Halo Movies reviews

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Halo 4 Forward Unto Dawn
A nonpsittacorian's movie review

Okayish, but sadly boring for most of it. It does its job of showing why Lasky is insubordinate and how he is a friend of John-117, it has a really cool Warthog (although the minigun didn't spin when fired), the space elevator was cool, the Simon Fraiser campus they picked does look really futuristic and did well as the Corbulo Academy of Military Science, but it was still rather boring. Really well done for its type of docudrama genre, but it really did well to switch to being an action movie genre in the last chapter.

It was sad to see some of the characters die, even the yuppie Dimah who threatened to have the Marine fired by her mother if he didn't let her skip the queue for the space elevator (which they made like elevator rather than a vertical train) who probably died when the Covenant battleship lasered the tether and destroyed the space elevator system. It was even sad to see the one bully die, Vickers I think, who had changed along the way and was trying to whack the sangheili elite with a fire extinguisher or some other cudgel. Silva's death was especially tragic, being the best friend and love interest of Lasky at the least. Why kill her off?

The boot camp stuff makes me glad that ADHD and Asperger's syndrome are disqualification criteria for military service. I can't stand being yelled at. Physical training and riflery are one thing, but psychological manipulation is another. It has very little swearing for a school. I was homeschooled for all my life with the exception of two months in a public school. CAMS has nothing on Billy Ryan High School when it comes to foul language and bullying, and I'm not sure how accurate that would be for an academy of pampered brats whose rich relatives are paying for their children to become officers. Probably not very, but it's cleaner than public school as far as I've seen.

The end has a fair bit of violence and they did a good job of making the aliens realistic. It was cool that the actor they had playing Master Chief was his own stunt man too, though you have to watch the special features to find that out. The special features, behind the scenes, and the commentaries were more interesting than the film itself really. Perhaps to someone who likes the documentary drama genre the first three quarters would not be boring to them, because for its style it was well done and the acting was good. I just like the ending better than the majority of the film. Also cool was seeing the ships enter slipspace.

Okay, content wise there's some language, there's a fair bit of violence at the end while the Covenant kill everyone they can on planet Arcadia, and Cortana is momentarily shown in her humanoid form and she looks like herself. Mostly her feet, but at one point brielfly her side. Oh wow, she's typing on a virtual console. Yippie. Then she's gone and it's on with the show. Philosophy wise it has necessity of war and what "axios!" means, "I am worthy!" literally and duty and loyalty unto death metaphorically.

It's okayish and the last segment of the movie is really cool actually. It is my least favorite of the Halo movies, but that's due more to the style it was done in than the quality of work done. For what it is, it was well done. I may have found it mostly boring personally, but everyone likes different things to a degree.

Halo Nightfall
A nonpsittacorian's movie review

This movie is like the first Riddick movie, Pitch Black, except without most of the stuff I didn't like. Except that daytime is more deadly than the monster threat, that is.

The hunter worms herein are quite a bit more intimidating on their own than in their usual armor though. A flamethrower would probably be the best way to fight them.

I thought it was sad that Aiden died, but it was noble of him to make it a 1/1 probability that Pfc Mercer and Agent Locke got to leave. The other ONI troops, other than Locke, really were backstabbers and they pretty much deserved to die. The Sedrans and the horses I felt more sorry for than the backstabbers. The jerky dude with the broken ankle who one of the ONI backstabbers threw down the hill to feed the hunter worms I almost felt sorry for, but he was a jerk and he was taunting the ONI trooper who killed him so that's a little confusing. The one who killed his friend by not helping him and just letting his hands slip and fall, yeah he deserved to die also. I hate backstabbers.

The modified slipspace-FTL capable Pelican, Sedra's Condor, is a cool dropship. It would have been cooler if they had shown it enter/traverse/exit slipspace though rather than just having it as a detail to find out by words alone in the special features.

They did do a great job at making the ONI version of ODST armor. In the special features it was neat to hear how the actors felt like they were in the videogame while wearing it and one tried to move a car (unsucessfully). I wish I could afford a suit of armor, though I think what would be coolest is to dress as Roman General Corbulo with an MA5 Battle Rifle like the one statue in Forward Unto Dawn. A working powered armor spacesuit with a rebreather system and jumpjets would also be awesome, but lorica segmentata, a tunic, sandal boots, a helmet with an arc plume of dyed horse hair, and a replica MA5 would probably cost a few orders of magnitude less.

