waste no time distinguishing itself from the popular game franchise. We open in a rebel village bar where patrons are discussing the evil UNSC (United Nations Space Command) and fakers like Spartans. It could easily be a scene from firefly, a short series about lucky people fighting for freedom against the authoritarian central government. In short, a group of Covenant aliens attack, resulting in a bloody massacre where limbs are blown up, skulls are severely damaged, and an entire children’s room is murdered. It isn’t long before Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber), our hero clad in dazzling green armor, appears and wipes out the alien threat with an effective unit of superhuman Spartan soldiers. brutal but elegant.
Spoilers ahead for Halo on Paramount+.
Core Halo games have always been rated M for Mature by the ESRB, but they have never felt as bloody as The program is opening. When you play as Master Chief, you feel like a one-man army embarking on a hilarious intergalactic adventure. Instead, the TV series begins by focusing on people who are often overlooked by the game. Only one survivor from that rebellious village remains, a teenage girl named Kwan Ah. But instead of being cared for by the Spartans and their UNSC and United Earth custodians, she is treated like a prisoner. When Halo games often see UEG as a kind of benevolent dictatorship, the show framing the military government as controlling and villainous.
That might put off even the most ardent fans of the franchise, but it’s a more honest representation of what UNSC stands for. Master Chief quickly learns that he cannot trust his leaders either. After touching an alien artifact, he begins to reminisce about a soldier’s previous life. While the show doesn’t quickly delve into his roots, Halo Fans know the history of Spartan soldiers is rife with controversy. Master Chief, and the other members of his party, were actually abducted as children, genetically engineered and trained to be super-soldiers. While games rarely struggle with the horror and complexity of that show, Halo The novel fills in the gaps.
The most interesting thing about Halo series is that it confronts that plot directly. When we first met Master Chief, he was the last soldier we were familiar with. But when the UNSC orders him to kill Kwan Ah, he hesitates and does something we’ve never seen in the game: He takes off his helmet. Instead of killing the defenseless teenager, Master Chief went rogue. The super soldier started thinking for himself.
Unfortunately, the interesting elements of Halo somewhat overwhelmed by the show’s simple writing, stiff acting, and sometimes confusing special effects. If it came out in 2015, when we, it will be more impressive. But now we are practically living through a golden age of sci-fi television.(And to a lesser extent, Books by Boba Fett), are bringing us some big budget episodes Star Wars Annual action! not the Asimov story as we know it, but it looks incredible. The Expanse skillfully brought a series of epic books to life. And even Ridley Scott is working on science fiction again with.
It doesn’t help with that either, at its core, Halo feels like re-reading Mandalorian’s riff on Lonely wolf and cub in space. Kwan Ah is not a child, but she is a defenseless innocent being protected by a tough space loner who is forced to go against her superiors. Whatever is done Halo seemingly only a few years ago no longer exists.
Still, it’s amazing that the show exists. The live-action adaptation isis a partnership between 343 Industries and Amblin Entertainment, with Steven Spielberg himself involved as producer. Kiki Wolfkill, the leader of 343 Halo transmedia, told Engadget that the key to making the series a success was "patient." The studio isn’t in a hurry to bring the series to TV, instead 343 wants to take the time to adapt it properly.
Halo finally started to emerge in 2018 with Kyle Killen joining as writer/presenter, who was later joined by Steven Kane in 2019. Original director, Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), eventually replaced by Otto Bathurst (Black Mirror, Peak Curtain), which boosted production even further. And when they finally started shooting in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a delay again. Instead of being a premium cable highlight, it has become .
Despite the fit and the start, Wolfkill says the pandemic’s delay eventually helped the creative team regroup and uncover some unsustainable aspects of production. At one point, she said, there were five directors shooting at the same time. Breaks also allow VFX teams to catch up on remaining workloads. Now Paramount + already Wolfkill said that the group was also better prepared to deal with bringing the world Halo to life. For example, they know that the live-action Master Chief can’t pull a gun out of his back like he does in the game – it has to be an active VFX instead.
When Halo the series exists on a separate “Silver” timeline from the games, Wolfkill says we could eventually see some crossover between the vehicles. But when I asked if we’d ever see a Master Chief reveal himself in-game, Wolfkill was quick to say “quite obvious not.” As she puts it, “it’s a different experience and Chief is owned by all of us, so we never wanted to get in the way of that.”
