Halo Halo TV Series Thread: This isn't the Red Flag we were hoping for.
- Thread starter Battlegrinder
- Start date
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
Post links!They've already started. All of them.And the RT ratings also aren't too great either.
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
Watched the first episode.
He sums all my opinions in under 2 minutes.
I am not a Halo fan but I can tell you it's shit
I am sailing the high seas and getting the audiobooks. And rewatching the other stuff they put out instead of this crap.
He sums all my opinions in under 2 minutes.
I am not a Halo fan but I can tell you it's shit
I am sailing the high seas and getting the audiobooks. And rewatching the other stuff they put out instead of this crap.
Alrighty, ladies and gentlemen. Let's talk changes and characterization.
If the Expanse never aired, it would be an interesting choice, because Parangosky and Chrisjen Avasarala have the same role. They're both high-level bureaucrats who have some kind of moral compass, but there's dirty business to be done and they're the ones who have to greenlight it.
In the books, Colonel Ackerson came to Maggie Parangosky to greenlight the Spartan III program, explicitly arguing that the war requires disposable Spartans. Not suicide soldiers, but Spartans who can be sent on missions with a low probability of survival. Every expense will be made to recover them, but the priority will be completing the mission.
Parangosky greenlights the program with a "God help us all."
I'll wait for the Critical Drinker review.
The biggest change, and as a Halo fan, the biggest turd in the punch bowl, is the fact that the Master Chief's memories have been wiped.
The Master Chief doesn't remember his childhood. In fact, the conflict between him and the UNSC kicks off when he touches a Forerunner Macguffin and it restores his memories. He reports seeing visions of a white dog and a family back to the UNSC, and the encounter leaves him moody and uncertain. Parangosky and Halsey panic, because they realize that his induced amnesia is failing. His memories of his childhood are coming back. They are terrified that their control over their pet supersoldier is going to slip, and Halsey explicitly proposes restarting the Cortana program to bring the Chief back under control.
If this leaves a bad taste in your mouth, let's compare this to the source material.
The amnesia is actually a plot point from the very first book, the book that established what the Spartan II program even was. When the six-year-old Spartan II candidates were brought to Reach, Doctor Halsey personally briefed them on what would be done to them. Her AI assistant, Kamiya, proposed wiping the children's memories with a selective neural paralytic, and telling the children that their parents were killed in a bombing.
Doctor Halsey rejected this option out of hand, explicitly because the neural paralytic could fail, and then the children would realized that they'd been lied to. Instead, she used the truth. She told the children that they would be conditioned, and trained to be the best that they could be. They would become supersoldiers to protect Humanity.
And all the little Spartans signed right up. John 117 was offered the chance to be Superman, and he took it.
If this leaves you conflicted, it should. Now let's talk about narrative and The Message.
This is just some comedian from Polygon reading through the Halo novels back when there were less than twenty of them, and it's a fairly unremarkable video except for his review of The Fall of Reach. He's shocked that the Spartans are child soldiers, and says that based on the way the book is written, you'd expect the UNSC to be the bad guys. And if Halo was a lesser series, the UNSC would be. If the Halo books were just another dystopian YA series, then the Master Chief's character arc would involve realizing he'd been lied to and turning on the UNSC, perhaps even defecting to theResistance Insurrectionists.
But Halo is not that story. In fact, the UNSC are the good guys, and if you only played the games, the UNSC seems like stand-up guys. Captain Keyes and Miranda Keys are solid commanders, as are Lord Hood and Colonel Holland. And Johnson isn't bitching about the UNSC forcing him to fight. The focus of the narrative isn't on whether the UNSC is evil, it's a conflict between Humans and aliens.
See, you can have a good debate about how evil the UNSC is, whether the Spartan II program was justified, whether the Insurrectionists are legitimate in seeking secession as a solution to their problems with the UNSC. And it's pretty damn clear that the characters themselves are conflicted. Halsey, whose password to terminate her AI assistant is "Whateverittakes", is wracked by guilt that everything she sacrificed was for nothing because the Covenant were going to win the war. Parangosky is very clearly horrified by the concept of child soldiers. Ackerson would rather be slogging through the mud with a rifle than doing this cloak and dagger shit, but he can't quit ONI because the job needs to be done and he's too damn good at it.
