Halo Halo TV Series Thread: This isn't the Red Flag we were hoping for.
- Thread starter Battlegrinder
- Start date
So...it'll start with amnesia Spartan.
Edit: I don't know anything. This is just the 1st stupid thing that came to mind.
Edit: I don't know anything. This is just the 1st stupid thing that came to mind.
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Whats going on?
Wait, an alternate timeline and Chief has amnesia...oh FFS.
Arlos
Sad Monarchist
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
Do they always have to improve the plot of games? Can't they just take one of the books or comics from the universe and adapt it? Without knocking out the entire existing storyline because they do?
Part of the issue with adapting the books is that the books, particularly the early ones, are very different from the games. A huge chunk of the Nylund books are set on ships doing space combat, an aspect of the series the games barely touch on. I would love to see Keyes Loop make it onscreen, but in terms of brand identity Halo is heavily invested into Master Chief running around shooting people on the ground, and not math heavy slingshot maneuvers.
It could still be done, but doing something like, as I pitched before, a series following Maria 062 as she tries to protect her family during the battle of Earth, or a series about how she decided to quit the Spartan program and raise a family in the first place would be much harder to sell in terms of being a "Halo" thing, because it's missing most of the highly recognizable elements of Halo.
Also, it would require talent, whereas taking some clichéd story about how Army Bad and cramming a few canon characters into it is more in line with the writing skill Hollywood has these days.
I have no idea if that is actually true. I just tossed off the 1st stupid thing I could think of.
No, from the vid, it sounds like that is actually the case, at least to a degree.
BWAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAHHH!!!!!
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
Well, there is no shortage of those who have no talent.. Hell, I doubt there are even craftsmen.
But let's think for a moment, it's so hard to, I don't know, create some team of ordinary Marines fighting from battle to battle who are trying to survive some sort of slaughter.
Some company of brothers but in space?
There's a lot of space in Halo, you could also give a brief overview of why the Covenant is attacking them except that only we viewers know and here we show the artifacts and that's it. A classic series about soldiers this time fighting aliens in space.
None of this is originality, but it doesn't have to be.
And we can, from time to time, show off some of the cooler elements of this world.
The thing is, the people making this crap don't care about anything that made Halo, or anything else popular. All they care about is that it is popular, so they can use it as a platform to spread their propaganda. They don't care that this pisses fans of the property off. In fact, they probably welcome any backlash, because they can use it the same way the backlash against everything else has been used.
Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
And I was wondering how they could twist it like that, well hell pity people didn't they at least look at some wiki about Halo? Or I don't know if they hired someone who ate their teeth on Halo lore in their spare time?
Welp. The first episode landed last night.
First of all, let's talk about what a Halo TV series needs.
It doesn't need Spartans. It doesn't need the Master Chief and Cortana as main characters. It is perfectly possible to write a story that features the UNSC and the Insurrectionists prominently, without even mentioning Spartan supersoldiers. Two of the best Halo stories, which also happen to be stand-alone and prime for adapting into a movie or TV series, are Halo 3: ODST and Contact Harvest.
And if you're going to point out that Sergeant Johnson is an Orion, and therefore technically a Spartan I, let me remind you that "technically correct" is the dumbest kind of correct. Sergeant Johnson may have been in Contact Harvest, but his augs weren't mentioned and weren't relevant to the plot.
Ok. To the show proper:
OK. Someone who wrote the script has played sci fi video games, because there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to Mass Effect.
That said, this is like a high-budget fan project. Everything looks cheap, and the actors are so wooden that they might as well be mannequins.
In promotional materials, one of the showrunners bragged that he wrote two hundred and something scripts for the TV show, but this first episode feels like it was shot off a rough draft. The dialog is stilted and generally awful, and none of the elements are really coming together.
More later. Going to rant about character assassination.
First of all, let's talk about what a Halo TV series needs.
It doesn't need Spartans. It doesn't need the Master Chief and Cortana as main characters. It is perfectly possible to write a story that features the UNSC and the Insurrectionists prominently, without even mentioning Spartan supersoldiers. Two of the best Halo stories, which also happen to be stand-alone and prime for adapting into a movie or TV series, are Halo 3: ODST and Contact Harvest.
And if you're going to point out that Sergeant Johnson is an Orion, and therefore technically a Spartan I, let me remind you that "technically correct" is the dumbest kind of correct. Sergeant Johnson may have been in Contact Harvest, but his augs weren't mentioned and weren't relevant to the plot.
Ok. To the show proper:
OK. Someone who wrote the script has played sci fi video games, because there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to Mass Effect.
That said, this is like a high-budget fan project. Everything looks cheap, and the actors are so wooden that they might as well be mannequins.
In promotional materials, one of the showrunners bragged that he wrote two hundred and something scripts for the TV show, but this first episode feels like it was shot off a rough draft. The dialog is stilted and generally awful, and none of the elements are really coming together.
