Goodbye Halo

 

There really has been some huge leaps forward when it has come to the representation of game franchises on the silver screen. Fallout for one has jumped leaps and bounds ahead to be a budding TV series worth calling the masses in- The Last of Us nailed one fantastic series and is currently grappling how best to craft a story out of the narratively confused sequel. And Resident Evil... well, the less said about that series the better to be honest. And in all that space there has been one show that thread the gap. One show that wasn't the absolute pits like RE, but paled in comparison to the source material to such a degree it almost felt like the team actively hated the game it was birthed from. Halo the TV series never could figure out where to land.

One on side you had some actually great snippets of action that felt like they came right out of the game, and on the otherside you have direct undermining of some of the core game's world design aspects in a manner that seemed to miss the point of the source material. Which is particularly perplexing as Halo is not a thematically complex franchise- you'd have to try to not nail it. In fact, some the ways that the show treated the relationships that the Spartans held with the UNSC, the presentation of the Covenant war, the presence of the Halo rings and even the relevance of Cortana seemed utterly perfunctory. Like these were skins placed atop an entirely separate sci-fi story in order to create the illusion that these series was somehow related to the Halo people loved.

The 'Silver Timeline' quote has done so much heavily lifting in this show's defence, irregardless of the fact that even alternate timelines should retain some vague spirit of the original timeline in order to be relevantly 'alternative' to begin with. There is a baseline to work off of, for goodness sake! But it seems that the original showrunners actively held no regard for video games as a storytelling medium and simply tried to leapfrog off the franchise to propel their own careers, and the later showrunners were just left with a faulty ship to try and correct. But there was little to be done. Master Chief barely resembled his video game counterpart- the Covenant somehow ended up as side-characters in their own war, the first Halo ring couldn't even make it into the first series. Reach fell far too quickly. Master Chief committed a sexual war crime- the ship had already taken on too much water before the new captain took the helm.

And it is within that light, and the vastly unimpressed reactions the series accrued, that I lack any surprise to the announcement that the Halo series has now been cancelled right in the middle of it's run-up to season 3. Paramount has cut ties to the franchise it spent nigh on five years trying to bring to life (maybe more) and right now the showrunners are left with the rights to shop around for a perspective third party to pick up and run with. Honestly it's what I expected largely, just as I honestly do expect someone to pick this up and try to do something new with it. I can certainly see Netflix looking around at the popular video game franchises going around and wondering why they haven't got their own yet. But the big question persists, should they? Should anyone pick this series up again?

First off; it seems that Halo doesn't gell with modern show creation inclinations. Halo is symbolised by it's faceless protagonist but the outwardly superficial and pretentious people who make TV nowadays simply can't fathom a TV series without a pretty face on the front of everything. Sure, Pablo and his team disingenuously discard the honest question of why the literally faceless protagonist series needs a mug whilst freakin' Star Wars managed to pull off the faceless protagonist thing with no problems- because the truth is they're scared to rely on the integrity of a product they aren't interested in trying to understand. And if even the basemost aspect, the most perfunctory accessory, of the brand you are attempting to work eludes you so fully- maybe you're out of your depth! Just a little.

All the hallmarks of generic fantasy are present and inseparable from this story. Overtly evil militaristic humans, badly implemented chosen one garbage- (even the real Halo started falling for this one around Halo 4, before abandoning it pretty much entirely for Halo 5.) and godawful enemies-to-lovers romance. None of which represents the franchise, all of which comes to odds with the fanbase- and most of which will need to be preserved in some fashion should this series be revived. Even if the best comes to pass and an absolute diehard takes control of the franchise- without pulling a total reboot- something unheard of in a TV series, it's going to go down the exact same route the previous two series' went. Disappointing everyone and then getting cancelled. Why waste the money?

At the end of the day when everyone is just sitting around waiting for the next action scene to pop up so that they can point at the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio- maybe you're better not making a story based series. It's kind of like The Acolyte for Disney. The action stuff is all great and does gangbusters reuploaded to Youtube- so maybe the special effects department are better off just throwing together cool compilations of action set pieces. Sure, maybe that will seem a little rudimentary to the minds of traditional film makers- but I bet that would generate a lot more interest, traffic and, most importantly, money than what they're currently committing to. If this has to persist- do it like that.

So we say goodbye to bad rubbish with the end of Halo- yet another sacrifice at the altar of 'bad adaptation to superior material'. There really is no winners when these unfaithful diatribes into self indulgent trite are allowed to proceed and their agonising decline hurts literally everyone- the runners, the fans, the very industry itself. Maybe a little more scrutiny should go into place deciding who gets to make these products in the long run so we can avoid another disaster like this. But then again, that would also necessitate we avoid another disaster like Resident Evil- and I'd loathe to miss out on that!