The problem is that there's a lot of writers who can't handle that kind of complexity. They can't grok that a government is a mass of people, each with their own agendas and ideals, often with conflicting principles, and they make the best decisions they can. The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every Human, and you can have good people and evil people working towards the same vague purpose.
To a certain class of writer, this kind of government is literally unimaginable. The government is either hierarchical and oppressive and full of people who are out for themselves (Or at least willing to casually murder bystanders for the sake of the greater good) or it's a communist utopia where everybody is equal and free to do as they please and nobody goes hungry.
The UNSC is in conflict with dirt-poor Insurrectionists and trains children into modern-day janissaries, so obviously it's not the communist utopia. Therefore, in the minds of these writers, the UNSC is fash.
It's perfectly possible to be critical of the UNSC. Personally, I think Halsey's recruitment of the Spartan II candidates (And Kurt's recruitment of the IIIs) was just one small step above child grooming. You could argue that the kiddies consented to be made into supersoldiers, but that's the exact argument that child molesters make.
But these writers don't make a good-faith attempt to engage with the source material, Troy Denning excluded. They warp the facts and make shit up so they can cram the UNSC into the "Goose-stepping Nazis!" box.
The first to do this was Karen Traviss, in her Kilo 5 trilogy. Remember how Halsey refused to lie to her Spartans. Nah, after a week of one of the candidates begging to go back home, Halsey broke down and told her that her parents were dead. And then the three novels took every opportunity they could get to shit on Halsey.
But the UNSC... well, the UNSC is no longer the stand-up organization we know from the games. Instead, ONI is supplying weapons to the Arbiter's enemies in the hopes that they'll all kill themselves. And they're strapping bombs to prisoners and testing out gene-modded grain that will destroy the Elites' food supplies.
Then came the opening to Halo 4 and the entirety of Halo 5, where ONI is obsessing over whether the Spartans have been traumatized by their training, and simultaneously worried that the Spartans might be out of control.
So. Now we're at the TV show, where The Message is fully evolved. The UNSC is an oppressive militaristic government, and only people who work for it are
A) Evil, power-hungry bureaucrats who are obsessed with controlling others
B) Not necessarily evil, but willing to shrug off liquidation of dissident prisoners with "Just following orders" and "For the greater good."
C) Brainwashed and unaware of how evil the government is.
And the only way out is to be made aware of how evil the UNSC is. In other words... to become woke.
Is this a lot to judge from the first episode. Perhaps. But there were a lot of clues laid down in that first episode alone, and I'm willing to stand by my reading. Halo has gone woke, and everything woke turns to shit.
The Master Chief doesn't remember his childhood. In fact, the conflict between him and the UNSC kicks off when he touches a Forerunner Macguffin and it restores his memories. He reports seeing visions of a white dog and a family back to the UNSC, and the encounter leaves him moody and uncertain. Parangosky and Halsey panic, because they realize that his induced amnesia is failing. His memories of his childhood are coming back. They are terrified that their control over their pet supersoldier is going to slip, and Halsey explicitly proposes restarting the Cortana program to bring the Chief back under control.
If this leaves a bad taste in your mouth, let's compare this to the source material.
The amnesia is actually a plot point from the very first book, the book that established what the Spartan II program even was. When the six-year-old Spartan II candidates were brought to Reach, Doctor Halsey personally briefed them on what would be done to them. Her AI assistant, Kamiya, proposed wiping the children's memories with a selective neural paralytic, and telling the children that their parents were killed in a bombing.
Doctor Halsey rejected this option out of hand, explicitly because the neural paralytic could fail, and then the children would realized that they'd been lied to. Instead, she used the truth. She told the children that they would be conditioned, and trained to be the best that they could be. They would become supersoldiers to protect Humanity.
And all the little Spartans signed right up. John 117 was offered the chance to be Superman, and he took it.
If this leaves you conflicted, it should. Now let's talk about narrative and The Message.
This is just some comedian from Polygon reading through the Halo novels back when there were less than twenty of them, and it's a fairly unremarkable video except for his review of The Fall of Reach. He's shocked that the Spartans are child soldiers, and says that based on the way the book is written, you'd expect the UNSC to be the bad guys. And if Halo was a lesser series, the UNSC would be. If the Halo books were just another dystopian YA series, then the Master Chief's character arc would involve realizing he'd been lied to and turning on the UNSC, perhaps even defecting to the
But Halo is not that story. In fact, the UNSC are the good guys, and if you only played the games, the UNSC seems like stand-up guys. Captain Keyes and Miranda Keys are solid commanders, as are Lord Hood and Colonel Holland. And Johnson isn't bitching about the UNSC forcing him to fight. The focus of the narrative isn't on whether the UNSC is evil, it's a conflict between Humans and aliens.
