So, much to my surprise, they've gone and made a television show based
on the Halo video games. Well, I say surprise, but it's not really
that. I knew they were making a Halo TV show... but I knew it much the
same way I know there are people working on cold fusion. It's a
project that's been in the making for years and years and, quite
honestly, it's not one I really expected ever to come to fruition.

Of course I had to watch it. I'm not really a big fan of the Halo
series, although neither do I have any significant negative feelings
about it. Despite the hype, I've always found the franchise to be
rather run of the mill, both in gameplay and setting. Nonetheless, I
have - usually to my disappointment - kept abreast with the franchise;
I've played the games, I've read (some) of the novels and comics; I
even own the direct-to-DVD Halo cartoons. Watching the TV show seemed
the natural next step.

I'm hesitant to render an opinion, partly because there's only been
one episode so far, but also because so little actually happened in
that episode. The best I can say is that the series is faithful to the
source material and seems to have been developed by fans of the
franchise. You know how you watch a movie based on a book or game or
whatever, and there's so many changes that you wonder why they
bothered with the license at all? This isn't that sort of thing; there
are notable difference, but the feel of the show feels very true to
the games.

Which is also, perhaps, the worst part of the show. Despite the rich
backstory of the franchise, the games themselves always had very
shallow plots and one-note characters... and the TV show isn't any
better (but see my aforementioned note about this being only the first episode). Still, the show didn't help by using half its run-time (at
least!) to showcase a bombastic battle and overly-long VFX sequences
featuring all the future-tech for which the franchise is famous. That
left it precious little time to actually build up the setting,
characters and plot.

Very surprisingly, the visuals and sound were the weakest part of the
show. The episode itself begins with a VFX shot of some alien world
that looks so fake that I was sure it was intended to be some sort of
fake-out; that the camera would pull back and reveal that what we were
looking at was a zoomed in shot of an alien's face or something. But
nope, that cartoony landscape was supposed to be convincing.

None of the CGI looked particularly good and didn't meld well with the live-action sequences; I've seen better efforts in amateur Youtube
videos. A lot of the stuff seemed off-model too (the alien Elites, in particular, looked very poor, more like tubby men in poorly molded
armor than the fearsome warriors they were supposed to be). The
animations lacked convincing weight and realism; it very much looked
like the frenetic activities you'd find in a video-game. Sound was
likewise disappointing, especially with the Foley (the
thump-thump-thump of the Spartans walking about was so over the top it
became farcical).

Honestly, the whole thing was - even to somebody who wasn't expecting
very much - an oddly disappointing experience. It felt very much like
a fanboy's attempt at live-action, focused far too much on the
fighting rather than drama and character. That's fine for a five
minute Youtube video, but it fails completely if you're trying to
maintain interest over an hour (and want people to come back for more
later). That it looked like a sci-fi TV show produced ten years ago
didn't help either; shows like "The Mandalorean" and "The Witcher"
have greatly raised the bar and its qutie apparent that "Halo" hasn't
kept up.

Still, as I said, I'm not willing to declare the show a lost cause
yet. It could still be a show worth watching, but between its
uninteresting story, flat characters, and disappointing VFX, it
certainly hasn't put its best foot forward. Despite the faithfulness
to the material and the very apparent love for the franchise by the showrunners, they haven't yet shown that Halo is a series worth
watching for any reason other than its name. We'll see if they can
turn things around.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

I only briefly played the first Halo game during its free weekend on
Steam. It wasn't bad. I was curious about the TV shows after seeing its trailers. It wasn't not bad even though not a Halo fan.


Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

So, much to my surprise, they've gone and made a television show based
on the Halo video games. Well, I say surprise, but it's not really
that. I knew they were making a Halo TV show... but I knew it much the
same way I know there are people working on cold fusion. It's a
project that's been in the making for years and years and, quite
honestly, it's not one I really expected ever to come to fruition.

Of course I had to watch it. I'm not really a big fan of the Halo
series, although neither do I have any significant negative feelings
about it. Despite the hype, I've always found the franchise to be
rather run of the mill, both in gameplay and setting. Nonetheless, I
have - usually to my disappointment - kept abreast with the franchise;
I've played the games, I've read (some) of the novels and comics; I
even own the direct-to-DVD Halo cartoons. Watching the TV show seemed
the natural next step.

I'm hesitant to render an opinion, partly because there's only been
one episode so far, but also because so little actually happened in
that episode. The best I can say is that the series is faithful to the
source material and seems to have been developed by fans of the
franchise. You know how you watch a movie based on a book or game or whatever, and there's so many changes that you wonder why they
bothered with the license at all? This isn't that sort of thing; there
are notable difference, but the feel of the show feels very true to
the games.

Which is also, perhaps, the worst part of the show. Despite the rich backstory of the franchise, the games themselves always had very
shallow plots and one-note characters... and the TV show isn't any
better (but see my aforementioned note about this being only the first episode). Still, the show didn't help by using half its run-time (at
least!) to showcase a bombastic battle and overly-long VFX sequences featuring all the future-tech for which the franchise is famous. That
left it precious little time to actually build up the setting,
characters and plot.

Very surprisingly, the visuals and sound were the weakest part of the
show. The episode itself begins with a VFX shot of some alien world
that looks so fake that I was sure it was intended to be some sort of fake-out; that the camera would pull back and reveal that what we were looking at was a zoomed in shot of an alien's face or something. But
nope, that cartoony landscape was supposed to be convincing.

None of the CGI looked particularly good and didn't meld well with the live-action sequences; I've seen better efforts in amateur Youtube
videos. A lot of the stuff seemed off-model too (the alien Elites, in particular, looked very poor, more like tubby men in poorly molded
armor than the fearsome warriors they were supposed to be). The
animations lacked convincing weight and realism; it very much looked
like the frenetic activities you'd find in a video-game. Sound was
likewise disappointing, especially with the Foley (the
thump-thump-thump of the Spartans walking about was so over the top it
became farcical).

Honestly, the whole thing was - even to somebody who wasn't expecting
very much - an oddly disappointing experience. It felt very much like
a fanboy's attempt at live-action, focused far too much on the
fighting rather than drama and character. That's fine for a five
minute Youtube video, but it fails completely if you're trying to
maintain interest over an hour (and want people to come back for more
later). That it looked like a sci-fi TV show produced ten years ago
didn't help either; shows like "The Mandalorean" and "The Witcher"
have greatly raised the bar and its qutie apparent that "Halo" hasn't
kept up.

Still, as I said, I'm not willing to declare the show a lost cause
yet. It could still be a show worth watching, but between its
uninteresting story, flat characters, and disappointing VFX, it
certainly hasn't put its best foot forward. Despite the faithfulness
to the material and the very apparent love for the franchise by the showrunners, they haven't yet shown that Halo is a series worth
watching for any reason other than its name. We'll see if they can
turn things around.

--
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)