Halo: Season 1 REVIEW- A Solid Opening Campaign
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Halo: Season 1 REVIEW- A Solid Opening Campaign

Halo: Season 1 REVIEW- A Solid Opening Campaign
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Halo: Season 1 REVIEW- A Solid Opening Campaign

Paramount+ finally has the Halo TV adaptation. It took more than a decade and at most $200 million. Was the wait for this highly anticipated video game adaptation worth it? The answer is a resounding “yes.” Although showrunners Kyle Killen & Steven Kane occasionally make mistakes, the first season of Halo is a solid nine-episode campaign that should satisfy both existing Halo fans and new franchise members.

Halo is set in the 26th Century and chronicles the conflict between the United Nations Space Command (the Covenant) and the Covenant, and an alien race determined to wipe out all of humanity. Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 (Pablo Schreiber), an armored Spartan super-soldier capable of fighting toe-to-toe against the Covenant forces, is at the heart of the conflict. Master Chief, like all Spartans, is conditioned to follow orders without hesitation. However, his reliability is questioned after he refuses to kill the teenage revolutionary Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha).

The situation becomes more complicated when our hero discovers an alien artifact that only he can activate. The artifact may point to an ancient, super-powerful weapon that both the UNSC (and the Covenant) are eager to find. Doctor Halsey (Natascha MacElhone), Master Chief’s emotionally unstable, implants Cortana (Jen Taylor), an advanced AI program, in his brain. This is part of a larger plot that will bring the super-soldier under her complete control.

The Covenant unleashes Charlie Murphy’s human turncoat Makee (Charlie Murphy), to bring Master Chief down.

The show is a bog-standard sci-fi story and generally aligns with the Halo canon. However, purists may be hesitant about some of its more radical departures from established continuity. The truth is that Halo: Season 1 does a better job when it focuses on world-building and retreading the franchise’s generic core narrative than when it explores the characters and their relationships.

The Master Chief/Doctor Halsey dynamic is easily the most compelling. Killen and Kane have crafted Halo’s main plot around a strangely touching mother-son bond. This is a key element in keeping the story compelling and interesting. Kwan’s subplot is a different story. While it offers plenty of heart during Master Chief’s scenes early on, it becomes less effective against Bokeem Woodbine and her maverick ex-Spartan Soren066.

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The cast of Halo is also affected by this uneven streak. The show’s Master Chief has been found in Schreiber, which is a positive. Canadian-American actor Schreiber is a natural actor. His distinctive, rugged face, which was controversially displayed without a helmet for most of Season 1’s runtime, sounds as tough as a space marines. Although Master Chief comes with a lot of baggage, Schrieber manages to deliver and proves equally convincing as an action hero or something slightly more complicated.

Schreiber’s co-stars are more mixed. McElhone, Murphy, and Kate Kennedy are the standouts among the supporting cast. Ha and Woodbine, along with other prominent players Olive Gray and Danny Sapani, and Shabana Azmi, compare less favorably. However, in fairness, Killen and Kane offer them less rewarding material to get their teeth into. Taylor reprises the Cortana role that she played in the original Halo video game. Although Taylor is a great voice actor, she has to contend with a poor CGI avatar that doesn’t look real enough or fake enough to win over fans.

Cortana is one of Halo: Season 1’s few visual effects-related hiccups. The show’s pixel-powered, cosmic vistas are as impressive as possible (not to mention seamless) for a TV production of this ambition. Halo is rooted in solid production design. It doesn’t just replicate the visuals of video games but expands upon them as needed. This results in visuals that rival those of big-budget sci-fi films like Foundation.

This is true for action set pieces that were sprinkled throughout Halo’s initial season. These sequences are at their best and capture the spirit of Halo’s unique mix of melee combat and gunplay, while still playing to the strengths of a different medium. They can be a bit too stylized, especially when they fail to reflect the original attempts of the show to evoke Halo’s first-person shooter gameplay. The show’s battle scenes, however, are generally well-executed.

Perhaps the best thing about Halo: Season 1? It’s a videogame adaptation that actually has something to say. This is similar to the story of the show, but the message is timeless and timely.

These themes also feel frustratingly undercooked, akin to Halo: Season 1 at times. However, they are just as appealing and have obvious potential. This is much like the first season. With Season 2 already confirmed you can be sure that you will be able to reenlist before Master Chief’s next small screen mission.

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Halo: Season 1 REVIEW- A Solid Opening Campaign
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