Paramount+’s Captivating, Ambitious Halo Series Shoots for the Stars

Further, some decisions around the Master Chief’s relationships and his conduct seem written to try and humanize him. While it’s unlikely that fans who have grown accustomed to the mostly silent videogame protagonist Master Chief want his character changed, these adjustments allow for viewers that aren’t closely familiar with the existing franchise to connect to the character. Still, it could be a mistake to try to recontextualize seemingly esoteric sci-fi to appeal to the broadest possible audience; the reason the games are in position to have a show made about them is that the story and the world they originally created was unique and compelling enough to become popular. I can accept that adaptations are very seldom exact replicas; when fans get nitpicky about this (from the benignly annoying to the toxically malicious), it’s because of the preconception that adaptation can mean a piece’s essence changes in the popular imagination. So rather than new fans getting a different reading on an existing text, they get a whole different text.

Halo game developer 343 Industries tried to get out ahead of this earlier this year with an official blog post, where Franchise Creative Director Frank O’Connor said:

The TV show timeline-the ‘Silver Timeline’-is grounded in the universe, characters and events of what’s been established in core canon, but will differ in subtle and not so subtle ways in order to tell a grounded, human story, set in the profoundly established Halo universe. Where differences and branches arise, they will do so in ways that make sense for the show, meaning that while many events, origins, character arcs, and outcomes will map to the Halo story fans know, there will be surprises, differences, and twists that will run parallel, but not identically to core canon.

But what I didn’t understand upon seeing the trailers, and still don’t understand now, is the purpose of creating the human character Makee (Charlie Murphy) whole cloth to embed with the alien antagonists—do the creators not trust that fans will pay attention to their CGI aliens without a human with them? Perhaps they should have tried to put humans in special effects makeup rather than do it all by computer. And I can speculate that making the Sangheili/Elite species of the Covenant army twice as big as humans rather than just taller than the average human (from 7-8 ft to seemingly 10 or 12) is to make the Spartans seem even more impressive in contrast, it also makes some of the action seem disproportionate. One choice that feels funny (but that makes sense within the context of wealth disparity as presented in the show’s world) is the distribution of technological advancement—some people do indeed seem to be living a few hundred years in the future, whereas some others seem to be living in the near future, if not the present. This material distinction helps create a world that feels lived-in; the grit-and-grime of one area contrasts with the shininess of another, and with that the show has a viewpoint.

Before Halo 5: Guardians, all of the main first-person shooter Halo games have been rated M (mature) games, primarily for the blood and violence that attempts to apply some realism to the fantasy of fighting aliens, and the chaos and grief of being a lone supersoldier on a death-defying mission. As a successor to those games, it feels authentic for the TV series Halo to commit to the brutality of that violence, as well as its emotional and ethical consequences. It’s commendable too because it keeps the stakes of individual moments in mind, as well as underlining the moral flaws of villains, or contrasting with a depiction of warfare that could easily (and perhaps still does) become glorifying. Some shows ostensibly about wars in space sometimes eschew violence to make the viewing experience more family friendly, in turn easing tension and lowering stakes. Halo isn’t quite that sanitized, which means that from the very beginning, parents should exercise caution if they intend to watch it with children. It isn’t The Sopranos, but it also isn’t Boba Fett.

As a casual fan of the games, I’ll accept any changes that end in making a good story. I’m apprehensive by nature, but I’m enamored by the cast and generally impressed by the composition of the design. A lot of expensive projects end up looking cheap these days, but when I say it feels more like a high-end SyFy show than a low-end HBO show, I don’t mean the production values are bad; but rather, that this collaboration between Showtime and Amblin Entertainment does feel, in its bones, like it’s made for people that want to visit the world of the Halo franchise. Series composer Sean Callery is riffing off Martin O’Donnell’s original game scores closely enough that I needed to check to make sure it wasn’t the same guy. Jen Taylor, who voiced the AI Cortana in the games, reprises her role for the show. There are first-person sections that draw from the videogame’s HUD even if it isn’t an exact replica. The Elites make the noises they made in the games and the combat sequences look like the live-action expression of gameplay. Will it end up propagandistic and committing to an idea that some of the excesses of warfare are necessary or acceptable? Almost definitely. But it’ll probably be a fun ride, and hopefully a good story.

Halo premieres Thursday, March 24th on Paramount+.

Kevin Fox, Jr. is a freelance writer, editor, and critic. He is a former Paste intern with an MA in history, who loves videogames, film, TV, and sports, and dreams of liberation. He can be found on Twitter @kevinfoxjr.

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