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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2531 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 22, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Does anyone have thoughts on the Halo show? I know the fans are outraged, but I've been enjoying it.

I generally enjoy serials, space ships, space marines, and bad aliens being shot. So it's a pretty easy sell.

The writing could be better. They kind of botched the flood reveal.

The budget limits show. The first five episodes were shot in Ontario, they switched to Budapest for covid reasons for the rest of S1. You can definitely tell that they were shooting some outdoor combat scenes in stone and gravel quarries.

But they made practical spartan suits and warthogs, which is fun.

It seems fans were expecting Band of Brothers meets Lord of the Rings in space. Which was never going to happen.

It seems fans were expecting Band of Brothers meets Lord of the Rings in space. Which was never going to happen.

It's not that fans were expecting Band of Brothers with LoTR. It's more that fans were expecting Halo. The show has very little in common with the games. And while the show is about a "Spartan" named "Master Chief" who fights the "Covenant", it's just not Halo. The story has almost nothing to do with the story of Halo. The characters are not the same as the ones from the game. This makes sense as when S1 released, the writers specially stated that they didn't play any of the games.

So for the fans of the games, the Halo show is just another example of slapping a well known name on a show to sell it. In the eyes of the fans, all they had to do was to make 3 seasons based on each of the 3 games, and they couldn't even do that.

The hypothesis I've heard from my friend who watched it is that the showrunners wanted to make a Mass Effect show, but failed to get the licence, so they retooled as little as possible to (barely) fit Halo lore.

From what I've read, it has very little in common with the source material. Like, it sounds like it was written by someone who actively hates Halo and wants to mock it. I would've been mildly interested in an actual Halo show, but have no interest in watching TV writers disrespect yet another source material. So I haven't watched. But from everything I've heard, it's really bad.

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