If you’re into games then you’ve heard by now about Halo 3: ODST. The new game is set to take place during the events of the third installment of the Halo franchise, a story about a genetically enhanced warrior that almost singlehandedly saves humanity. The Master Chief as he is known in the game is brave and swift and is able to accomplish some pretty amazing feats. We here at Crave want to know why Hollywood is so slow in responding to this amazingly popular video game character that seems to have all the prerequisites for a major motion picture.
Back story:
The Halo franchise is home to one of the deepest back stories in all of gaming with a story that spans decades and covers years of strife and warfare. In a nutshell mankind becomes a space faring race in the not so distant future where they have the extreme misfortune of running afoul of the Covenant a collective of alien species who have formed under one religious banner. The aliens savagely attack humanity and over the course of some thirty years drive humanity to the point of near extinction.
The Covenant presents the perfect film going threat, their big and scary and strong. While it would call upon CGI to render them properly, the end result would be more than worth it. The battles in Halo are titanic to put it mildly and any director worth his salt would have a field day bringing that kind of action to the big screen.
The Hero Conundrum:
The only real problem with a Halo movie is that the main character is rather two dimensional. The Master Chief is powerful sure, but he has little to no personality to speak of, delivering about six lines in total in the first game if that. He speaks more as the games continue but not by much. There would have to be a ton of work done on the main character before a movie could be made and that’s dangerous ground. The movie hinges on this one character being cool to audiences that isn’t familiar with the game series and that’s asking a lot.
Luckily the second game offers an unlikely but better balanced hero in the form of the Arbiter, an alien who basically has had a change of heart and now fights against the Covenant. The Arbiter has a lot more going on and a lot more to say which makes it easier to translate him into film.
Just think of the money:
Being a realist I can admit to myself that movie studios only care about what’s cool on the basis that it’s profitable. If they don’t see themselves breaking the bank then they don’t care how cool something is. To paraphrase a classic term: If you build it, they will come…
If you make this movie it will finally break the stereotype that videogame movies suck. Halo will be (if made properly) one of the better movies to come out in whatever year it comes out, especially if you let Peter Jackson get his hands on it. After seeing District 9 I’m thoroughly convinced that Jackson and company could easily do a Halo movie the right way.
Just watch the video:
It also seems like Microsoft is campaigning for a Halo movie with their ODST advertisement. The live action short is beyond awesome, to be bold I have to say that it’s perfect. Far superior to Hitman and Max Payne and those were full length motion pictures!
I’ve seen some pretty crappy Halo ‘movies’ on the web that have shaken my resolve about a movie, but that was until Microsoft and Bungie set me straight. Listen studio execs, this movie is a slam dunk, so grow a pair and make it already while we’re young!