So, the show opens up with a bunch of insurrectionists on Madrigal, sitting around a table and bitching about the UNSC while a TV report plays in the background. Then it cuts to a group of kids outside the mining town. I say 'kids' with an advisory, because this is the worst case of Dawson Casting I have ever seen. The kids are looking for a drug to get high while they talk about what they're going to do with life, and also drop some exposition that Madrigal is a mining colony that produces heavy water for deuterium.
This is... in a better movie, it would be foreshadowing for the fact that the UNSC needs Madrigal for deuterium. In a later scene between Miranda Keyes (Who is black now) and Jacob Keyes (Who is also black now) Miranda Keyes bitches about killing people for energy. Something like that. The actual line is hard to hear over the psychic echo of "No blood for oil!" This is echoed again in a dialog between Kwan Ha and the Master Chief. You see, they have a previous history. Kwan Ha's mother attended a meeting between Insurrectionist groups that was organizing to stop the UNSC from stealing all their resources. But the Spartans crashed the meeting to stop an Insurrectionist bomb threat that was clearly fabricated by the UNSC, and Kwan Ha's mother died.
But for the Master Chief, it was Tuesday.
This is all as stupid as it sounds.
This is a conflict from the books, but that conflict was a background detail never meant to be brought to the foreground. The Spartans and the UNSC's military strength needed a justification for their existence, so the Insurrection was dreamed up as a threat to the UNSC. The Insurrectionists needed a reason to fight the UNSC, so the resource conflict over the Outer Colonies was created. This is a justification of a justification that always looked thin when examined in isolation, and any good adaptation would have fleshed the conflict out.
Instead, this show is using it as a hook to cram in their messaging about "Evil bad empires steal resources from poor minorities."
Isn't there a war going on? A war of extermination where the Covenant are burning entire worlds?
Yeah, but that's barely worth a mention as anything other than a justification for why the UNSC needs deuterium. And the UNSC doesn't just laugh off a girl for demanding that an entire colony be made independent in exchange for her giving "The Covenant is totally real, guys!" testimony that the UNSC doesn't actually need, they decide to kill her and cover it up.
It's godawful worldbuilding that doesn't even sound good on paper. Not unless you're a Berkley Leftist who thinks that the government really is this cartoonishly evil.* Why does the UNSC care about this one survivor enough to disappear her? Why is her testimony so important to getting other Insurrectionist groups on-board?
In the novels, the Innies were reluctant to believe that the UNSC didn't just make the Covenant up, but that only lasted for a few months, and maybe a bit longer for them to give up on the idea of siding with the Covenant. This only worked because interstellar comms don't exist. More than that, travel from one colony to the next can take weeks or months with civilian-grade slipspace drives. The Innies didn't know and were reluctant to trust the UNSC, because go-see-it-for-yourself evidence took months to get.
In this TV show, a Condor jumped from Madrigal to Reach in less than a day, and contacted Halsey's lab en-route. Go fucking see it for yourself.
Finally, there's Makee. The Human who was raised by the Covenant to hate Humans is being waited upon by the High Prophet of Mercy himself. And she's studying a book (Dawn of Angels, which sounds like a romance novel) to 'understand how the Humans think.'.
*pours a glass of vodka*
You know, the last time I saw this plot point, it was in one the later Artemis Fowl book. It was treated as a joke, and it was still lame. Seeing the exact same thing pop up in a serious science fiction show is... ugh.
*Maybe I'm being unfair, but I'm reminded of the 'fix' that David Brin floated around to cure Avatar's storytelling. Because instead of mucking around with Avatars and trying to negotiate with the Navi, the RDA Corporation should have invited all the Navi elders to a peace conference and then bombed them.
This is... in a better movie, it would be foreshadowing for the fact that the UNSC needs Madrigal for deuterium. In a later scene between Miranda Keyes (Who is black now) and Jacob Keyes (Who is also black now) Miranda Keyes bitches about killing people for energy. Something like that. The actual line is hard to hear over the psychic echo of "No blood for oil!" This is echoed again in a dialog between Kwan Ha and the Master Chief. You see, they have a previous history. Kwan Ha's mother attended a meeting between Insurrectionist groups that was organizing to stop the UNSC from stealing all their resources. But the Spartans crashed the meeting to stop an Insurrectionist bomb threat that was clearly fabricated by the UNSC, and Kwan Ha's mother died.
But for the Master Chief, it was Tuesday.
This is all as stupid as it sounds.
This is a conflict from the books, but that conflict was a background detail never meant to be brought to the foreground. The Spartans and the UNSC's military strength needed a justification for their existence, so the Insurrection was dreamed up as a threat to the UNSC. The Insurrectionists needed a reason to fight the UNSC, so the resource conflict over the Outer Colonies was created. This is a justification of a justification that always looked thin when examined in isolation, and any good adaptation would have fleshed the conflict out.
Instead, this show is using it as a hook to cram in their messaging about "Evil bad empires steal resources from poor minorities."
Isn't there a war going on? A war of extermination where the Covenant are burning entire worlds?
