I’ve seen the writing on the wall and that Halo was headed for disaster (As of today there are 140 messages in that folder). The fact is that Halo has been horribly mishandled since day one. Everyone said I was an idiot and subjected me to a lot of abuse… well… you read the story yesterday.
HOWEVER…
As badly as Halo has been handled up to this point and what a mess the people at Bungie and Micronut (Thanks for that phrase Chark) have made of things… there is a silver lining to this debacle. As a matter of fact… when all is said and done… we may all look back at yesterday and say that Halo getting canceled (for now) may have been the BEST thing to happen to it in the long run. Consider the following…
1) Perhaps now Neil Blomkamp can actually cut his teeth on a smaller project and get some experience under his belt before doing Halo. This would be nothing but positive for Halo. The main job of the director is working with actors (It’s why George Lucas did such a bad job with the prequels). Blomkamp has never really done this… and to get some real movie experience working with real performers on a real project will do nothing but improve Halo’s chances of being the good movie so many people want it to be.
2) Perhaps Peter Jackson realizes he needs to make amends for King Kong and decides to direct Halo himself? Tell me that wouldn’t be every Halo fan’s wet dream.
3) It gives the Halo folks more time to examine the script, give more thought to it and perhaps improve it even more
4) Now that Bungie realizes they don’t know squat about the movie business, perhaps they’ll be more knowledgeable about what to look for in potential partners… and to actually LISTEN to those partners.
5) Visual effects technology is only getting better and better each day. If Halo would have looked amazing visually now… just think about how good it may look if they do it 3 years from now.
6) Realistically, WETA is over booked right now anyway, and I know for a fact that they’ve been hiring freelance (non-weta artists) artists out the ying yang to make up for it. Perhaps now, when Halo is actually gets rolling, it’ll be staffed by true WETA team members exclusively.
7) Maybe (and this is just my personal thought) with all this time they have to think about it, perhaps they’ll decide to scrap the live action route and do a full 3D CGI movie instead. I think that would be amazing.
The point is, that many of us could see yesterday coming from a mile away… BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD for Halo fans. This could be the best thing that could have happened… and I think the end result… if Bungie takes its head out of its ass and learns some things… will be a better Halo movie then what we were destined to end up with… which in my opinion wasn’t going to be very good.
Halo will live again at some point… and it’ll be better than it would have been if it hadn’t had been stopped. But that’s just my two cents worth.
