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Source
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/film-tv/news/ridley-scotts-halo-digital-feature-being-shot-in-belfasts-titanic-quarter-30323063.html

So, discuss. Anyone excited? I know i'll be lookin for work as an extra...

Forward Unto Dawn was pretty good.

If only this happened a few years ago

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
If only this happened a few years ago

Indeed. Before Karen Travis got her grubby hands on the canon*.

I Will Never Drop the Stick! *proceeds to beat horse*

I'm awaiting news that Damon Lindelof will be brought on and have the big idea to make it not about HALO or Master Chief.

I wouldn't have any issues with the film not being about Master Chief or even about the Halo rings. A movie about Gray Team would be cool, or the Spartan IIIs or ODST's. There's a lot of room in the Haloverse for cool movies.

 LordofHats wrote:
A movie about Gray Team would be cool, or the Spartan IIIs or ODST's. There's a lot of room in the Haloverse for cool movies.

He doesn't know what those things are either. It would be about something you've never heard of before for no reason and with no answers to why, where, or what.

Fair point XD Or worse. SOmeone might declare Halo's backstory stupid and that it can't be put on film without 'adjustments.'

Ohhhh, sweet!

And I personally liked bitter, angry Halsey. But, I've only read up to Glasslands. I have Thursday War on my desk, but haven't started yet.

Eric Nylund already made bitter angry Halsey Travis just took bitter angry Halsey and had her declared a war criminal for... for... she's a scientist damn it she's evil incarnate! *keeps beating horse*

Ahh Halo... where in 500 years Humans are using worse weapons than those found in the 20th and 21st century.

Suprised they didn't get Neill Blomkamp for this

My prediction is that this is gonna suck. Ridley Scott's made some good-to-great movies - Alien, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down - but all his recent work has been poor.

 Ahtman wrote:
I'm awaiting news that Damon Lindelof will be brought on and have the big idea to make it not about HALO or Master Chief.

There are many things I will never understand - the motivations of troofers, why people switch lanes without using their turn signals, why cheesy poofs smell OK when you're eating them but nauseating when someone else is; but chief among these might be how Mr. Lindelof continues to find work.

 LordofHats wrote:
Eric Nylund already made bitter angry Halsey Travis just took bitter angry Halsey and had her declared a war criminal for... for... she's a scientist damn it she's evil incarnate! *keeps beating horse*

Don't worry, I won't judge you for being silly

This should be good. Is this a part of the Xbox Live offering or is this seeing a wider release?

If they can make it like Forward Unto Dawn with more alien-blasting and less teen drama, it'll be a great film.

EDIT: answered in the article, they're two separate things. I'm surprised they expect it to release later this year if they've only just started shooting.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
If only this happened a few years ago

Indeed. Before Karen Travis got her grubby hands on the canon*.

I Will Never Drop the Stick! *proceeds to beat horse*

I was sorta thinking before I moved over here, but we can work with your post too

 mega_bassist wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
Eric Nylund already made bitter angry Halsey Travis just took bitter angry Halsey and had her declared a war criminal for... for... she's a scientist damn it she's evil incarnate! *keeps beating horse*

Don't worry, I won't judge you for being silly

Never surrender!




But nahhhh. I thought Halo Legends was one of the better attempts at a shorts anthology that I've seen. if anything let that down it was the quality of some of the animation, not the stories themselves. Forward Unto Dawn was a nice foray into the Halo world and managed to be better than most movies I've paid to see.

Microsoft as always, runs the risk of over marketing Halo, but that doesn't mean everything will be awful. So far it's been decent to good. I'm up for what comes next.

Hard to get excited for this. For a game franchise with an exceptionally shallow story and remarkably little compelling action (yes there is action, but can you really point out any moments that stand out as set pieces?), there isn't much for a movie.

Ridley Scott is a meh-to-good director at the best of times, and as mentioned in this thread, his recent work has been pretty crap. As a producer in a purely digital movie, there's not a whole lot I see him contributing of any value, his influence will be minimal at best.

