Halo (2022)

Watchseries; Whole cast is female practically. How ridiculous is that. Plus the story is not off to a great start with way too many issues. Rebels? Caves that need exploring? Why? Drones could do it in a few moments. Chief removing his helmet and losing the mystery. I was surprised Master Chief wasn't a woman, you know so women can feel empowered and better than men.

Chief walks like he is Robocop or someone who dropped a load in his pants, just really bad.

I have played many of the games and seen a lot of fan fiction shows that were 10x better than this with a large budget. But lets make sure we get the woke check list out and check off all the boxes and ruin the show for people.

So much no in this first episode.

Whole cast is female practically. How ridiculous is that. Plus the story is not off to a great start with way too many issues. Rebels? Caves that need exploring? Why? Drones could do it in a few moments. Chief removing his helmet and losing the mystery. I was surprised Master Chief wasn't a woman, you know so women can feel empowered and better than men.

Chief walks like he is Robocop or someone who dropped a load in his pants, just really bad.

I have played many of the games and seen a lot of fan fiction shows that were 10x better than this with a large budget. But lets make sure we get the woke check list out and check off all the boxes and ruin the show for people.

So much no in this first episode.

Halo watchseries. Halo Lore was rich with excellent novels, games, comics and fan fiction. All of them excluding the Halo 6 had a much better story line and less annoying sidekicks. Halo 6/halo Infinite was a warning of what was going to happen to the Halo franchise with algorithmic story writing, but atleast the game play was good. Halo 2022 is what happens when good sci-fi story writing gets replaced by algorithmic garbage spewed by interns. I am pretty sure it is not getting any cheaper to produce these episodes. Please realize that 1 high quality writer > 300 strong internship assignments from non science fields spewed together by an algorithm.

It is ok to be diverse and aware of the political climate when casting for these series and movies, just don't murder the lore, the story, sci-fi and the lack of basic military tactics. Please look up the expanse, it had a diverse cast and does need to make up pointless story arcs. The writers of the Expanse series mostly stuck to the source story, the science and worked with a much lesser budget. Pretty sure there is a dumb company behind all these movies and series applying their brand of AI algorithm trained on market research with flawed data (probably twitter and facebook) to spew this garbage. No wonder do they keep isolating their core audience with these design decisions.

Also why does everything need to have a teenage messiah who has to figure out their emotions in the middle of a crisis? You are sacrificing millions of viewers to pander to an audience that is fine with roblox and minecraft. Maybe Minecraft halo would be your next intended target ? If it is for a younger audience, why do you add in so much gore ?

That said, the Gore, costumes, 3d design, some effects were very well done.

The first episode could have been done in 25 minutes or less cutting the filler and doubling their budget for some high quality scenes.

My gripes with Episode 1, Spoilers ahead:

The insurgents were brilliant tacticians after surviving decades of fighting against UNSC. Yet they lack basic tactics, no scouts, their weapons are ineffective against covenant (why ?, The Spartans use the same weapons including the chain guns). Even though they were dug in for decades, all they had was a wall, Maybe sets were too expensive? The insurgents use the common star wars trademark tactics of bunching up, throwing hundreds into meat grinders, shooting randomly and rushing the enemy. You don't need hundreds of extras in single shots just a dozen thrown into bulldozer dug trenches to get a better cheaper realistic battle scene that conveys their sense of panic. It is ok for others to kill the covenant.

Why is it not reasonable not to expect everyone to speak a common language, this is a time far into the future (2531)? Humanity has intertwined and mingled so much explaining your diverse cast, why cannot they all have the same language? Languages will bound to die after people mix. It is nice for "some" tv/movies set in the current time line to have multiple languages, but it breaks immersion in other contexts. For the angry mob, next time please ask yourself what effort did you put in to save some dying 3rd world country language?

Humans in covenant ? Seriously ? Prophets would never take in Humans and put them beside the relics due to their forerunner origins.

Where is the wide spread usage of AI ? Where is Cortana or jr Cortana or whoever ?

Where were the other species, grunts, jackals , brutes, worms etc ? It is called th

So far it's about what you expect from a series based on a game. It just doesn't translate well at all. Moments that would be extremely cool in a game are cheesy and disappointing in live action. The acting is also pretty weak. The biggest complaint, however, is the unmasking of Chief. It's an unspoken rule that you never show his face. The only good thing here is that some of the action sequences are cool.

Seriously, were we expecting better?

What bothers me about Paramount's continued misfires is that they a) forget who the target audience is, b) disregard the source material and c) write and cast a show in an attempt to draw new viewers to an established franchise.

What they get instead is a woke mess that won't appeal to anyone. They insult and disinherit the fan base of the source material, and fail to understand why people who never knew that source material in the first place don't tune in for all the stupid stuff they cram into the story.

All you have to do is look at the ten star reviews (written by shills by the way) and one star reviews and there you have the story.

Oh, two stars for some decent battle scenes and cgi.

Hard pass.

I could compare this to the games, and on those grounds it would do terribly, but I think I'd rather explain why it's trash on it's own merits.

The Good: the action was top tier, thoroughly enjoyed it and that's what gets it two stars.

The Bad: everything else, the story is contrived and cheap, Master Chief loses his mystique the moment he takes his helmet off and even before then he's just a poorly copy and pasted archetype.

The female lead is mostly just annoyingly preachy and almost everyone we meet seems like a cheap caricature.

In closing, I'll watch another episode or two, but I already know this show will be generic at best, irritating at worst.

When you approach an intellectual property that you clearly do not respect or understand, there can be no good outcome.

In this case, the intent was obviously to exploit a beloved gaming franchise to push an agenda and make a profit.

Unfortunately, in their haste to use the Halo universe for their own purposes, the makers of this show did not bother to stop and reflect on the elements which originally made it successful.

Instead, they hollowed out the core concepts of the game until all that was left was an aesthetic shell, which they then filled up with their own ideology.

Beyond the lack of respect for the source material, this show also suffers from inept dialogue, abysmal character development, and emaciated plot development.

While this criticism may seem harsh, the series truly is an abject failure right out of the gate.

What is truly sad is that this did not have to be a disaster.

Forward Unto Dawn stands as a testament to the fact that Halo can be translated into an engaging story with flesh and blood actors.

Alas, in this instance a game with a devoted following and enormous potential was desecrated by outsiders who merely wanted to use an existing fanbase for their own purposes.