Halo 2025
- Thread starter Shadow Reaper
- Start date
Last time I watched a linked youtube video my suggestions were Jpop for a year (thanks Maynard) so not clicking through to defend what YT offers me, but do remember they were working on a Halo movie or TV series or something at some point weren't they? Wasn't there some fan backlash due to the guy taking his helmet off or something?
As I recall there was a live action Halo series we linked to here, but this is apparently a 3D cinematic from the most recent game in the series. I haven’t had time to watch it yet. I just saw about 15 minutes. It’s a couple hours long. Important to those following the game storyline.
IMHO, both the game and the live action series have excellent story and visuals, but yes. The live action series took heavy criticism where it departed from the game. That’s pretty common. Most people have no idea how writers decide where to take liberties.
For instance, Peter Jackson came under very heavy criticism for expanding out the Hobbit for three films. He especially took criticism for inventing the character Tauriel from whole cloth. Thing is, the Hobbit is not nearly enough source material for a work equal in scope to Lord of the Rings and had to be expanded, and Tauriel is a character and supports a subplot Tolkien would heartily agree with. The Hobbit was certainly “in the spirit of Tolkien” and my guess is the live action series is similar.
The problem with adaptations is really when the writers don’t like the source material and decide to ride its success while rewriting it—like we saw with the Witcher. Fans have plenty of reasons to complain about that adaptation because it intends to shit on the source materials. That’s why Henry Cavill left Witcher.
IMHO, both the game and the live action series have excellent story and visuals, but yes. The live action series took heavy criticism where it departed from the game. That’s pretty common. Most people have no idea how writers decide where to take liberties.
For instance, Peter Jackson came under very heavy criticism for expanding out the Hobbit for three films. He especially took criticism for inventing the character Tauriel from whole cloth. Thing is, the Hobbit is not nearly enough source material for a work equal in scope to Lord of the Rings and had to be expanded, and Tauriel is a character and supports a subplot Tolkien would heartily agree with. The Hobbit was certainly “in the spirit of Tolkien” and my guess is the live action series is similar.
The problem with adaptations is really when the writers don’t like the source material and decide to ride its success while rewriting it—like we saw with the Witcher. Fans have plenty of reasons to complain about that adaptation because it intends to shit on the source materials. That’s why Henry Cavill left Witcher.
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The same thing happened to the Halo show that happend to the witcher, the writers introduced characters that were there to fill checkboxes without any real substance, they concentrated a lot more on their agenda filled fanfiction rather than the protag, and they made John-117 fight his demons instead of the literal demons around him....
They also hated the "true good Hero vs true evil" story of the games and books, as is a must if you want to become a hollywood writer these days, and twisted the story around enough that humans became the real villains, instead of the "just misunderstood culturally different" poor aliens who just happened to glass a couple of planets and wipe out a couple million humans, no biggie...
Oh and the visuals were all over the place. Some parts did look okay, but other times bare white 3d printed weapons/props were clearly visible in multiple scenes and such nonsense... the money was there, the attention to detail (or the will to give the post production teams enough time) was utterly lacking.
The Hobbit should never have been 3 movies. It should have been a single movie or even better, it should have been the 2 episode (50-70mins each) pilot to a Middle Earth TV show (no, not for amazon's laughably bad soap that we got, that's just absolutely horrible, but something else with Peter Jackson in the lead)
The original isn't even a book, it's basically a short story... Every single creative liberty they took with the writing and characters diminished the value of the original work. Adding meaningless or outright anti-lore characters and their relationships, pointless action scenes that even an 8 year old raised on the worst marvel crap would find cringe, and basically adding no value while wasting all that money and talent... I wish it wouldn't exist in this form.
I do like game-cinematic movies though, when done right. I might give that a watch later. Also, if you like Halo, I highly recommend reading some of the books, like The Fall of Reach (1st of 4 book series, the rest is also great) and Contact Harvest. There's also a bunch of books that follows the enemy, some of those are supposedly good although I never got that far into them.
