“This canon is so big, so deep and so wide. It’s a virtual playground. So I never saw it as an obstacle, I just saw it as a help,” explains Steven Kane, screenwriter for the Halo TV Series† “What was great was that I was able to dig deep into the canon, in places that even the most hardcore fans might not know.”
Halo, unlike video games
Looking at Halo’s history and knowledge through a new lens is incredibly refreshing and arguably the most exciting part of the first two episodes we’ve seen of Paramount+’s new Halo TV series. from March 24 on Sky† This new imagination, simply called Halo, takes familiar characters and events, but sees them from a new perspective, or sometimes changes them completely. Here we see the famous and mysterious Dr. Halsey as she creates Cortana, an AI designed to live alongside them in the Spartan armor, eventually helping them turn into obedient soldiers. It’s a very different start to what video game fans are used to, but it adds a sense of intrigue to a story veterans already know well.
“But the most important thing is that everything feels believable, because in a video game, as good as it is, you can let certain things pass because they are necessary for the gameplay,” explains executive producer Kiki Wolfkill. “How do you convey the same feel of the game, give it the same look as the game and give the viewer the same experience, while making it realistic with real heavy bodies making movements that bodies can physically do?”. It is undoubtedly much more difficult to get the Master Chief of a flying pelican hundreds of feet above the ground with Pablo Schreiber in the harness. But thanks to heavy, rattling sound effects and a few visual tricks, the team was able to recreate that moment in the first episode, when the Master Chief makes his powerful entrance onto the scene.
The Face of the Master Chief
Elsewhere, the series is less visually impressive. Alien enemies, especially the Elite Covenant, are big and bulky, and not as agile as you might expect. This highlights how big the creatures Master Chief has to deal with, but their CG faces sometimes seem a little too much like video games, at odds with the realism the rest of the show strives for. It’s fun to make heavy use of stage and non-CGI effects during combat, but it often feels like the Master Chief is pacing through the environments while fireworks explode all around him.
One of the biggest changes, from a fan’s perspective, is: the face of the Master Chief. Chief takes off his helmet so Pablo can convey emotions and talk to the other characters. It’s not the same when a disembodied voice follows this huge armor in its movements. In the famous Halo: Combat Evolved ending sequence, Chief had his helmet taken off, only his face was never shown in the frame. In the game, the mystery remains a historical part, but in the series this all changes from the first episode.
“A huge moment”
“I’m pretty sure when people see what we’ve done, they’ll understand the reasons why we made the decisions, and they’ll see that we really had no other choice,” explains the Master Chief actor. Pablo Schreiber. “Take off the helmet, see the face and start deconstructing the character, trying to understand a new version of who the character is, John’s journey, discovering who he is as a human, over the course of the first season…it’s a huge moment”.
A lot has changed also for Cortana, though she’s still played by Jen Taylor, just as she has been since 2001’s Halo: Combat Evolved, which should help fans process this new take on the universe. The transition from video games to a TV production wasn’t a huge leap for an accomplished actress like Taylor, but she came up with her own good number of things to adapt to. “It’s a little intimidating to me,” Taylor explains. “Originally I just did the voice, okay. But I realized that I should have understood how Cortana moves, I should have understood how she gestures. It scared me when I had to do it for video games, and now this. There is a larger and wider audience. And it’s intimidating.”
A new character
A new Halo universe needs a fresh introduction, and no character serves this purpose better than Kwan Ha Boo, played by Yerin Ha. In the first episode, Kwan’s rebellious family is eliminated by the Covenant, with the Master Chief and the UNSC arriving too late to save anyone other than Kwan. Kwan, who comes from outside the UNSC, looks at the world around her from a different perspective and sees the Master Chief as a poor soldier who only follows orders under an authoritarian system. A worldview that soon proves correct when the UN Security Council tries to limit the oxygen on their Pelican.
“I think Kwan’s sarcasm and honesty bring out this new side of Master Chief that we’ve never really seen before,” explains Yerin Ha. “Kwan is so tired of everything, she has nothing to lose. Master Chief is physically intimidating, but I think Kwan is emotionally strong on the same level. I tried to approach it with that kind of energy and that kind of spirit.”
Where should Halo go?
Kwan’s introduction marks his debut as a character in the franchise and gives the Master Chief someone real and emotional to interact with as he discovers himself. Her resistance to the UNSC towards the climax of the first episode marks a turning point influenced only by Kwan, but for it to work, the series must give her the same space to mature and develop as Chief. There are parts of Halo that still feel a little low budget, maybe even on the level of a YouTube Original, but the characters and sets know how to make you believe. in the Halo universe† If the series can truly capture the story of Master Chief and Kwan, it might be worth keeping up with.
Written by Dave Aubrey for GLHF
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