The recent release and subsequent rerelease of Morbius severely damaged any residual influence in Sony's Spider-Man villain universe. While the movie quickly became little more than a widespread meme, it turned many fans off of the franchise entirely.
Of course, Morbius isn't alone in destroying interest in other, unrelated movies. Yet while Morbius severely hurt the prospects of Sony's universe, there have been movies that were so terrible that they devastated entire genres and eventually killed them entirely.
Titan A.E
Traditional hand-drawn animation has lost its prominence in recent years, and not for the reason many moviegoers would expect. Reddit user rccrisp says, "The first shockwave was definitely Titan A.E. which had a massive push from Fox... and was so expensive to make that after its opening weekend Fox shut down their animation studio."
A sci-fi bomb that really deserves a reboot, Titan A.E. may have had great animation, but its story was utterly uninteresting to audiences. IMDb reports that the film had a $75,000,000 budget, which certainly didn't help, given its $36,754,634 gross return. It marked the end of an era.
Cutthroat Island
While it's considered a great pirate movie by Reddit, Cutthroat Island was one of the worst box office failures in Hollywood history. "It came out in 1995 and basically killed pirate movies until Pirates of the Caribbean came out in 2003," says Reddit user timelordoftheimpala.
The movie itself was certainly interesting, and the setting was incredible, but the effect it had on the industry is undeniable. Hollywood was incredibly hesitant to actively seek out another pirate movie after watching Cutthroat Island collapse. While it was still enjoyable within the genre, it killed it for years.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
A 2007 film that didn't make back its budget, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was a complete failure. While it was intending to serve as a satire of musical biopics, the comedy fell completely flat, and it failed to earn the attention needed to keep the genre alive and stable.
"Musician biopics had to retool themselves after Walk Hard," says Redditor BaronAleksei. The genre failed to recover until Straight Outta Compton in 2015, which may as well be decades later for Hollywood. Even then, it took until 2018's Bohemian Rapsody to fully heal the genre.
Divergent
A big-budget movie that was intended to be as big of a success as The Hunger Games, Divergent and its sequels were eventually more often relegated to the shelves than big screens. "While the genre was getting on at this point, Divergent sent the YA dystopia genre into the grave," says Reddit user BiMikethefirst.
With a confusing storyline that left fans scratching their heads to figure out where the story was headed, Divergent stripped the dystopian genre to its core, and the effects weren't what filmmakers hope for. Despite being one of the highest-grossing Young Adult franchises, fans were less interested with each additional project, and it showed.
Xanadu
There are few musicals as damaging as Xanadu was to its genre. "Xanadu came out in 1980 and killed big-screen movie musicals hard. How hard? Best as I can find, the next movie musical was Moulin Rouge. In 2001," says Reddit user Super-naught1.
While the results weren't as bleak as Reddit insists, given that there were still big-budget animated movies, the presence of expensive live-action movie musicals was certainly diminished in the aftermath of the release. The genre has thankfully recovered since, but it was dead for years.
Batman & Robin
A movie that completely destroyed the campy superhero genre for years, Batman & Robin also "killed any chances of a specific sub-genre of Batman stories, specifically anything to do with the Batfamily," says Reddit user GoneRampant1. "In every cinematic adaptation of Batman since, he has always been a loner."
Despite having the best cast for a bad movie, even that cast couldn't save it. With terrible dialogue and an odd tone that left fans questioning why Batman was so campy, the movie convinced Hollywood that superheroes were a serious matter, and especially the Dark Knight. It's why every Batman movie has grown grittier and grittier with every new iteration.
World War Z
While shows like The Walking Dead continue to earn acclaim, the movie World War Z severely damages the zombie genre, after the huge spike in interest in the early 2010s. "Feels like big zombie movies are all straight to streaming ever since World War Z," says Redditor BlueFootedTpeack.
Despite being based on an extremely successful book, World War Z borrowed little to nothing from its source material, leaving many fans wondering why they'd bothered. Most of the best zombie dramas since have struggled to earn any popular acclaim since.
Need For Speed
While there are still many movies that revolve around cars, "Need For Speed has been doing a great job of killing the arcade racer for a while," says Redditor derwood1992. With too much story for its short runtime, the film left much to be desired, and it left many convinced that the genre just cannot handle existing outside of video games or television.
The film certainly had the budget to accomplish anything it could need, so Hollywood hasn't seen the purpose of taking the risk with any others. Had it proven capable of being one of the best video game movies, it might have led to more films like it. Instead, it killed the genre.
Mars Needs Moms
Despite being a movie with heavy resources behind it, Mars Needs Moms had a strange plot and even stranger animation. "That thing murdered motion capture movies (which, to be fair, tended to be dizzyingly expensive to make and thus had a high barrier of entry) before they ever really got going," says Reddit user javer80.
While motion capture has grown increasingly popular in video games, the movie failed to properly introduce it to wider audiences, as audiences came to reject it quickly. The movie had one of the worst box office results of all time, which certainly didn't leave the animation style in a good place, and it's why it's been left behind and forgotten.
Dragonball: Evolution
Despite the potential that anime adaptations have in Hollywood, it took a remarkably long while before the industry took advantage, and there's a very good reason why. "Didn’t Dragonball Evolution pretty much kill any opportunity for there to be a western live-action adaptation of an anime or manga until like the live-action GiTS movie?" asks Redditor EcchiPhantom.
A movie so terrible it outright destroyed any hope for live-action adaptations for years, it utterly failed in attempting to replicate the energy of the show. Between terrible acting, worse dialogue, and an incoherent story, the film managed to keep Hollywood away from anime and manga for years.