TELEVISION REVIEW: Halo Ep:1 "Contact" (Paramount+)

 (Brave - Owl City)

Halo is one of those intellectual properties that absolutely begs for storytelling. The world of Halo is rich with lore and lush with detail, a fact that's driven it forward in video games, novels, comics, cartoons, and movies.

The 'long pole' in the tent of Halo's universe is a story revolving around a super soldier and his artificial intelligence companion as they navigate through one insane combat situation after another. At first blush, you'd be forgiven for thinking this sounded both boring and overdone. Anyone who has played the games or read the books will tell you that the actual meat and potatoes of what makes Halo so compelling goes so much farther than either of those two things.

Finally, it seems that Halo's protagonist, the Master Chief, is ready to deploy onto television. 

Is he up for this newest challenge?

THE SHORT VERSION:

Uh...I sort of think he should have brought backup for this one.

THE LONG VERSION:

Listen, I've never tried to adapt a beloved ANYTHING into a television show or a video game or a book or a broadway musical -- Master Chief On Ice! -- but what I consider to be very simple logic dictates that if you're going to adapt a wildly successful ANYTHING, you need to pay a tiny bit of attention to what made it wildly successful so that you can be sure you carry that over into your new medium.

By the time the credits rolled on the first episode of Paramount+'s new Halo show, I was incredibly frustrated. They'd gotten SO MUCH RIGHT, and yet still somehow completely screwed everything up. And it was all exemplified by a helmet being removed and a face being shown.

In my initial draft of this review, I rambled on about how the specific problems I had with them removing the Chief's helmet. I think my points stand -- and you can see them in the Extras section down below -- but the Chief removing his helmet is only one of many problems present with this show. Several of the show's shortcomings boil down to a decision to basically make a different Halo. Paramount+ is using (most) of the same characters but they're basically using them in name only. They're also not using most of the main story/continuity beats for the show. The UNSC is there as 'the good guys', there are Spartans, and the Covenant is there as 'the bad guys', but that's sort of...where it stops. "But Steve," you cry, "There's nothing wrong with them wanting to take Halo in a different direction!"

Yeah, see, that's kind of the crux of the problem, and it's a problem that Star Trek: Discovery has been struggling with for over four seasons now. 'Discovery' is gotten frequently panned for being a good Sci-Fi show, but a TERRIBLE 'Star Trek' show. That's kind of why 'Strange New Worlds' is being launched, but I digress.

Halo is an extremely established universe with very prominent characters. That established universe and those prominent characters are a HUGE part of what makes Halo so appealing. Below is a list of the things that have been changed in the pilot alone:

The Master Chief: The Chief is pretty much a Spartan in armor only here. He doesn't act like we're used to and he certainly doesn't sound like he used to. The Chief we all know and love behaves in a very specific way for -VERY- specific reasons. Very little of that behavior is present here. Indeed, the pilot episode is pretty much full of the Chief behaving strangely. He tells jokes, he ignores protocols, and HE TAKES HIS HELMET OFF IN COMBAT SITUATIONS. The OG Chief was calm, collected, and in control. He didn't sound gruff or gravelly or like...well, a soldier.  He was a rock in combat, a constant. His statements were fact. A huge part of this perception was the voice of his actor, Steve Downes. The bearing of the Chief was built on Downes' performance and elaborated on in six games and I don't know how many novels. And yes, he almost never took his helmet off. This was for several very important reasons, all of which are central to WHO THE CHIEF IS. Nailing this should have been Paramount+'s top priority. Frankly, they blew it. Don't get me wrong, I -love- Pablo Schreiber. (He's a riot in 'American Gods'!) He was just terribly mis-cast here and then handed a character that was poorly written.

Dr. Catherine Halsey: Where do I start here? Yes, she's British now instead of American. She's a blond now instead of black hair. The greater sin here BY FAR is how much they have changed her character's behavior. In nearly every respect, Catherine Halsey was IN. CHARGE. She knew more than you did, period. That's not the case here at all. Oh, and she hooked up with Jacob Keyes. And had a kid.

