One Last Thing on Halo

One final effort is all that remains.

Apparently my Paramount+ subscription, which cost me $0.99, had two days left before expiration this coming Saturday. I made up my mind after last week's boring assfest that I wasn't going to renew for the outrageous price of $14.99 when I could instead spend that money on a fund toward my next colonoscopy. But since Episode 5 of Halo was allegedly the one in which the super cool new ultra-Halo-like battle scene that was the best bit of action Halo action ever since "Landfall" in 2007 would be featured, I decided to give the show one last try.

It should be noted that it's no surprise the series' second action scene takes place on the fifth episode, right as the time for resubscription arrives. Not because the writers need to create a dramatic story, not because they're adhering to strict plot structure, but because they wanted to con you out of your subscription money and knew well that action was the only thing anyone cared about in a Halo series.

What a Boring Turd

I stepped in puppy fecal matter this morning with my bare feet and it was still more enjoyable than watching this episode. This week, Kwan is handcuffed to a motorcycle and does random boring shit. John Halo (otherwise known as Master Cheeks, but definitely not Master Chief), explores his past that no one cares about. I explored my FireTV's fastforward function and skipped most of everything leading up to the action sequence, and I was still so bored that I wanted to be blown to pieces by a needler.

This episode is only ~35 minutes long. The writers couldn't even stretch it out to an hour. And it was still so boring I couldn't finish it; I turned it off before the end.

So How About That Fight Sequence?

The real reason I felt compelled to make this post, though, is because I'm annoyed at how completely, totally, utterly terrible the action in this series is.

In the first episode, I complained that the fight sequence was lazily done. Nothing made sense. Where was the air support? Why were there only Elites? Where were the other marines? Why did the Covenant barge in through the front door? Why do weapons wielded by Spartans kill Elites instantly while the exact same weapons wielded by insurrections do nothing at all?

The filmmaking is lazy. All the work has been done in post. It feels like the crew showed up, got a bunch of coverage, then an editor assembled something that more or less makes sense in post. I'm not even convinced this--and now the next fight sequence--were written into a teleplay. They do not feel like they were. They come off as completely improvised.

This second 'battle' is even worse.

Yes, so now we have Grunts and Jackals and even a Brute, plus our first Banshees. Unfortunately this all happens just like the first episode.

I'm glad there are ships in the atmosphere now and planes (or Banshees) in the sky.

That's where my praise ends.

Just like last time, this battle, in this grand sci-fi setting, takes place in...a quarry? Everything is conveniently contained within this...quarry. No one puts Jackal snipers along the ridge of the quarry; that would be out-of-bounds.

Cortana tells us, "Slipspace rupture, near Io!" (or something). Then literally one quarter of a second later, Banshees are everywhere. These Banshees apparently scrambled instantaneously. Then a Corvette, or something that looks like a Corvette, appears in the sky. There's no warp effect, it just appears like magic, like it popped in due to an error in asset loading. It immediately drops pods (see above) full of Grunts and Jackals, and a big dumb battle, all conveniently within the same quarry, takes place.

No one takes any cover. No one does anything interesting. The two sides shoot at each other. A Jackal with an energy sword kills some guys, which is sort of cool.

Note that this is our first time in this series EVER seeing Grunts or Jackals. EVER. We've never had any hint of their existences until now. So how are they introduced?

They aren't. They drop in, the fighting starts. There is no introduction. No reveal of Grunts. No exciting moment where the smoke clears and we see the true might of the Covenant. These other aliens are thrown at us with no sense of cinematic excitement, in the blandest way possible. No thought or effort was put into this. Someone wrote in a screenplay:

EXT. QUARRY

The TRUTH AND RECONCILLIATION warps into the atmosphere. It drops pods. The pods land. GRUNTS and JACKALS come out. They fight the MARINES.

CUT TO:

This problem, and the fundamental problem of this sequence, is that there is no narrative. From whose Point of View are we experiencing the action? In whose perspective are we grounded?

The answer is literally no one. The camera flies around and cuts with abandon. We go back and forth seemingly at random. We see things from Halsey's PoV, then Dr. Miranda's, then Captain Keyes, then Chief, then Kai, then random Marines, then Grunts, then back to Marines, then over to John Halo, then to Halsey again...

We can, if the writers so choose, swap between the perspectives of the various characters within a given action sequence. Our grounding PoV doesn't even need to be a person; it can be a place. But we cannot change perspective within the course of a single scene. We need to finish with John Halo, then go to Halsey; finish with Halsey, then go to Keyes; etc. Instead, the cutting has no sense at all. There is nothing concrete about the world we're placed in. It's information thrown at us without being decoded. It's just shit. Random bullshit happens with no explanation. When we finally dig into a fight between Tartarus and John Halo, Tartarus wins because he has to, then the UNSC ship explodes because it has to, and we never have any real understanding of why things are happening the way they are.

Fight sequences are complicated. We need relatable goals and directed action. The best they come up with here is...defend the thing, which I guess we care about because it's a thing, and help Kai, who's terminally retarded.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl has been on my mind as I watch the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard trial. I want you to compare what we saw this week with this action sequence, where The Interceptor and The Black Pearl come broadside-to-broadside. In this sequence, we receive establishing shots of the broadside action. Then we cut to individual characters that we know and care about and watch their reactions to that fight as a whole. We see both sides--but one at a time. We know what each side wants. We know everyone's objectives. The rhythm is up and down: the music roars one second, falls the next.

But the biggest difference between these two sequences is that in Pirates we know what we're fighting over. We know the play area: the two ships. It makes perfect sense. It's diegetically justified. In Halo, what even is happening? No one takes cover. I don't know where people are relative to each other. I don't know why the sides are where they are. When we cut to a different perspective, I don't know why, and I don't know what this person is trying to accomplish, and I don't know where we are.

I understand that Orlando Bloom is going into the hold of The Interceptor looking for the medallion which Elizabeth lost. We only see seconds of his searching, but I know what he wants. What the fuck does Halsey want in this action scene in Episode 5? What's Keyes doing? It's just, at best, fighting, because bad guys bad, good guys good.

It isn't fair to compare these two scenes. One is the best adventure movie ever made; the other is diarrhea. The score alone changes everything. But the point I want to make is that the real reason Halo's action sucks is a problem of screenwriting. These action scenes were not written. Just like the first episode--more so, in fact--this entire sequence watches not like a battle from a film, but like a film crew went out to a quarry, got some shots, then the post team figured it all out. There is no writing here. I'd be fascinated to read the teleplay for this episode, because it might not even be thirty pages long.

So Anyway

I hate Halo. I turned it off when they sent town the blonde lesbian with the alien kink to pretend to be a refugee, even though she looked perfectly manicured. This is just too stupid to endure. I won't turn it back on. For real this time.

But I might go watch all the Pirates movies. Even the really bad ones.