Sanctuary

That said, if you remove the (diminishing) expectations of quality attached to the Halo name, this show is mediocre at best and a midnight showing on the SyFy channel at worst. The writing is lackluster, the action is alright at times (but not quite up to Halo's standards) and the world is bland and soulless. It is paradoxically embarrassed to be associated with Halo, yet - at the same time - attempting to cram as many empty references to characters, events, and story beats from across the *entirety* of Halo's timeline into one space. All of Halo's books and games thrown into a blender, then scraped much too thin over some generic white bread Sci-Fi.

Halo was destined to be the vanguard of videogames taken seriously as a source for live action adaptation. It's had a running start since 2007; The days of Landfall, We are ODST, and Believe. With big names like Peter Jackson, Neill Blomkamp. And Alex Garland attached to the IP. Now, after shows like Arcane, The Last of Us, and Fallout have aired... Halo is limping along far behind the pack. Instead of leading the charge, Halo has faltered and is struggling to catch up to the likes of Uwe Boll.

Video game derived shows have some pretty big limitations to suspend disbelief but they are fun if done right. Halo is a massive scope project, I don't envy this show the bar it has to best to be impactful on any meaningful level. They've done a better job this season of smoothing out the inconsistent competing plots the first season struggled with. I'm interested to see the continuation and maturation of the characters a bit more and the actors seem to inhabit the familiar Spartans from season 1 more convincingly. The real standout so far in terms of delivery would be the amazing feats of agility displayed by the Spartans fighting Elites and training, really showing off the special nature of the Spartan's combat prowess. This is not Shakespeare nor is it Kubrick but it is Halo and that game is pure imagination at work. Given this as a Beta test bed for development of more material I'd say there's plenty of fertile ground for a feature film eventually, perhaps Reach's fall could be considered.

I'll be frank: I HATED the first season of this show. However, after getting roped back in by the trailers and positive reactions I'd seen about the first two episodes, I decided to give season 2 a shot and see if the show was any better this time around. And I've got to say, I thought this first episode was pretty good in general even though I think there are definitely some things holding it back.

Everything before the opening credits was awesome. The character interactions and dialogue were much better this time around, the action was great, and the glassing scene was well done and made the Covenant feel like an actual threat for once.

I also really like what we've seen of Ackerson so far and feel like the whole "UNSC intrigue" element of the show is being handled much better here than it was in Season 1. Seeing Chief with his helmet off also doesn't bother me nearly as much as it did in the previous season (he seriously treated that thing more like a bicycle helmet than an actual piece of armor). The show has obviously committed to showing its own version of Master Chief (feel about that as you will), but at least this time they've made an effort to make those scenes feel more natural.

My biggest complaint so far is that every scene on The Rubble just felt incredibly bizarre and pointless, and they kind of sucked all the energy out of the show for me whenever they appeared. While it's probably too early to say for sure, I wish they'd scrapped most of that subplot in favor of giving more screen time to the Covenant perspective. So far the show has made them out to be essentially just generic alien bad guys, and the audience hasn't really been given much insight on what their objectives and motivations are.

The scene at the end with Chief venting to the fake AI Cortana was also really weird and off-putting. Also, what is it with all the mystical / magical / shaman mumbo jumbo in this show? It's like they're trying to make the Halo universe feel more like Star Wars or something.

Overall though, I liked this. Definitely better than the first season but still not as great as it should be. But I'm interested to see where it goes!

I liked the first season. But he wasn't perfect. Especially in terms of the script and visual effects. But the second season, especially the first episode, showed that the series could be much better. Dark tone, better character development. Very cool. I am delighted.

Pablo is amazing as Master Chief. It will be interesting to see how his dynamic with Ackerson changes. The rest of the Silver Team has finally begun to be revealed.

Akerson is very good, Joseph Morgan is amazing. An excellent antagonist. I'm looking forward to the third episode! The main thing is that they do not slow down and spend less time on uninteresting secondary lines.

So you get one pretty bland action sequence, with the fights we already saw multiple times on a planet that does not seem to be important as it's there only for 10min or so... After that you have 40 minutes of talking with various characters... Talking with ex admiral, talking with a new boss, talking with Cortana alike and there is a seemingly unimportant side story about ex Spartan developing... I don't know who are the people praising these first two episodes, but the show turned from a mediocre action show which I actually enjoyed into a mediocre soap which I can barely stand watching, what is worse in EP2 that Asian woman with her side story is back...