And Keyes isn't a starship captain anymore. 

And neither is Keyes' daughter, Miranda.

And Lord Hood is nowhere to be seen, or Vice Admiral Stanforth, or Fred, or Linda, or Kelly, or...

...You get it.

I completely understand that they wanted to take Halo in another direction with this show but at some point, you have to acknowledge that what's happening here is someone wanting to tell a story while standing on another story's shoulders. You want to write your own story in someone else's world? Knock yourself out but don't pretend that it's something that it's not.

This all goes back to me being really frustrated. They nailed the look, the sound, and (most of..) the feel of Halo. They just completely missed the most important thing:

The characters.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS! ...And EXTRAS!

Alright, let's talk about that pesky helmet.

George Lucas gets dragged over the coals for a LOT of his decisions where Star Wars is concerned. Let me be clear, I think he deserves almost all of it.  He did make a few absolutely brilliant choices though, choices that I worry have been forgotten with the passage of time. Chief among them, in my opinion, was his decision to keep Darth Vader's helmet on until the very end of Return Of The Jedi. So many people don't understand that this is a HUGE piece of what made Vader so compelling as a character. The helmet didn't take away from Vader's performance; far from it, it ADDED to it. You couldn't see Vader's face, so you were forced to pay attention to his actions instead. Lucas understood this, and you can see that in this clip from RotJ:

This is SUCH A GOOD SCENE, and a stunning example of how to tell a story. You don't need to see Vader's face to understand what's happening here. You get all you need through his actions, the score, and the cinematography, and it's SO MUCH MORE POTENT because you can't see Vader's face. Darth Vader's actions in every movie were so pronounced and deliberate. Every single one of them had weight to it and you couldn't take your eyes off of him any time he was on the screen. The one time you -do- see Vader without his helmet on, it's just a tease that serves to generate more questions than answers. (I'm talking about the bit in Empire, of course.)

You act with your whole body. You tell your story with your whole body. Your story is so much more pronounced this way...

The folks at Bungie and 343 -- the two development studios responsible for the wildly successful Halo video game franchise -- understood this wholly. Their story of the Chief was never dependent on seeing his face. It was actually quite the opposite; NOT seeing his face was critical to the interpersonal stories that went on over the course of all of those Halo games. Having him take his helmet off would have blown a huge hole in what they were trying to accomplish, not just with the characters but with the AUDIENCE! We are not meant to see the Chief as a human! THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT! Cortana even calls this out EXPLICITLY in Halo 4:

It's this understanding that's at the heart of why I'm so concerned -- and quite frankly, disappointed -- in the pilot for the Halo TV series that started airing on Paramount+ earlier this month. After seeing Halo done properly across so many different mediums, to have it seeming so far off of the rails in the very first episode of this highly anticipated series is just...sad.

And yes, they blew this with the Mandalorian as well, the only blemish in an otherwise perfect first season.

And if you'd left his helmet on, you could have gotten Steve Downes to voice him again.

End of rant.

Some other odds and ends:

- COULD WE PLEASE JUST GET JEN TAYLOR TO PLAY HALSEY??!?! Just throw however much money you want at her and get it done! You get her for Halsey, you get her for Cortana, bish, bash, bosh! 343 knew this would be a HUGE fucking problem when they were making Halo: Infinite so you know what they did? They wrote a story around Cortana and GOT JEN TAYLOR FOR IT.

- Can someone please explain the point of race-swapping Jacob and Miranda Keyes? I ask this question the same way I ask it about how Liet Kynes was race and gender-swapped in 'Dune'. What is the point? I'm asking seriously here, because I honestly do not know...and I certainly don't know if the net good of the rationale here justifies all of the negativity that will be generated. The only answer that I keep hearing with any kind of regularity is that it's out of a desire to have more minorities on-screen at once. If that's the case, there are other minority characters in Halo that you could have brought to the fore without altering existing characters. (I'm looking at you, Sgt. Johnson!) I get -- at least I think I get? -- that the issue of minorities in film is incredibly complex. I just don't think that this is the answer.