One thing that bugs me is, why didn't Locke just shoot the Sangheili zealot the rest of the way? I can sort of understand not knowing what to do while the dispersal device is free floating and if you shoot it who knows what would happen? Also, from Locke's vantage point if he were to shoot and miss it would probably hit the crowd below. The other ONI troopers didn't have the issue of missing and hitting a crowd, but still I suppose the previous issue of worrying causing hesitation would still be in effect.

Another thing that would have saved some problems: just waiting for the mining ship to leave and either capturing it in flight or following it to its destination and capturing whomever the miners are selling the ore to also.

Without knowing the threat of the hunter worms, I suppose it makes enough sense to send a platoon of power armored troopers with automatic suppression rifles and semiautomatic long range rifles against an unknown enemy that has to fit in a two seat vehicle. At least none of the Flood survived, but it's strange that the hunter worms would.

However, it's still a fairly good movie regardless of minor issues. Content wise I think I remember some profanity and there is a lot of violence. Nothing sexual unless you count the female Pfc Macer wearing a tank top and running. Unlike Pitch Black, and other copycats of the characterization format in Robert Aspirin's novel Tambu, you don't have antiheroes as the good guys. You have some stressed out good guys who become bad guys (most of the ONI troopers except Locke), bad guys (the sangheili zealot), bad guys who don't know they're bad guys (the trader and the two miners), worm food (most of the Sedran troopers), and the good guys (Col. Aiden, Pfc Macer, and Agt. Locke.) Also, unlike Pitch Black the pilot lady lived and the annoying guy died due to a backstabber after he also became a backstabber. Also, the designs of the ships weren't stupid. In many ways, Halo Nightfal is better than Pitch Black. I don't believe they were intentionally trying to imitate that movie or the conditions on the planet Crematoria of second Riddick movie either, it's just what it reminded me of.

What I don't get is how the Halo ring fragment is able to have an atmosphere, but there's probably a treknobabble explanation for that somewhere. Still, somehow it does and it's like a high altitude atmosphere in the mountains it would seem. It would have been better if someone had just brought compressed oxygen with mechnical valves rather than whatever the heck those electronic systems were. Also, why would rifles need electrical power? Are they a combination the normal chemical expanding gas propulsion along with railgun amperage acceleration systems or something else needing electricity to add extra velocity? Also, why would you want lights on armor or weapons? Especially for ONI spooks, I'd think covertness would be a priority, perhaps even having active camo like the Spartan III's SPI armor. Still though, everything looked cool even if some things didn't make sense to me in particular. I know how difficult it is to write and try to think of everything, it's probably the main reason for writer's block, and so just sticking with something -- even if it isn't perfect and doesn't make total sense -- is better than trying to make everything perfect and ending up writing nothing. They really did do a good job and the actors played their roles well, so I think Halo Nightfall is worth watching.

Halo: Fall of Reach
A nonpsittacorian's movie review

Despite other bad reviews and some canonical issues, between the book and itself, this movie is rather well done. A bit simple in places, but I think it goes along with the style. Reminds me of Ender's Game, the book more than the movie. It could be a bit better, but it's still good.

I really liked the space battle between the UNSC Commonwealth and the Covenant cruiser. The UNSC should really build ships with multiple MAC cannons, matrices of them on each side and a massive one along the length of the ship as normal. Such a ship would be larger than the Infinity, but it would kick butt. That way it could really fire rad massive broadside cannonades at the genocidal aliens and see how long their shields last. Since the second shot passed through the ship, what might a few hundred simultaneous impacts do? It was sad that they wasted/"spent" the lives of the fighter pilots just to get a nuke to the ship. It didn't makes sense to me that they'd just let the enemy retreat and make repairs. It could have been a trap, but after the Pelican with the Spartans left, they should have pressed the attack and continue launching missiles and more nukes. If the Covenant ship was damaged by one, then it would be damaged yet more by a second, a third, etc until it's vaporized.