And let's not forget the fact that it is a digital movie. Are you ready for subpar voice acting and bad graphics?

 curran12 wrote:
yes there is action, but can you really point out any moments that stand out as set pieces?

Just from the games:

Escaping an exploding Halo ring overrun by the flood in a beat-up Warthog.

Carter crashing a Pelican into the face of a Scarab to buy Emile and Six some time.

The Shipmaster glassing a whole continent to stop the flood.

High Charity emerging from Slipspace over the Ark.

The Gravemind first showing itself to Chief and the Arbiter.

To list but a few. Halo lends itself to a film very well, I think, given the scale that is epic without being out of reach (the issue that stops a 40k movie existing).

Yeah Curran. Of all the games franchises in the world, Halo is probably one of the ones most easily adapted to other media including film. The games already play like a hollywood blockbuster.

Unfortunately, many of those scenes you can't really sell a movie around. But let's go through the list and I'll give my reasoning:

Escaping an exploding Halo ring overrun by the flood in a beat-up Warthog.

Of all the listings, this is the most that I think could work for an action movie concept. However, I think it falls flat in a digital medium as there's a whole lot less weight to it. The problem is extracting a movie scene out of a good game sequence, which is not an easy thing to do.

Carter crashing a Pelican into the face of a Scarab to buy Emile and Six some time.

Problem here is that you aren't going to see this in a Halo movie. You need to deatch yourself from love of the series and think in terms of a movie producer. They are not terribly interested in the side/backstories, when someone mentions Halo in a wider context, it is purely about Master Chief. Sorry, but that is gonna be the reality of it.

The Shipmaster glassing a whole continent to stop the flood.

High Charity emerging from Slipspace over the Ark.

Gonna be bitter and jaded on both of these. These scenes would be cheap CGI spank. And again, to keep the mindset of making a movie for wider distribution, you need to cut out all of the context. Both of these scenes fall apart without it. Blowing up a planet doesn't carry a whole lot of oomph unless you are given sufficient reason to care, and to be honest I didn't get that in the game so I don't see any way for it to happen in a movie.

The Gravemind first showing itself to Chief and the Arbiter.

Reaching too far. You're talking about a 90-150 minute movie at best, you aren't going to get that kind of depth or side villains in this movie. You just aren't.

 LordofHats wrote:
Yeah Curran. Of all the games franchises in the world, Halo is probably one of the ones most easily adapted to other media including film. The games already play like a hollywood blockbuster.

Yeah, and blockbusters are not known for being good. I mean, it'll (hopefully) be better than say...Transformers, but talk about a low bar.

 curran12 wrote:
Yeah, and blockbusters are not known for being good.

They aren't known for being bad either. Like anything some are good some are bad and a few are excellent.

No one is expecting this film, or the series, to be intellectually stimulating or thought proviking, what we expect is a decent action movie along the lines of Bond, Bourne ect.

Yes, the events are improbable, but that doesn't stop them looking awesome. Give me a couple of hours of Spartans machine-gunning the gak out of aliens, a Warthog chase and some amusing one-liners from the supporting cast and I'll be happy.

And while 1&2 were flawed, Transformers 3 was actually pretty awesome. A Halo film to that quality would satisfy me.

Regarding my list, I appreciate those scenes do need context, I was simply proving that Halo as a setting does have the capacity for cool set piece scenes.

 Ahtman wrote:


They aren't known for being bad either. Like anything some are good some are bad and a few are excellent.

I would disagree you on that, but I suppose that is a matter of opinion. Personally, I find summer action blockbusters to be increasingly bad, that said, the Avengers is a strong contrast to that, so it isn't like they are hopeless. Though for me, for every Avengers, there is about 2 or 3 Transformers 1-4, which are agony to watch.

 Paradigm wrote:
No one is expecting this film, or the series, to be intellectually stimulating or thought proviking, what we expect is a decent action movie along the lines of Bond, Bourne ect.

