I genuinely love Natascha McElhone as Halsey, but not much else in this trailer is doing much for me.

I'm glad Jen Taylor got the gig.

https://youtu.be/ROhH8yBVrns

I genuinely love Natascha McElhone as Halsey, but not much else in this trailer is doing much for me.

Thoughts & Things: Irrationally Hot and off the press!

• The entire time I was watching this, I was saying to myself - "Don't be a superhero, Don't be a superhero, Don't be a superhero*..."

• This was made by a committee.
  • I hate it.

• This looks like New Star Trek
  • I hate it.

• I'm so happy for Jen Taylor.

• Even without watching this, I feel as if already know what this entire story is going to be without having any real idea of what the context shall be.
  • I hate it.

• Korny hasn't even posted, and somehow I feel like I might agree!
  • What have I done?
    • Oh no.
      • Oh no no no.

*(Which is NOT me hating on superhero movies.)

It will probably bite me in the ass, but my perception of the trailer is that it has massive The Fall of Reach vibes, lore-wise. Halsey not being played by Jen herself took me by surprise, especially because the actress they picked looks a lot like her.

Anyway, pretty much everything in this trailer got me the series into the "will definitely watch" list.

Except for Covenant girl. Covenant "fleshed-out CGI villains didn't quite fit in our budget" girl was way too much wtf for my mind to handle.

Seems like I'm making a lot of "write your story for the medium" posts this week but…yeah.

This isn't for me. I don't mean its not to my taste. I mean it was designed for someone else who is not someone like me. Not someone who does not need a introduction to who Master Chief is, or what a Spartan is. Not me who already had a moral journey about Halsey and what she did. Someone for whom every one point one seen in the world triggers memories.

So all that's left for me to ask is "will it succeed at what it wants to be?" Based on that trailer, it seems like their reach exceeds their grasp, and yet simultaneously, They don't want it to be a spectacular. It's trope after trope so familiarity is important for them, but also it's Clearly not designed to feel be Halo from the setting to the time to the character and volume of the Chiefs dialog.

I can't help but know for a fact that this would have been better if they set it in the world of Halo but not centered on the Master Chief. That they didn't;t is going to make it hard for me to see this as anything other then them following the safe money even when that leads to bad decisions creatively and in terms of quality.

It's just a trailer, so who knows. Shame they could not launch it while a lot of people will be trying to figure out how to use the rest of a Paramount+ subscription month after the NFL playoffs. Shrug.

Not everyone knows the depth of the Halo story like we do around here. In the real world, I'm the only person I know of in my life that has played, or knows anything about Halo, in regards to the story and how good it is. I'm excited that people will get to see the story unfold. People have been texting me in regard to this show. It's cool that they are starting to be intrigued by it.

This show is not "for us." It's for everyone else. Try to watch the trailer from the PoV of someone who knows Halo exists, but knows nothing about the story.

I think it looks badass.

I'm willing to give it a shot. There are a lot of nit-picks I could make, but ultimately, this is a chance for them to play around in the universe (or Silver Universe) and tell new interesting stories. I hope they do it. Maybe like The Book of Boba Fett I'll feel like it wasn't for me, and that's OK too.

What I will say is that it's a shame the Halo Community has mostly convinced 343 that The Master Chief and Cortana are the only characters worth anchoring big budget storytelling around. I think a ODST show could rock, but I doubt they'd be willing to risk the budget (unless Nathan Fillon was on board perhaps).

Literally. Lol.

https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/silver-debrief-a-new-beginning

Basically, we want to use the existing Halo lore, history, canon, and characters wherever they make sense for a linear narrative, but also separate the two distinctly so that we don’t invalidate the core canon or do unnatural things to force a first-person video game into an ensemble TV show. The game canon and its extended lore in novels, comics, and other outlets is core, original, and will continue unbroken for as long as we make Halo games. To be clear: these will be two parallel, VERY similar, but ultimately separate timelines whose main events and characters will intersect and align throughout their very different cadences.