His Divine Shadow posted:

2nd episode in and I wonder why the future always has to suck in sci-fi shows recently. Some of these peoples lives look worse than a medieval peasants.

MiddleOne posted:

Of course both Dredd (2011) and The Mandalorian show that this train of thought is idiotic

Sash! posted:

Not even that recent a thing either. Darth Vader is almost universally agreed to be the greatest movie villain and you never saw his face. James Earl Jones did all of the work with his voice, 45 years ago.

Sash! posted:

Not even that recent a thing either. Darth Vader is almost universally agreed to be the greatest movie villain and you never saw his face. James Earl Jones did all of the work with his voice, 45 years ago.

Polaron posted:

You realize he wasn't the guy under the helmet, right?

MiddleOne posted:

That specific example is one of the most notorious ever for why actors are uncomfortable agreeing to masked roles. It turns what could be career-defining roles into footnotes on wikipedia.

Milkfred E. Moore posted:

McSpanky posted:

I only played the first game and have nothing invested in the Halo lore, but it's exactly these kinds of thoughtless changes that make bad adaptations less than their source material. It's like the fruit of the poisonous tree.

RBA Starblade posted:

I laughed when the Prophet got naked. Prestige nudity in our Halos lmao

RBA Starblade posted:

We better see Chief hang dong

Sash! posted:

David Prowse was a fellow who played Frankenstein monsters and strongmen. He was already a footnote.

Professor Beetus posted:

I watched the first episode last night and I have to say it was a real missed opportunity to not have Grunts be the aliens we first see show up, especially if they still played up the terrifying nature of the plasma weapons.

McSpanky posted:

Isn't Halo on max difficulty supposed to be the "authentic" experience? A squad of Grunts being lead by an Elite will absolutely gently caress your poo poo up if you aren't on the ball, as I recall. And you're a SPARTAN, not a generic Marine.

Arc Hammer posted:

Grunts are scary to everyday marines. They're 5'6 250lb turtle monsters with armored limbs, plasma guns, grenades and a suicidal lack of self preservation instincts.

Anita Dickinme posted:

I kinda liked how the used just a huge teams of Elites to really show how savage and insanely hard they are for the average human to fight. We never got that playing as Master Chief in the game. I’m hoping the Grunts really are just like normal soldiers that marines can dispatch with relative ease but once that squad leader Elite shows up it’s like twenty marines need to handle it or the humans are just hosed if a Spartan isn’t there.

If it was Grunts attacking the outpost then there would, more than likely, been survivors after the attack and that’s not what the writers wanted from what we saw. Besides, Elites being the first covies we see and they absolutely decimate 100+ humans is pretty badass.

Professor Beetus posted:

or stick them with a plasma grenade.

Anita Dickinme posted:

There’s not much I can think of that would make ballistic guns much better. The assault rifle in the game has a 64 round magazine that is TINY and fits flush into the rifle which is god-tier. Just imagine an extended magazine on it. The AK today is a marvelous weapon and until we can create our own plasma or laser weapons that gun will probably be in service for the next few hundred years

I just don’t see much improvements or new ways to advance ballistic weapons even today past completely removing recoil or adding a crosshair directly into your eyeball. But I’m also not an inventor so I can’t say for certain.

Milkfred E. Moore posted:

The crazy dude in the jail cell should've been a Grunt, IMO.

Milkfred E. Moore posted:

It's such an odd series. We're only two episodes in but it feels like they've taken a fairly interesting set of characters and decided to present them in a more bland, less interesting and arguably more nonsensical way. It's a series that is both aware of what the audience knows and wisely skips past it (Halo being a weapon) but also makes it clear that pre-existing knowledge doesn't count for much (virtually everything to do with John, Cortana and the SPARTAN program.)