Content wise it is somewhat gruesome in parts, particularly the augmentation procedure and John's momentary nightmare showing a battered Kelly saying, "Where were you when we needed you? We needed you." Also, there wasn't any confetti or "yay!" sound when the Spartan boarding party shot the unggoy grunt. There is a little profanity, when the Insurrectionist leader said "...I'm not getting in that damn box." The word "damn", by the way, comes from Latin "damnare" which means "to curse or be accursed." They missed a great opportunity to reply, "oh, yes you are." Edit: after watching it again there is the term "pissing contest", which isn't a literal contest to see who can pee further or fill the most volume of a septic tank between Dr. Halsey and Capt. Wallace, it's not referring to the act of urination but instead to saying angry words/elephant hurling/telling the other person they're wrong until they finally listen and realize "oh, the giant alien ship can really make an intrasystem slipspace jump even though our ships can't." The film is mostly serious in tone, which works for the Halo franchise in general -- though in Halo Wars the sardonic humor of Serina was rather funny, like imagine if cashiers had freedom of speech. There is a bit more humor later on, but apart from Halsey saying "And I don't have a pony" it's super serious for the first half before the augmentation procedure. There is no sexual content, not even the artistic female quasi-partial nudity or whatever Cortana's humanoid avatar might be classified as in whatever taxonomy of aesthetics that accounts for many paintings and statues of the last few hundred years - this movie is in the timeframe of the year 2517AD to 2525AD whereas Cortana wasn't around until about 2552AD and the AI Déjá is dressed fully (unless anyone wants to whine about arms and the hair on her head showing, in which case I don't really care to hear that opinion.) There isn't much other than violence, unless you count philosophies - in which case you ought to start listing those on packages too (Warning: Nieztche, Kant, Hagel, Bacon, "etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, excepting fishes.") The scene with the unaugmented volunteer attempting to wear a Mjolnir suit was somewhat gruesome and depressing, but the animators should have had the three doctors around him doing something more than standing around like managers. The frames showing wolves hunting was rather sad too, even though it's something that actually happens in real life it still sucks. When the Covenant ship caused a hull breach and a sailor got spaced I actually said "wow, that sucks" before thinking about what I said.

It is easy to see how Cortana would see Halsey as a monster, albeit a well meaning one and not a sadistic piece of crap like Mengala (the Nazi "scientist" whose name I might have spelled wrong but who doesn't deserve the respect of having his name spelled properly anyway.) Also, Cortana being a neural clone and hybrid Forerunner AI Construct, it's easy to see how Cortana would go crazy even if rampancy weren't a normal issue for AIs. Halsey has too much of an "ends-justifies-the-means" mentality but I don't believe this movie is glorifying that philosophy so much as showing context for why the shortened AI version of Halsey, Cortana, would think of Halsey with disdain.

Some dialog is a bit simplistic, and I am terrible at writing dialog myself -- especially with Asperger's syndrome -- so I'm not going to complain too loudly about that. Déjá, Halsey's AI who acted as school teacher for the children, sounded scary at first. Also, after John-117 had his Ender Wiggin kick-the-crap-out-of-bullies moment, when the three Orbital Drop Shock Troopers were about to beat him up, the dialog somehow sounded out of context - though being an Aspie I often do the same thing, responding to what I think someone will say next so as to save time in conversation for more than just predictable speech, I don't believe they meant for him to appear Aspie.

One thing I'm not sure about is when Kelly said, "I've got Cherenkov radiation readings from all over the ship." Isn't Cherenkov radiation basically light produced by particles that are travelling slower than light's speed in one medium suddenly enter another (denser, usually/alway[?]) medium in which their previous velocity is faster than the speed of light in the new medium. It's (visible?) light emitted from a behavior of matter similar to a sonic boom. I know alpha particles are just helium nuclei that are created ionized and they'll ionize other stuff by stealing their electrons. Beta minus particles are electrons and beta plus particles are positrons. Gamma radiation is electromagnetic, often high frequency/short wavelength, but basically photons. I don't know very much about this subject, but I'm not sure that Cherenkov radiation is the right term.

Overall, I really do like the movie. It's not the most well done, but it is fairly well done for its style of animation and it's lacking most forms of bathwater which are popular nowadays. There is not much wrong with it and it isn't boring. It reminds me of the animated series Roughnecks and Ender's Game and it does okayish in making part of the novel Fall of Reach into a movie. It's worth watching. Not quite as well done as Jurassic World, but it's still pretty darn good.