Anyone watch this yet? I've been a huge fan of Halo since it was originally supposed to launch on Mac hardware, then got bought buy Microsoft to launch the XBox. I enjoyed the first episode. Nothing ground breaking or extravagant... just fun to watch Master Chief come to life.
I’m planning to watch it. And I’m glad they got Jenn Taylor to reprise the voice of Cortana. But the decision to cast Liev Schreiber‘s brother and let him do his own dialogue (and have the helmet come off at some point) instead of keeping the helmet on and getting Steve Downes (the original voice actor from the game) I think is a colossal mistake. Pedro Pascal in the mandalorian and Karl Urban in Dredd both showed that a good actor can act the fuck out of a role and give superstar performances with a helmet on. Honestly I thought they were a bit over eager to get Pedro’s face on camera in Mandalorian. If they’d held off on that for the finale scene I. Season 2 being the first time you see his face, I think that would have punched that moment up through the roof, and lost basically nothing. Andy Serkis is kind of the other master of performances where you can’t see his face. I know loads of his lost epic mocap moments, they were mapping his face as well. But so many moments where he’s motion captured in and you can’t see a face - he still destroys performances. And Steve Downes is the iconic performance of the master chief. Why change him out when you never need to see him on screen? I haven’t watched it yet, so if they’ve got Downes doing the voice acting with Shrieber just wearing the armour, I’ll be delighted to be wrong.
Yeah, I get it. I think Mando is the Gold Standard for sci-fi for the last decade or more. No real competition from where I stand. There's no way Halo will come close, in my opinion... the writing and characters are just so much better for Mando. That being said, Halo isn't bad. It's not as good, but it's enjoyable. Could it be better? Yes, I agree... it could. But it would also take a much better cast to pull that off. I think Pedro is almost uniquely capable of pulling off what he did, and I'm not sure you can get a Jack Reacher in Advanced Body Armour of the same quality for John 117. I've read the Halo back stories, and they seem to be starting in about novel 4... and they've done a fairly good job with the relationship between Halsey and John 117. Not as in depth, obviously, understandably, but still reasonable. Overall, if I gave Mando a 10/10, I'd give this first episode of Halo a 7.5/10. Maybe a 7.8/10.
I watched this in the gym yesterday, and I've had worse ways to spend an hour. I don't remember much about the story behind the game, and the Halo lore seems to be expansive, so there's a lot to draw from. I feel like this show is a bit tame for invincible space marines fighting alien lizard muslims, but I understand how you can't run with that too hard these days. The action sequences were stellar, the opening battle was fantastic. Shreiver is a pretty good choice for the role, even if he can't touch Mando or Dredd for helmeted epicness. They did a decent job of sucking me in with episode 1, and we'll see how it goes. It's excellent to see these characters come to life, and the nods to the gameplay were fantastic. They didn't fuck anything up, but they didn't do anything groundbreaking either.
The early books were quite the opposite... it was about his selection into the Spartan program, and his inner turmoil while transitioning into that "perfect soldier". I'm hoping they can draw on that in some way otherwise yeah, I agree, we're just watching a really, really long cut scene from the game.
I finished episode 2 at the gym this morning. They need to do a LOT more curb-stomping aliens than talking about feelings. Again, they are not doing anything adventurous with these characters, and I get it. However, the political intrigue is not what I find interesting about giant, super-powered, space marines killing alien jihadis. One epsiode of back story, I'll give you. Two hours is excessive. Episode three better have some bloodshed.
It's kind of weird: some scenes are absolutely gorgeous, and have intricate detail. Then the space SUV looks like a Tahoe with a 1999-era Fast and Furious body kit built by someone with a Blade Runner fetish, and the clothes look like the folks who make stuff for H&M went quilting with tacti-cool nonsense.
Any of y'all still watching this? It's sort of devolved into a "Days of Our Lives: Space Marines" and I'm hoping they have a pretty decent setup for the ending in a few weeks.
Yes, and I agree with you. It’s a great looking show, but no where near enough action and too much angsty shit.
I’m pretty well watching it because it’s the only sci-fi shit on right now, there’s not much else worth watching these days (sci-fi or not), and they haven’t done anything really stupid to push me away from it yet. I’m not watching it because I can’t wait for the next episode to drop.
Same. Give me more worm monsters eating the ship's crew, and less angsty introspection about your family.
I finished out the season because I have an addictive personality and am unable to check out in the middle of a season no matter how bad it is. But that's definitely the last season of Halo that I'll be watching. It's amazing how a show can dance around mediocrity and then do a straight plunge into terrible. Ironically, they only found the actual Master Chief personality in the last ~10 minutes of the last episode of the season.