For example, what we see so far from John and Soren is that the SPARTANs are, according to Soren, basically brainwashed by the UNSC and have their emotions suppressed due to some kind of implant and possibly regular "treatments." John in that sense is something of an unwilling prisoner of the UNSC. His humanity has been stolen from him and he's somewhat aware of it and not happy about it. His memories of his parents are coming back. In extreme situations, he lashes out with strong emotional displays, like we see with the prisoner. Halsey's ultimate goal is the Cortana Project which will, according to her, basically override the consciousness of the SPARTANs and turn them into robots.

Thing is, that's just less interesting and less horrifying than the 'primary' lore. John was abducted by the UNSC and taken to Reach and turned into a super soldier. But in this version, the SPARTAN 'candidates' are all very aware of what's happening. Halsey argues that lying to the children will only backfire (which includes selective amnesia!) So, they're told, frequently, that they'll be made into the best soldiers ever. They get so thoroughly indoctrinated with propaganda, past and present, that it isn't that John doesn't know he has parents -- it's that he knows and he no longer cares. They didn't steal John's humanity so much as stripped it from him and made him think he gave it up and left him thinking it was the right thing to do. It isn't that John's psyche is suppressed by physiological implants (indeed, messing with the minds of the SPARTAN candidates was seen as too dangerous), it's that he's just been tricked into thinking he isn't really human. I think one of the best things about Halo is this idea of John as a tragic character. When I think John-117, I don't think emotionless prisoner, but closer to that line from Watchman: "His subtle facial twitches wouldn't be noticed by the layman, but to me, he might as well have been sobbing."

Halo 4 demonstrated a pretty interesting story about John reclaiming his humanity, or part of it. Halo 4 also seemed to be leading to a story where John would act against the UNSC before Halo 5 crashed the plane (with no survivors) and Infinite was left to try and put it back together. So, it's not that Halo itself can't do this. It's just that what we appear to be getting is much more simple when the tapestry is fairly complex. And maybe that makes sense -- it'd be hard to have a TV series where John is as robotic as he sometimes is in the primary lore. But the times where he is really awkward and stilted in these first two episodes are some of the best bits! Just like it'd be hard to have a TV series where we see the UNSC turn a child into a soldier and have it sort of skip past the fact that the UNSC's issue with the SPARTANs isn't that they're walking crimes against humanity but that it's cheaper to buy a corvette or whatever.

Similarly, it's not that Halo hasn't presented alternate canon takes before, either -- Halo: Reach overrode the beloved Fall of Reach novel. But that was similar to my initial point in how it was somehow less interesting and more nonsensical so the writers could tell a 'new' story.

I feel like how they depict John and Cortana will be what makes or breaks the series. It's a defining element of the franchise with some well-executed pathos in the various games and novels. The idea of the human who doesn't think he is and the AI who guides him, that sense of them being protectors for each other and of each other, of being war buddies, of the weird intimacy where Cortana is this weird mother/daughter/lover figure. The guilt Cortana bears for picking John in the first place. It's a very rich, interesting relationship and I feel like 'she was made to control you but decided to help you' or whatever it feels like they might be going with just feels... well, flat. Especially when she's seemingly human now, probably so John and Cortana can have a mutual 'wow, they took our humanity from us' moment.

I'm trying not to be too cynical but I feel like they could've gone much further with their idea of a 'Silver' continuity that is its own thing or whatever while telling a story that felt closer to the spirit of the lore. Just have John start with Cortana instead of doing this slow, dumb build up. Give us a first season where John is just murdering rebels and we can get a feel for the authoritarian nature of the UNSC. Give us a better idea of, well, everything if we're not going to trade on pre-existing lore and concepts.

And then there's the little things. It feels like the UNSC isn't engaged in an existential war against the Covenant. Like, maybe they've had a few skirmishes but the Insurrectionists on Madrigal seemed to believe they were basically UNSC propaganda. We see in the first episode that the SPARTANs are using these huge gantries to put their armor on, and then John seems to shuck his armor between shots in episode two. And I feel like the idea of SPARTANs removing their armor simply is even more of an issue in this take on the universe than the original given that this take basically says that the armor is a way to monitor and control them, up to and including remotely cutting off their oxygen.