by Mike Hilty, Contributing Writer
I’m generally of the mindset that a movie or a TV show that is based on another property like a book, comic book, graphic novel, or a video game should appeal to all potential viewers, not just fans. There have been plenty of instances where I watched something based on something else and I loved it. I loved the original Mortal Kombat because I got a lot of the references and understood what was going on. I liked the Resident Evil movies because I was a fan of the game and I understood where everything was heading. Rarely is there a TV show or a movie based on an existing property I’ve seen that I was completely lost, didn’t understand, or felt this was mainly only for fans.
Then I watched Halo…
Halo, based on the popular Xbox video game series, is about a series of conflicts involving humans and aliens known as the Covenant. Squeezed in between this conflict are insurrectionists fighting the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) for independence. UNSC have a secret weapon though to assist with the conflict, the Spartan program. They are genetically modified, highly trained warriors, and are sent in to take care of any conflict. Leader of this team is Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber), who is about to embark on a mission of self-discovery that may also change the fate of humanity.
Full disclosure, I am TERRIBLE at Halo. I don’t really do well with first person shooter games, so I’m not particularly a fan of the game. It doesn’t really help that I’m a PlayStation kid so Xbox isn’t really in my wheelhouse either. I don’t really expect to be catered to as a non-fan of a popular franchise like this one. I went into this series completely blind and had no prior knowledge of anything going on. What I generally walked away with, though, is a show that has a bit of an identity crisis; a show fans don’t really like and newcomers don’t really understand.
Let me first talk about the couple pieces I did like. The action set pieces are really cool, particularly the parts where Master Chief goes full-on first person shooter and it looks like a clip from the video game. It reminded me of the only parts of the movie Doom I liked, when it actually felt like a video game. The action in general was pretty cool, and there were a few moments of fighting and gun fights I found to be really strong. The set pieces in general are pretty awesome. All the planets have their own unique feel, as well as the spaceships. There were a few characters I liked. I wanted to give a shout out to Soren-066 (Bokeem Woodbine), whose character I found compelling and had a lot of interesting things to say.
This is literally all I have good to say about Halo….
I had three consistent thoughts about the Halo TV series while watching the entire first season.
The first feeling was confusion. Again, I have no previous knowledge of the game, but I could have used some of it to understand a little bit about what’s going on. The story is a bit of a mess, simply because there are a few different things going on. We have Inception-style levels of stories that are layered in, and none of them get their just due. For instance, Master Chief in the first episode helps with a conflict on a planet called Madrigal and activates an artifact. He then makes a choice about Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha), which leads to a discovery about himself that he wants to investigate. While investigating who he is, Master Chief makes a discovery about the artifact and he spends the rest of the first season trying to figure out what the artifact is, how he’s connected to it, and what it actually means and does. They don’t spend a lot of time talking about backstory, history, or context, which either means they didn’t have time to put it in (understandable, considering the first season is only nine episodes), they didn’t care to put it in, or couldn’t figure out a way to do it that would appeal to both fans and newcomers. It’s sloppy at best, and I just didn’t respond well to the story put in front of me. The secondary story involving Kwan helped pave the way for my second emotion I felt.
Frustration settled in pretty quick during the course of watching Halo. I was not interested in most of the characters, and found myself annoyed at the people they wanted to focus on, which brings me to Kwan. I did not like her at all as a character. I found her as a whole to be pretty one-dimensional and prone to childish, arrogant outbursts that often got her in trouble. She’s the main driving force for the secondary storyline involving the insurrectionists and their fight for freedom. Kwan didn’t sell me on her ability to fight for this cause, nor lead anyone who’s willing to fight in it either.
A lot of the characters make frustrating decisions that I just didn’t understand. Master Chief was also a frustrating character as a whole. From what I’ve gathered, he’s a tough and skilled fighter. What the audience gets is a moody, brooding, and dull character. I understand that he doesn’t really have a lot of emotional depth because of his training. However, he makes a decision to gain some emotional intelligence and nothing really changes. The other Spartans don’t even get that much screen time, except for Kai (Kate Kennedy). She makes a decision about her emotional intelligence as well, but we see no payoff from it because she is relegated to the background pretty quick.
The sin Halo commits the most unfortunately is that it is boring for long stretches of time. We’re talking Star Wars prequel levels of bureaucracies that don’t serve the story and sets up only manufactured drama for emotional reaction for the characters. For a video game turned into a TV show, there’s a whole lot of talking and not a lot of action or anything of substance going on. Sure, I concede that some of my boredom may have been from the frustration and confusion I was feeling, but at the same time, there is a span of multiple episodes where not a lot happens from an action standpoint. That’s not a smart choice from a creative standpoint, and I didn’t really understand why the story focused more on characters trying to find themselves personally and government officials making poor choices.
I don’t know how you fix Halo at this point. How can the show recover from this with another season on the way, and so much that needs to be smoothed out to hopefully get an expanded audience? There needs to be an injection of life given to season two, and the characters need to be evaluated on who there should be more of a focus on. I’m not recommending Halo as someone who’s never played the game, but even my friends who are fans of the video game don’t like the decisions that are made. To aggravate both sets of viewers is an accomplishment, just not one worth celebrating.
Score: 3/10
You can follow Mike Hilty on Twitter and Letterboxd