See, you can have a good debate about how evil the UNSC is, whether the Spartan II program was justified, whether the Insurrectionists are legitimate in seeking secession as a solution to their problems with the UNSC. And it's pretty damn clear that the characters themselves are conflicted. Halsey, whose password to terminate her AI assistant is "Whateverittakes", is wracked by guilt that everything she sacrificed was for nothing because the Covenant were going to win the war. Parangosky is very clearly horrified by the concept of child soldiers. Ackerson would rather be slogging through the mud with a rifle than doing this cloak and dagger shit, but he can't quit ONI because the job needs to be done and he's too damn good at it.
The problem is that there's a lot of writers who can't handle that kind of complexity. They can't grok that a government is a mass of people, each with their own agendas and ideals, often with conflicting principles, and they make the best decisions they can. The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every Human, and you can have good people and evil people working towards the same vague purpose.
To a certain class of writer, this kind of government is literally unimaginable. The government is either hierarchical and oppressive and full of people who are out for themselves (Or at least willing to casually murder bystanders for the sake of the greater good) or it's a communist utopia where everybody is equal and free to do as they please and nobody goes hungry.
The UNSC is in conflict with dirt-poor Insurrectionists and trains children into modern-day janissaries, so obviously it's not the communist utopia. Therefore, in the minds of these writers, the UNSC is fash.
It's perfectly possible to be critical of the UNSC. Personally, I think Halsey's recruitment of the Spartan II candidates (And Kurt's recruitment of the IIIs) was just one small step above child grooming. You could argue that the kiddies consented to be made into supersoldiers, but that's the exact argument that child molesters make.
But these writers don't make a good-faith attempt to engage with the source material, Troy Denning excluded. They warp the facts and make shit up so they can cram the UNSC into the "Goose-stepping Nazis!" box.
The first to do this was Karen Traviss, in her Kilo 5 trilogy. Remember how Halsey refused to lie to her Spartans. Nah, after a week of one of the candidates begging to go back home, Halsey broke down and told her that her parents were dead. And then the three novels took every opportunity they could get to shit on Halsey.
But the UNSC... well, the UNSC is no longer the stand-up organization we know from the games. Instead, ONI is supplying weapons to the Arbiter's enemies in the hopes that they'll all kill themselves. And they're strapping bombs to prisoners and testing out gene-modded grain that will destroy the Elites' food supplies.
Then came the opening to Halo 4 and the entirety of Halo 5, where ONI is obsessing over whether the Spartans have been traumatized by their training, and simultaneously worried that the Spartans might be out of control.
So. Now we're at the TV show, where The Message is fully evolved. The UNSC is an oppressive militaristic government, and only people who work for it are
A) Evil, power-hungry bureaucrats who are obsessed with controlling others
B) Not necessarily evil, but willing to shrug off liquidation of dissident prisoners with "Just following orders" and "For the greater good."
C) Brainwashed and unaware of how evil the government is.
And the only way out is to be made aware of how evil the UNSC is. In other words... to become woke.
Is this a lot to judge from the first episode. Perhaps. But there were a lot of clues laid down in that first episode alone, and I'm willing to stand by my reading. Halo has gone woke, and everything woke turns to shit.
It's not just playing Halo, it's also the books. The first three books from Nylund were something else, something that I don't think could be written today. Not because it would be censored, but because I don't think that a lot of writers are able to write the shades of gray needed to depict a largely democratic, well-meaning government that suppresses independence movements, and also trains cadres of child soldiers.
My guess: They wanted to get Shohreh Aghdashloo for the part, but she was too expensive for the role. So this is the next best thing.
If the Expanse never aired, it would be an interesting choice, because Parangosky and Chrisjen Avasarala have the same role. They're both high-level bureaucrats who have some kind of moral compass, but there's dirty business to be done and they're the ones who have to greenlight it.
In the books, Colonel Ackerson came to Maggie Parangosky to greenlight the Spartan III program, explicitly arguing that the war requires disposable Spartans. Not suicide soldiers, but Spartans who can be sent on missions with a low probability of survival. Every expense will be made to recover them, but the priority will be completing the mission.