They also hated the "true good Hero vs true evil" story of the games and books, as is a must if you want to become a hollywood writer these days, and twisted the story around enough that humans became the real villains, instead of the "just misunderstood culturally different" poor aliens who just happened to glass a couple of planets and wipe out a couple million humans, no biggie...
Oh and the visuals were all over the place. Some parts did look okay, but other times bare white 3d printed weapons/props were clearly visible in multiple scenes and such nonsense... the money was there, the attention to detail (or the will to give the post production teams enough time) was utterly lacking.
The Hobbit should never have been 3 movies. It should have been a single movie or even better, it should have been the 2 episode (50-70mins each) pilot to a Middle Earth TV show (no, not for amazon's laughably bad soap that we got, that's just absolutely horrible, but something else with Peter Jackson in the lead)
The original isn't even a book, it's basically a short story... Every single creative liberty they took with the writing and characters diminished the value of the original work. Adding meaningless or outright anti-lore characters and their relationships, pointless action scenes that even an 8 year old raised on the worst marvel crap would find cringe, and basically adding no value while wasting all that money and talent... I wish it wouldn't exist in this form.
I do like game-cinematic movies though, when done right. I might give that a watch later. Also, if you like Halo, I highly recommend reading some of the books, like The Fall of Reach (1st of 4 book series, the rest is also great) and Contact Harvest. There's also a bunch of books that follows the enemy, some of those are supposedly good although I never got that far into them.
I totally get why you say this and understand how you feel this way. I think though, as a true fan of Tolkien, you should be able to empathize with those of us who feel what Jackson did was give us more of Tolkien than Tolkien himself. If you watch the interviews with Jackson and the other two writers, what you come away with is the undeniable inclination that they all deeply respected, admired and honored Tolkien and his intentions. They didn’t have an agenda past giving Tolkien’s audience something to cherish.
As per the romance between Tauriel and Kili, to understand it you need to harken back to how Gimli lost his heart to Galadriel, and as a gift asked only for a locket of her hair. That was intended to make a mockery of the racism between the elves and dwarves. Tolkien was saying that all the important things about us transcend race. He was anti-racist before Martin Luther King made it trendy.
Jackson chose to amplify this about Tolkien, and the result was a deeply heart warming romance. If you were too angry at its novelty to enjoy it I suggest give it another view, and ask yourself had Tolkien been younger and able to write longer, whether he might not have invented exactly these sort of characters and storyline. They’re truly touching.
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I wasn't angry, I was bored to tears and couldn't care less. The whole romance story, or rather that whole part of the movie with the elves that shouldn't have been there felt out of place.
The reason why the Galadriel+Gimli part works is because Gimli falling for her doesn't change the power dynamic at all. Galadriel is still a god compared to the lowly dwarf. She treats him like a child, just like she treats the rest of em. There is no ... maybe not the correct English word to use... reciprocity? It establishes a hierarchy and it remains unbroken. No matter how much Tolkien was against racism.
I get that they did their best at giving us more of something we like. I also happen to know that 3 movies was not the plan. It was the studios plan, not Jacksons. He had to do 3 otherwise he couldn't have done any.
I think less would have been more in this case. I absolutely don't mind Jackson doing his own thing in Tolkien's world, that's fine. He has earned it.
What I disapprove of is making a slog out of an otherwise fast paced entertaining short story that is by far more action packed and "for fun" than LOTR is.
The tone is all over the place from disney-esque whimsey to waaay too overly serious and dark.
The Hobbit, the book, is basically an Indiana Jones level adventure, fun time with some danger and a bit of seriousness. That's what I would have rather seen instead of the epic-that-really-isn't that we got.
If the studio weren't so greedy and Jackson could've made a single adventure movie out of it, maybe the movies weren't considered a flop and we would have gotten more out of it in the long run. TV shows, the streaming sites producing one off movies and whatnot...