Yeah, but that's barely worth a mention as anything other than a justification for why the UNSC needs deuterium. And the UNSC doesn't just laugh off a girl for demanding that an entire colony be made independent in exchange for her giving "The Covenant is totally real, guys!" testimony that the UNSC doesn't actually need, they decide to kill her and cover it up.
It's godawful worldbuilding that doesn't even sound good on paper. Not unless you're a Berkley Leftist who thinks that the government really is this cartoonishly evil.* Why does the UNSC care about this one survivor enough to disappear her? Why is her testimony so important to getting other Insurrectionist groups on-board?
In the novels, the Innies were reluctant to believe that the UNSC didn't just make the Covenant up, but that only lasted for a few months, and maybe a bit longer for them to give up on the idea of siding with the Covenant. This only worked because interstellar comms don't exist. More than that, travel from one colony to the next can take weeks or months with civilian-grade slipspace drives. The Innies didn't know and were reluctant to trust the UNSC, because go-see-it-for-yourself evidence took months to get.
In this TV show, a Condor jumped from Madrigal to Reach in less than a day, and contacted Halsey's lab en-route. Go fucking see it for yourself.
Finally, there's Makee. The Human who was raised by the Covenant to hate Humans is being waited upon by the High Prophet of Mercy himself. And she's studying a book (Dawn of Angels, which sounds like a romance novel) to 'understand how the Humans think.'.
*pours a glass of vodka*
You know, the last time I saw this plot point, it was in one the later Artemis Fowl book. It was treated as a joke, and it was still lame. Seeing the exact same thing pop up in a serious science fiction show is... ugh.
*Maybe I'm being unfair, but I'm reminded of the 'fix' that David Brin floated around to cure Avatar's storytelling. Because instead of mucking around with Avatars and trying to negotiate with the Navi, the RDA Corporation should have invited all the Navi elders to a peace conference and then bombed them.
More later. Going to rant about character assassination.
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Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
Well, fuck me. It's a fucking drama. If they wanted an epic politically correct adventure they could have made their own fake Halo and no one would have had a pain in the ass.
so they can use the argument that it's not canon and do whatever they want. Including fucking with logic and presenting characters differently than they should look.
Paragonsky for example, why did they make her Indian? She should rather look like a European!
The changing of Miranda Keyes and Jacob's race for pity's sake I won't mention. But soon someone will say that it doesn't matter, and anyway what do you want, you racist Polack?
It does, and a lot because it creates a dissonance between the game and the series. If they wanted to create it, then thank you, they managed to create a barrier that is impossible to pass.
Another thing, where the hell is the logic of the world? This planet, is the fucking planet with the largest deuterium resources. And the UNSC doesn't control it? And to make matters worse, we only have one city on the entire fucking planet. Yeah, I get that there's no time or money, but you could make it clear that there's more than one city? Then the Spartans being late to save this town would make sense because it would show that Spartans are few and cannot be everywhere at once.
Another thing, how the hell did these insurgents get these ancient from their point of view weapons and why didn't they inflict any losses with them? Then Chief comes in with his MA5 and massacres everything despite the fact that this weapon has the same caliber as today's guns.
I could talk more, but I will add my last problem, where are the races other than elites or prophets? Where are the Grunts? Where are the Jackals? And the other races of the Covenant? They are the ones who should rather hit this planet. What was the money for extra CGI or idea for them?
The only plus I can give the fights, but with a wink at the plasma shooting everything out instead of melting. The series is very average, dialogues sometimes make no sense.
Paragonsky for example, why did they make her Indian? She should rather look like a European!
The changing of Miranda Keyes and Jacob's race for pity's sake I won't mention. But soon someone will say that it doesn't matter, and anyway what do you want, you racist Polack?
It does, and a lot because it creates a dissonance between the game and the series. If they wanted to create it, then thank you, they managed to create a barrier that is impossible to pass.
Another thing, where the hell is the logic of the world? This planet, is the fucking planet with the largest deuterium resources. And the UNSC doesn't control it? And to make matters worse, we only have one city on the entire fucking planet. Yeah, I get that there's no time or money, but you could make it clear that there's more than one city? Then the Spartans being late to save this town would make sense because it would show that Spartans are few and cannot be everywhere at once.
Another thing, how the hell did these insurgents get these ancient from their point of view weapons and why didn't they inflict any losses with them? Then Chief comes in with his MA5 and massacres everything despite the fact that this weapon has the same caliber as today's guns.
I could talk more, but I will add my last problem, where are the races other than elites or prophets? Where are the Grunts? Where are the Jackals? And the other races of the Covenant? They are the ones who should rather hit this planet. What was the money for extra CGI or idea for them?
The only plus I can give the fights, but with a wink at the plasma shooting everything out instead of melting. The series is very average, dialogues sometimes make no sense.
It wouldn't be a problem if they just took a company of brothers and put them in space since all they do is give generic nothing anyway. And it would have been more fun to watch.