Parangosky greenlights the program with a "God help us all."
I'll wait for the Critical Drinker review.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
I'm convinced most of the budget was blown on cocaine and strippers, Or its a big money laundering scheme.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
That one what I think is suppose to be a female has a haircut so terrible that it should be labelled a crime against humanity.
Arlos
Sad Monarchist
Is it even that? Original Halo Lore are plenty diverse already, this on the other hand literally seems like putting their daddy problem and political ideologies into the work.Diversity and Inclusion are expensive.
Also, Humans bad, but that’s to be expected from modern work *sigh*, can we not get Bollywood to do those things instead of hollywood? They can’t possibly do worse.
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
Probably. You will have to accept John "dancing" 117 though.
Halo is ripe for stories to be told.
Gimme a shot. Please. I'll write a kickass story that uses all the best elements of Halo, and it'll be canon-compliant, and I'll even go out on the Youtube Movie Critic circuit to explain why the Master Chief isn't the main character, and you'll still love it.
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
That was a path I could have taken a few years ago. Not sure if it would have worked.
I'm very interested in the implications of the Covenant faith and the fallout from the Great Schism and the loss of High Charity.
At one time, I was thinking of a story set after Humanity loses an interstellar war and becomes the vassal of a religious empire. A slightly different take on the outcome of the Human-Covenant War. I could still do it, but I'm not sure if anybody would be interested in reading it.
I'm talking about grifters. The people who basically demand you give them money to prove your virtue. Just another example of people using white guilt to make themselves richer.
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Man what a shitty, cliche change to make. Even if I'd heard nothing else critical of the show, that one might sink it.
Like...I think I might've read one of the Nylund books way-back when, but other than that my engagement is only through the games* and even then...Well, a pretty big, relatively-unspoken theme in the whole thing (perhaps minus five where things are weird and that I haven't played) is Master Chief (and by extension the rest of the Spartans who died before him) whooping ass for 'Merica humanity by choice--because even if horrific shit was done to them, and moral quandaries aplenty exist in their creation at all, they can look beyond to a broader humanity that doesn't deserve to be and shouldn't be destroyed by the Covenant. The whole 'wake me when you need me' sentiment.
Making him and the Spartans into automaton-soldiers blows that whole thing right up.
Because hope and goodness even in the face of extinction or inhuman treatment is dumb, we need grievances.
*I suppose that's more engagement than the show-writers had, eh?
Making him and the Spartans into automaton-soldiers blows that whole thing right up.
Because hope and goodness even in the face of extinction or inhuman treatment is dumb, we need grievances.
*I suppose that's more engagement than the show-writers had, eh?
SchrodingersWehraboo
Well-known member
What a mess of a show. What a letdown for a franchise with 20 years of history. I don’t know where to begin. Why does it start in 2552? Why do Elites manage to resist getting shot by two dozen guys with AK47s but Spartans take out their shields in seconds? Why do plasma and bullet impacts result in gore out of Gears Of War? Why does Master Chief look like a normal guy and not like someone who wears a helmet over their head for decades would? Why the 2001 Chevy Tahoe?
Seems like not having played the games for inspiration just meant the creators threw in the most generic editing kicks known to man. Pro-tip: your writing needs work if someone can PREDICT EVERY LITTLE TWIST AND TURN FIVE SECONDS IN ADVANCE. And that soundtrack, wow, just plain old MCU nothingness. Quite the downgrade from Marty.
Seems like not having played the games for inspiration just meant the creators threw in the most generic editing kicks known to man. Pro-tip: your writing needs work if someone can PREDICT EVERY LITTLE TWIST AND TURN FIVE SECONDS IN ADVANCE. And that soundtrack, wow, just plain old MCU nothingness. Quite the downgrade from Marty.
That one actually makes sense. Halo has always been a rated T for Teen property in terms of weapon effects, so the weapon effects in the show are probably closer to reality.
(Seriously, go back to the first 3 Halo games, and you'd be amazed that they're rated M for Mature due to "blood and gore, violence".)
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
In the 'amusing minutae' category:
^Short video clip where one of the separatist AKs that's raised eyebrows is shooting...And future AK-design has apparently incorporated a non-reciprocating bolt and some kind of ejector that shoot empty cases out by phasing them through the gun itself.
