OK, I know that Halo: Nightfall
isn't technically a movie, it's a webseries. But the way I
watched this was in a collected format on blu-ray which came out
earlier this year, so close enough. I also decided to write about
this movie since there doesn't seem to be that many reviews for it
floating around. A couple weeks ago at a Halo tournament with a bunch
of friends I was voted MVP (for some reason; I really didn't play all
that well) and was awarded with this (thanks, Dylan!).
Now let me just quickly tell you where I'm coming from, here: back in
the day – from around 2005 to 2009 – I was a huge Halo fan. I
played all the games, read all the novels, and listened to the
soundtracks. But after a while, I guess I got tired of it and I fell
out of the loop. I eventually did play Halo 4 – the first few
levels – but it just didn't feel right and I couldn't bring myself
to finish it. And I'm not planning on playing Halo 5 any time soon
(but that's a story for another time). So can this Ridley
Scott-produced series/movie/whatever be the jumping-on point that I
needed? Let's find out!
Halo: Nightfall
starts off with some ONI (office of naval intelligence) guys casually following an alien whose
species was never shown in the games or novels – dangit, three
minutes in and I'm already lost! Way to go, guys! Well, I looked it
up and it turns out that this guy did appear in the comics. OK, fine,
whatever. So our plot, which takes place between the events of Halo 4
and 5, follows ONI agent Jameson Locke trying to shut down a network
of Elite terrorists. He does this by tracking down where the
materials for their chemical weapons are coming from. This leads his
team to a place that should be familiar to all Halo players, except
this place is now occupied by a grave threat. The location for this
film is a pretty cool idea, though it doesn't have all that much
payoff to it. Unfortunately, the story winds up falling into standard
survival movie territory that you've already seen lots of times
before. It's also supposed to serve as an origin story for Locke:
give away the ending much? There's only about three interesting
characters, but at least the acting is all-around decent.
Nightfall
isn't like traditional Halo stuff that we're used to. There's pretty
much no gunfights or battle scenes. That's rather sad since not only
is Ridley Scott great at doing battle scenes (Black Hawk
Down) but also because shooting
stuff is kind of what Halo is all about. Likewise, there's only three
alien species in this game: one we haven't seen before and another
which displays abilities radically different from what we've seen in
any other media. (Seriously, if this species did behave this way in
the games, the player would get wrecked all the time.) And as I
mentioned earlier, the movie takes place in a familiar setting, but
it just looks unrecognizable. Also, why the hell are there so many of
those aliens at this place anyways?
The
production was alright. The sets, environments, props, and costumes
all look good. The CG effects, not so much. The cinematography was
OK, not much to say there.
When I
was given this movie, I jokingly asked, “Is it like Predator,
but on Halo?” It turns out that that joke was actually fairly
accurate. The only difference is Halo: Nightfall's
plot is less original and it has a Halo paint-job. Mind you, it's a
rather thin paint-job with familiar guns that are scarcely fired, a
few aliens that behave in ways we've not yet seen, and a location
that is unrecognizable. Overall, this barely feels like a Halo movie.
If you want to get into Halo 5 and other subsequent media, you can
probably skip this and it wouldn't make a difference. And if you take
away the Halo name and judge it on its own, then all you're left with
is an ordinary, by-the-numbers survival movie that's set in space. In
short, Halo: Nightfall
is watchable, but also forgettable. For die-hard fans only.
Rating:
two-and-a-half out of five.
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