The minute the show runners said that they did not play or care about the game before a single episode even aired, I knew it was going to suck balls.
If you don't know or even care about the source material: you shouldn't have the rights to make anything about it.
The quote from the showrunner, according to the article:
“We didn’t look at the game. We didn’t talk about the game. We talked about the characters and the world. So I never felt limited by it being a game.”
Looks like they should have looked at the game a little more closely.
"Limited by it being a game" is such a condescending thing to say. Just shows that these people look down on video games in general and most likely have little respect for the people who these games mean a lot to. I mean, that shows in this TV show, just based on the short bits I've seen. The Chief acts like a Stallone or a Tom Cruise stand-in, instead of a stoic warrior.
I can't wait for an Elder Scrolls show helmed by these showrunners, the Witcher showrunners, and Alex Kurtzman
limited by being an interactive medium where the average narrative length is dozens of hours.
We need the unlimited story telling freedom enabled by passively watching disjoint chunks of ad-riddled content
If they didn't name it Halo, it would have been a good sci-fi show on it's own. But because I walked into it knowing enough about Halo lore (even though I didn't play all that much of it). The show sucked... It wasn't even close to living up to the game series.
I felt exactly the opposite, I don't really care about halo lore that much and thought the show was horrible.
Master Cheeks
I don't even think that was the issue, the show was just fucking awful no matter how much or little it had to do with Halo.
I'm really surprised they made two seasons.
For a while streamers were doing this thing where they would renew a show for Season 2 before the Season 1 pilot even released. I guess it was a way to project confidence to the audience?? Or maybe just to get the production pipeline moving so there wouldn't be 2+ years in between season releases.
Anyway, they did that with Halo...
I never thought I'd applaud the Netflix approach but it should have been used here. They should have just shut down production on season 2 when the first fell flat on its face.
They knew enough to include a first-person fight scene, because that's what gamers wanna see.
Sounds like the Doom movie, which wasn't originally written to be a Doom movie which is very apparent by not only a few unchanged lines of dialogue but also by the fact it was more like Resident Evil than it was like Doom.
I fuckin love that film though. The Rock's best performance. The brief moment of transphobia can fuck right off though.
I'm so glad The Last of Us exists to show people that not all video game adaptations have to be this bad.
And Fallout. Goddamn, Fallout was such a good show.
Fallout is proof you can make a video game show good and still be true to the original game. Halo was a completely different story they tried to throw the Halo brand on and didn’t give two shits about the game. Bungie should have sued them for slander…. or whoever owns the brand now.
I couldn’t even get through the first episode. Legitimately horrible direction, shit acting, cliche story, terrible cinematography, and crap stage design. I’m surprised it lasted this long. I’m glad I didn’t need to get Paramount+ to watch it.
But, but, it has Halo man in it, how could you not enjoy it? ~Investors
They just straight up canceled the John Halo. It's preposterous.
The fact they couldn't even make it as good as Red vs Blue is amazing. And that's not a high bar.
The mid-late seasons of rvb were pretty good. Story got fucking convoluted at the end because they had to turn the silly jokes of the early seasons into honest plot points, but overall an amazing series.
only two seasons
Two more than it deserved.
I cancelled it after the first episode.
It was a good sci-fi show, just not a good Halo show.
Truly one of the worst adaptions ever made. It's astonishing that people might have actually tried and worked hard to make this heap of garbage.
Usually, in trash movies/TV you can see the vision at least and understand how maybe studio executives, or lack of technology, or even lack of ability destroyed the project. The kernel of what originally sold it is still there. But with Halo, I didn't see any of that. Everything was bad. Nobody cared, and nobody tried.
A live-action Halo is a terrible idea, as is a live-action Avatar.
Some media is so ingrained in its spectacle that to make live action work, you'd have to spend Marvel levels of money on special effects, and why? When animation is right there.
Sure, you might be able to appeal to a larger audience, but how's that working out for you?
A live-action Halo that was proud to not follow the games was a terrible idea. They did not care at all about following the source material, they did not care about wanting to make something good for Halo fans. If it had been better executed it could have done well.
I really don't get why studios do that. They pick some well known franchise to attract the fans of that franchise, but then either figure they can do something better or that fans won't care if they aren't able to stick to the original story?
And so often that "better" they go for is really just different. And there's nothing wrong with telling a different story, just don't try to slap the franchise name on it for the name recognition.
Funny thing is, in some cases they could still do both by just making a new story in the same universe, either one that happens before the video game or after it (and fans would love references to events in the original story in the latter or foreshadowing events to come in the former). Though it's still gotta be a good new story that follows the rules of the universe it's set in.
And to add insult to injury, after seeing the result of this over and over, people walk away thinking movies based on video games can only suck making things harder for those who would do them right.
Halo has worked live action in the past, albiet for shorter durations (Halo 3 and ODST both had really well done live action ad campaigns, plus there was Forward Unto Dawn).
The problem is Paramount completely missed the mark in terms of tone and faithfulness to the source material, and it seems like they didn't even try. They just went "Big green guy punches aliens, that's what those gamerzz like, right? We can do that for a few million bucks."
It wasn't even that. If they had just gone for a grittier more realistic take it would have been fine on visuals and effects. The acting though was cringe worthy at times and the writing wasn't any better. It just wasn't a fun show to watch.
And one where MasterChief doesn't remove his helmet at every opportunity and doesn't have sex with the first sketchy woman he meets.
The helmet thing is at odds with how our film industry works. Actors really are paid commensurate to their popularity and if your big role doesn't have your face on it then you don't get paid as much. So either you have to hire an A lister who doesn't mind, (the Mandalorian did this and there was still tension), or you settle for a modified helmet or having the helmet off whenever you can rationalize it.
Not that I think it should work this way, but could always just pick a lesser known actor willing to settle for a paycheck to be "David Prowse's Darth Vader" and then dub them over with someone more famous who is paid a lesser amount of money to be "James Earl Jones' Darth Vader".
Should've done A New Hope and just gotten Steve Downes voicing him.
I legit like the live action avatar. It isn't the best thing ever, but I am actually legitimately enjoying it and it's changes.
Wow, that's one more season that I knew about, assumed it'd never go beyond the first.
Oh thank god
Good riddance.
The second season was a lot better than the first. They made Cortana so strange looking in that first season...
Let's just pretend this fever dream never happened
So, I tried to watch it...
The non English parts with the aliens wouldn't show the subtitles no matter what I did.
I wasn't the only one having that trouble
Wtf am i going to watch something where I can't understand important scenes?
I guess I was the only one who thought it was a fun action show and enjoyed it?
In a vacuum it could have been a fine sci-fi show, IMO. They took something completely unrelated to the lore and put a Halo skin on it.
There was a Halo show? Oh Paramount, I hate paramount. When I had to do the contracts for renewing channels at a cable system they were by far the worst.
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