Yes, the events are improbable, but that doesn't stop them looking awesome. Give me a couple of hours of Spartans machine-gunning the gak out of aliens, a Warthog chase and some amusing one-liners from the supporting cast and I'll be happy.

And while 1&2 were flawed, Transformers 3 was actually pretty awesome. A Halo film to that quality would satisfy me.

Regarding my list, I appreciate those scenes do need context, I was simply proving that Halo as a setting does have the capacity for cool set piece scenes.

It isn't like I just snob up for any action movie (hell my favorite action movie is The Rock for god's sake), but I just don't see a Halo movie as being a very GOOD version of a dumb action movie. It's a situation where you either just have mindless machine gunning, or they try to crowbar in the shallow backstory and make it an awkward mess.

As far as Transformers 3....reaaalllly? Was "deep Wang" really pretty awesome?

I'm not saying it was perfect, but the Transformers side of TF3 (ie The bit I watch it for) is great. Sentinel was a great addition, The Wreckers and Soundwave/Shockwave fitted in nicely, and the combat scenes were epic. The human side was worse, but the same can be said for all of them in that regard. I hope that one day, we get a Transformers movie just about Transformers.

And, it didn't have Megan Fox in, which automatically makes it better than the first two. She simply cannot act.

 curran12 wrote:
Personally, I find summer action blockbusters to be increasingly bad

That is because you are increasingly becoming a bitter old man worrying about kids being on his lawn; it doesn't happen overnight; it is a slow process. One day you will wake up and be Frazzled.

 Paradigm wrote:
I'm not saying it was perfect, but the Transformers side of TF3 (ie The bit I watch it for) is great. Sentinel was a great addition, The Wreckers and Soundwave/Shockwave fitted in nicely, and the combat scenes were epic. The human side was worse, but the same can be said for all of them in that regard. I hope that one day, we get a Transformers movie just about Transformers.

And, it didn't have Megan Fox in, which automatically makes it better than the first two. She simply cannot act.

But it still had Shia LeDouche, so yeah...

I'd LOOSELY agree with you that the actual parts with the robots fighting were pretty good (I think that they are good, but very sloppy and confusing) however, that was like what? Maybe 20-30% of the movie, tops? You can't say a turd sandwich is good because it has a fresh olive on it, ya know? That's my position on that.

Compared to the other Transformers movies, 3 is the most competent and 'best'. Compared to any other movie, it is still a piece of garbage. So it is the most polished turd?

 Ahtman wrote:


That is because you are increasingly becoming a bitter old man worrying about kids being on his lawn; it doesn't happen overnight; it is a slow process. One day you will wake up and be Frazzled.

Is it bad that I am slightly giddy about being close to comparable to Frazzled?

The first Transformers movie was a 6/10 (maybe), the second two were abominations before god and man.

Ridley Scott has been coasting along on his past successes for a while now. Kingdom of Heaven (director's cut) was his last decent film. Even that wasn't a patch on his earlier works (Bladerunner, Gladiator, Alien). Frankly, I think this movie might work out well, but it won't be a blockbuster summer movie. The most likely scenario is that we get a film that is roughly equivalent to that Starship Troopers CGI film that went straight to DVD. It wasn't *bad*, but it wasn't great, either.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Paradigm wrote:
I hope that one day, we get a Transformers movie just about Transformers.

But we did get a Transformers movie about Transformers. It came out in the 80s. They killed Optimus Prime in it and everything.

 Ahtman wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
Personally, I find summer action blockbusters to be increasingly bad

That is because you are increasingly becoming a bitter old man worrying about kids being on his lawn; it doesn't happen overnight; it is a slow process. One day you will wake up and be Frazzled.

Its ok. Then you will discover something called "dinner theaters." Then you will discover dinner theaters with full bars. Then you will discover something called "crown royal" and his friends "Jim Beam" and "SoCo on the rocks." Then you will again like summer blockbuster movies, or whatever the hell is on the screen...who cares this drink is GOOD!