Halo: Nightfall

I generally like any kind of military scifi, but I have to say, this show is starting to tax my patience.

When I recall that the episodes are only twenty minutes long, that is actually far worse than it sounds.

The initial setup and "mission" are quite promising, but after that first episode, what was an interesting scifi concept turns into "Quarry Walking Simulator 2014". This begins in episode 2 and continues all through to the end of episode 4, which is about an hour of viewing.

There is a rather weak attempt to turn the show into a psychological study of people put in a difficult situation, but it doesn't really work. The short format of the series, plus the sub-par writing and acting, only makes the characters annoying rather than interesting. Instead of tense drama, you end up with trite stereotypes and predictable scenes.

The CGI isn't brilliant, but it does the job, but, as I have already mentioned, mostly it is a tale of people slowly losing control whilst walking around a large quarry. Quite where the purported $70 million dollars it cost to make the show went is a bit of a mystery.

SUMMARY: A poor man's Pitch Black, hampered by bad writing, acting and with precious little of the extensive HALO universe to show for the budget. Monsters that are clearly designed by someone who thought Matrix Revolutions was good. Considering what was done with the Battlestar Galactica webisodes, there is really no excuse for this.

VERDICT: The wait for a decent HALO series continues...

In the 28th Century, the prolonged war between humanity and the fanatical alien alliance the Covenant has ended with a tenuous treaty. Despite the ceasefire, Earth's outer colonies remain vulnerable to the Covenant's covert intrusions. The ONI - Office of Naval Intelligence has been tasked with counterintelligence to beat the Covenant.

In Planet Sedra, Commander Jameson Locke (Mike Colter) and his team witness a Covenant's spacecraft and a Zealot Elite warrior disembarks with a bomb. They unsuccessfully try to stop the alien that explodes the bomb in a mall. They realize that it is a biological attack with an element fatal to humans. Sedran Commander Aiken (Steven Waddington) captures the middleman Axl (Jonathan Harden) that tells that the element is obtained from Alpha Halo, where the day longs 16 h and the temperature in the sunlight reaches 482o C. Aiken, Locke and his team head to Halo in the spacecraft Condor with pilot Macer (Christina Chong) carrying a Havoc weapon to destroy the place. On the arrival, they find two terrorists but are trapped in Halo by weird worms that are attracted by technology. And in five hours the sun will rise.

"Halo: Nightfall" is a good and underrated sci-fi adventure. The story was released edited on a DVD as a feature and it works. I have glanced at the negative reviews and apparently they belong to fans of a video game that are not satisfied with the movie. However, for those like me that do not play the game, this movie is highly entertaining. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Halo: Nightfall"

Note: On 06 Mar 2022, I saw this film again.

This is the syfy special of Halo? There are 3 types of alien in thism ovie.? 2 only in the first episode? and a lot of bad choices. But the threats stay fairly limited and not ramping up.

luckily the human characters are 1 dimensional so you don't really care. And almost have 2 actors that do their job. i don't want to blame them. Scenery did a good job.

It starts off so well but then they spent most of the time walking around with the odd thing happening. There is parts with action but I felt it could have used a lot more. The fact this is a Halo movie I expected loads of special effects and action like in the games but we did get that for a short period of time. After that it was minimised.

The worst thing about the pilot is that it is not that sci-fi. It starts promising, detailing the threat and "the mission", it shows the characters, then they all go to an isolated place where technology works against them. So basically, an entire setup for a medieval like quest, only on an alien world.

Other than that, the plot is predictable, but not terrible, the acting is good and it kept me watching it, even if I knew how it would end from the first half of the movie.

As I have not played the game, I have no quarrels with that aspect of the movie, however it did seem that it had nothing to do with how a specialized fighting force would behave in the 26th century. Also, it didn't really say anything about the Halo universe. As a complete noob, I had no idea who MasterChef (he he!) was and what a Halo was.

Bottom line: forgettable, but not that terrible. It did seem really low budget, though, and I have to ask myself what is the purpose of a low budget sci-fi series pilot which brings nothing in terms of story or characters? It only prepares an even less worked on series, right?

Update: didn't realize that "the pilot" was the whole first season. Heh!