Reading a Halo novel made me realize that the act of reading anything isn't necessarily better than watching tv.

I've been reading a book called Halo: The Fall of Reach. The reason I was reading it was that I was a fan of the now canceled series on Paramount + of the same name minus "The Fall of Reach." There are a few similarities between what we saw in the series, and what we got on Paramount +.  But the big ideas that are present in The Fall of Reach would have been super costly to pull off (I think) in a television series, and the series looked really good. The fight scenes were fantastic. But the space opera like space battles would have taken a Star Wars level budget, and I don't know if that was ever possible for this television show.

As I was reading the book, I kept thinking: have I ever picked up a book that basically explained exactly what it was in the title? I mean...it's about the fall of Reach to the Covenant, who are these super advanced aliens pushing humans to the brink of extinction. "Reach" is a critical planet in the human civilization, protected by all of the human forces, and housing humanity's most important shipyard facilities. The destruction of Reach is a terrible thing. But usually, in a title, it isn't so obvious, right? It would be like naming Return of the Jedi to The Emperor Dies in the End. That just seems kind of...I dunno...a bit "spoiler-iffic?" But what do I know?

The book itself is decent entertainment. It's a consumable for fans of the franchise. But it isn't high literature. Aside from telling you exactly what it is in the title, it seeks to introduce characters like John a.k.a. "The Master Chief" and "Kelly" (these two are both Spartans) and some military brass who you end up liking because they are very clever, and then a doctor named "Halsey" who is also clever if not a bit unscrupulous. None of the characters are ones you can really like, because they don't have much of a personality. However, they do kick ass and take names repeatedly, which I suppose is what you expect from the Halo franchise. And when you frame your story against the high stakes of Armageddon for humanity, does personality really count? All that matters is that you are good at your job. And there is some deep satisfaction at watching people who are good at their job just go to work.

I do have some criticisms in the reading of the book, though. All of the chapter heads have an official "date" thing and time of events printed in courier font to make it look like someone typed them as official orders, or record-keeping. These things added nothing to the read. But, I get it. The nerds who love Halo want to feel like this world of military "super people" is real. It just got a little bit annoying to slow down and commit to memory when (in the Halo timeline) the last chapter started so that you could say, "Oh, this is just a few hours more" or "wow, this is three years later--I guess nothing happened in that three years except military training." 

And there's also the obvious need to keep these books clean of sexual details and other kinds of things because the audience for the books dovetails to the younger side. The way you write books and stories like that is you provide tons of high stakes combat so that there isn't time to get to know anyone. To quote Jesse "The Body" Ventura in the old movie called Predator, this is the "I ain't got time to bleed" moments of storytelling.

So you have all of these characters with the bodies of Olympians and yet they don't have any sex, don't have any relationships, and don't do anything because they are always fighting. It would seem silly to ask: why are you always fighting? When it is clear that the reason for all of the fighting is that humanity has been pushed to the brink. Duh? Don't you get that? Geez... I find some of this as a convenient excuse for a writer to not have to invest anything in the characters other than "they are kick ass" and I'm going to write the ways in which "they kick ass."

Maybe I wouldn't notice these things if I hadn't gotten old. But who knows? I see a lot these days that makes it harder for a person to suspend disbelief. However, after having read The Fall of Reach, I think I'm more convinced than ever that books aren't a sacred thing. There's this oft repeated mantra that I've run into over the years where someone says, "Any reading is great. That person is at least reading." I disagree.

I literally see no difference in educational content to the pulp fiction of The Fall of Reach to any one of the many Star Wars series on Disney +. Sure, there are no moving pictures, and this kind of book may "stimulate your imagination." But any other benefits you might get from books is woefully absent here. Even Halo's satirical message of fascism buried behind patriotism doesn't seem to translate well unless you realize that "authoritarian rule bad!" and know what to look for. But it certainly doesn't come across as bad. Rather, it seems to come across as desirable. It is entertaining, and it does scratch a kind of itch. Maybe in the end all that matters is that we enjoyed ourselves on empty calories.

I hope that Halo gets renewed on Paramount + for a third season.

I never played the HALO games that were kind of ubiquitous with Microsoft's XBox ever since it was launched a few decades ago (boy that makes me feel a bit old). I remember saving up money for my original XBox and being excited that "Microsoft was going to make a console." Anyway, having not played HALO but being a little familiar with the intellectual property, because I had friends who played, made me very interested in watching the show on Paramount +. 

