Halo: Nightfall

While Nightfall is a step above most other video game televisions or film adaptations, it is still unfortunately delivers less than what is expected from a modern drama and quite honestly less than what fans of the long running game series deserve. Halo obviously had an incredible series of video game entries but also was really the first game series to pioneer a literary universe alongside it with many award winning sci-fi novels that routinely place in the New York times best seller list. Television and film is an arena Halo has yet to conquer as successfully and Nightfall is, sadly, not going to change that.

My biggest complaint would be that at the end of the day the story really has very little to do with Halo. That's a benefit for those watching who have never played Halo, but a letdown for those fans looking for that kind of story, and honestly considering the scope and quality of what is available for sci-fi why would you watch this if you were not a Halo fan? Most elements here, if you had simply swapped the names to non-Halo terms, would not change the context or value of the plot at all. It is a sci-fi film with Halo paint essentially.

The CGI is absolutely laughable, but the costumes are quite exceptional and really the CGI turns out to be very limited as this turns into more of a character drama than anything else which I enjoyed. Most of the characters are fleshed out with unique motivations and it creates a lot of loaded, tense conflicts between then as they decide what they have to do and what choices need to be made. If I can say one thing is that this is the realest Halo had ever felt in terms of characters and motivations. Everyone has clear reasons for what they do and say and how they act towards each other and it pays off in a lot of tense interactions between them.

Maybe someday we will get the Halo show we have been asking for, and this certainly isn't it, but it still was enjoyable for me and honestly a lot better than what I expected from a low budget video game adaption.

It's the 26th century. There is a tenuous treaty between humans and the alien alliance called Covenant. Despite the peace, the Covenant is still sending operatives in a dangerous secret war. On an outer planet called Sedra, Commander Jameson Locke (Mike Colter) leads a squad hunting a Zealot Elite warrior with a suspected bomb.

I saw this as a ninety min Showtime movie. It has a lot less shooting than I expected. Actually I expected a lot less of everything from this movie. The acting is pretty good led by a capable Mike Colter. The characters are mostly one dimensional but that's fine for this type of movie. I like their conflicts once they get to the ring. The first part isn't as compelling and is limited by its production. Overall, I'm relief that it doesn't suck. It's not bad.

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.

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.