Halo - Paramount + TV Series (was originally going to be on Showtime)

[MardiganX]

Oh shit! I didn't realise Pablo Schreiber was playing Master Chief. Not someone that would have spring to mind on who could play him but his physical presence (Den of Thieves in particular) and voice in that trailer are actually perfect. Maybe I am getting a little excited

[Steven]

Looks no worse than BOBF - I particularly liked the Phil Collins cover as it adds a certain something to the entire series.

[Captain Kelsten]

To work so slavishly to get the look of everything just right and then get something as important as Cortana so wrong is almost hilarious. 

[Strafe]

If we can bully them into changing sonic then getting Cortana blue should be a piece of piss.

[Harsin]

52 minutes ago, Steven said:

Looks no worse than BOBF

That's some grade A damning with faint praise.

[Steven]

I'm not sure it even qualifies as that given the first three episodes I've seen.

[Harsin]

Supposedly Showtime underwent a management reorganisation and the new boss took one look at this and went 'Why the fuck are spending all this money making this?' Which is a pretty reasonable thing to ask when you look at the rest of Showtime's portfolio and how they market themselves. Which is why it got punted to the ghetto of Paramount+  who are in the new streaming sevice phase of oh god we need as much content as we can get and we need it now.

[Nick R]

5 hours ago, BitterToad said:

I think the problem is that as a series Halo is all about the gameplay to most sane people. The story has either been paper thin, completely incomprehensible or absolute drivel throughout for twenty years. Reach and ODST kind of get away with it but their plots are just slightly shoddy Aliens ripoffs and certainly wouldn't be something you'd engage with outside of something you actually play. 

 

I've said this before in Halo game threads, but you underestimate how lore/canon-obsessed certain Halo fans are outside of this place!

 

Go to places like r/halo and you'll find people who think that the Arbiter's arc in Halo 2 was one of the best ever stories in gaming, that the Flood were improved by the introduction of the Gravemind, that the Master Chief is an interesting character beyond the trait of "stoic blank slate who occasionally makes deadpan remarks", and that the whole Forerunner/Precursor stuff is interesting...

 

After all, this is the fandom that complained when Halo Reach didn't match the continuity established by the Fall of Reach tie-in novel.

 

... Oh wait. You specified "to most sane people".

 

 

I do appreciate that the games are enhanced by the fact that people have done all this worldbuilding stuff (for the flavour text on the armour descriptions, if nothing else). But I like it in the background to gameplay, not in the foreground as the main focus.

[yashiro]

 

[Gommy]

It's probably going to be rubbish.

But I'll be watching this no matter what because HALO:CE and Halo book reading younger me would have been so happy to have a Halo tv show back then.

[MK-1601]

I laughed out loud at the Phil Collins bit.

 

They know this has a built-in easy to please audience so they were never going to spend Mandalorian money on it.

 

It'll be cheesetastic, but it can't possibly be as offensively bad as that animated movie they made a few years ago, which seemed to strongly suggest that Frank O'Connor didn't realise that Judge Dredd and Starship Troopers were satirical.

[Harsin]

[Varsity]

This was such a cringe trailer. Not sure who it's marketed towards tbh, the halo fans won't like it because it's not "accurate." Not just the Cortana thing either lol. 

 

Anyone else is surely gonna see it as a cheesy budget show at most and a clusterfuck at worst. 

 

It looks awful to me lol and I'm a big time Halo fan. 

[Mikes]

Frickin' loved the first episode.

 

 

[JohnC]

A clip

 

 

[Quest]

This is going to be astonishingly shit. I can't wait.

[Harsin]

But can Paramount+ put out a worse sci-fi series than Discovery? That’s an awfully high (low?) bar.

[Lorfarius]

 

Showrunner Steven Kane:

 

"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."

 

Kiki Wolfkill, who is co-executive producing "Halo" alongside Spielberg added:

 

"Early on, we were thinking about doing something that could tie very closely with the game. What we were finding was, trying to verbatim stay with everything that'd come before wasn't serving the medium. It also wasn't serving the creative teams and their need to express a story and build the world through their eyes."

[JPL]

46 minutes ago, Lorfarius said:

 

Showrunner Steven Kane:

 

"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."

 

Kiki Wolfkill, who is co-executive producing "Halo" alongside Spielberg added:

 

"Early on, we were thinking about doing something that could tie very closely with the game. What we were finding was, trying to verbatim stay with everything that'd come before wasn't serving the medium. It also wasn't serving the creative teams and their need to express a story and build the world through their eyes."

That’s not Chief. Why didn’t they get the proper voice actor?

[Stig]

Just now, JPL said:

That’s not Chief. Why didn’t they get the proper voice actor?

 

Weird innit. He sounds so shit.

[yashiro]

Because they didn't look at the game!!

[JohnC]

31 minutes ago, JPL said:

That’s not Chief. Why didn’t they get the proper voice actor?

Probably because he's a voice actor and they need a physical actor.

[Lorfarius]

16 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Probably because he's a voice actor and they need a physical actor.

 

Never heard of dubbing before? Mando seems to manage just fine and they actively have stuntmen in that suit all the time.

[Stig]

17 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Probably because he's a voice actor and they need a physical actor.

 

It's a man in a suit, they could have gotten any big stuntman to do the role and Steve Downes to voice it.

[Alex W.]

Isn't 90% of The Mandalorian shot with someone else in the suit, for example?

[JohnC]

The Mandalorian isn't the same as they guy doing the voice is also in the suit at least some of the time. So when he takes off the helmet, it's right.

 

In this, you want someone who isn't in the suit at all to do the voice. So when he takes off the helmet, and he will, it's going to be wrong.

 

Honestly, I think this is some sub Comic Book Guy complaining.

[K]

Steve Downes is over 70 years old and his voice sounded pretty creaky in the last game. Plus, they will inevitably take the helmet off, so using Steve Downe's voice would seem even weirder. To be honest, I don't see any issue with recasting the role, or making any other changes needed to adapt the game into a TV series. The people making the series should be given a fair degree of creative latitude, you don't want them to be hamstrung by whatever creative decisions Bungie made in a mad sleep-deprived death march to finish the first game.

[JPL]

1 hour ago, JohnC said:

Probably because he's a voice actor and they need a physical actor.

Huh? He’s wearing a suit that doesn’t show his face.

 

Actually, don’t tell me he’s going to take his helmet off in this?

[Stig]

16 minutes ago, JPL said:

Huh? He’s wearing a suit that doesn’t show his face.

 

Actually, don’t tell me he’s going to take his helmet off in this?

 

They've already said he is

[Mikes]

Of God, this is Judge Dredd all over again.