I thought that the first season was really good science fiction, unraveling a mystery about an object that was genetically connected to two human-like individuals. It also introduced us to a race of brutal space-faring monsters called "The Covenant" who are nothing less than spectacular in their efficiency and strength. It is difficult to find any sympathy at all with the Covenant due to this fact, which I think is the point since the human characters are the ones the story definitely wants you (as a viewer) to feel sympathetic toward. The human characters consistently show empathy, camaraderie, and are thrust into high-stakes situations which look impressive, keep you on the edge of your seat, and pretty much demand that you root for the underdog (the humans). By contrast, the Covenant members we've seen so far just hit really hard and are extremely difficult to kill. They are fast, lethal, and there hasn't been one yet that has shown even a shred of decency and empathy. I think their very name is supposed to conjure fear (and it does do this), because you know that beating them is almost impossible.

Amidst all of this are the Spartans, who are genetically enhanced superhumans wearing armor that takes them from an "already mythical" status and raises them to the level of a demigod among normal humans. They are Nietzsche's Übermensch, who by merely existing to make war on the Covenant, give all humanity a profound meaning for their existence in a fight against a common foe. Watching the Spartans engage the Covenant on screen is as incredible as it was watching Jedi's fight with lightsabers when I was a little kid, or like watching superheroes punch each other in any kind of Zach Snyder fight scene. They just come across as so strong. But the writers of the material know that they can't have too many of these Spartans around or then the Covenant doesn't seem nearly as threatening. So they know to keep the numbers low on these specialized forces so that only a few of them can exist at a time, and thus humanity is consistently on the defensive against the creatures that the Covenant uses against them.

I definitely understand the appeal. I guess that in the game version of HALO, you never get to see Chief's face. This is what we call a "character sleeve" in fiction. It allows the player to insert themselves into the story. It does a neat little trick by allowing the player to envision themselves as having all the power of this superhuman at their fingertips. And all the killing that's done on screen doesn't matter because the Covenant "had it coming" due to their no mercy tactics and lack of any version of human empathy or pity for the weak.

I actually love that they decided to remove the helmet for this adaptation of HALO (which hasn't been popular with the video gamers who are watching the show) mostly because I wanted to relate to the character of the Master Chief, and I wanted to see just how human he is. Those are the kinds of characters I can sink my brain into, and in this aspect, the Master Chief is an excellent protagonist. Yeah he's as strong as ten silverback gorillas put together. But he also is really astute, has empathy, good judgment, and good character. In many situations, he might be considered a Mary Sue. However, he falls short of this in that the writers do have him get beat up and smacked around a lot to remind us that he isn't invulnerable and that he isn't a deus ex machina.

The second season is much stronger than the first. I was entertained in every single episode, and I looked forward to the next, and I hope that it gets renewed for a season 3. Supposedly, it is getting a lot of views on Paramount +, so the chances are good that it will be renewed (but streaming is also rather weird when it comes to what gets canceled and what gets renewed). Have any of you bothered to check it out on Paramount +? If so, what did you think?

I was surprised at how good the HALO series was on Paramount +.

I never played the HALO games that Microsoft put out, but I had plenty of friends who did. When the HALO show premiered on Paramount + earlier this year, despite my lack of familiarity with controlling Master Chief, I was excited to watch the show. I finally got around to finishing it this last weekend, and it didn't disappoint.

In reflecting on these nine episodes, I think I can say that HALO was a surprising show in that it had a lot of roles with diversity and handled them really well. This wasn't a clumsy or ham-fisted adaptation with little disregard done to racial casting. Every role seemed to have as much weight as the Master Chief himself. And each was given enough dialogue and enough screen time to warrant the investment of talented actors who seemed to take their roles seriously enough that I was immersed almost constantly while watching. In particular, I really enjoyed actress Yerin Ha's role in Kwan Ha, the only survivor of a Covenant-led attack that murdered her clan on the planet of Madrigal. Her story arc was really interesting, and shone just as brightly as the one led by the Master Chief.

I think that I'm glad I never played the video game, and thus was unfamiliar with the story going into this show. On the surface, it's a diamond in the rough, offering a lot of promise in many of its scenes (the one showing a ring-world of some kind in dreamscape-like sequences hint at some pretty high science fiction that may be coming down the pipe). I'm now on board with these characters, and I'm invested in whatever goes down with them. I actually cared that a Spartan was in danger. One thing that gave me a chuckle was watching John's bored face while watching for Kai to show up after the spaceship crash. That said to me that John knows an exploding starship is like a mosquito bite for a Spartan. In the end, I think the only thing that scares them are "feelings."

I was also impressed with the villainy of Dr. Halsey. In this show, the crime that she commits is one of the most horrific I've ever heard of in a story. Here's what it is in a nutshell: to create the Spartan program, she selected kids that were about six years old and targeted them for kidnappings. Then she cloned those kids (once they were kidnapped) and returned the clones to the parents. These "fake" kids would then (within days) hemorrhage blood and go into unexplained seizures and die, leaving the parents to mourn for their children while she kept the real ones for training to be Spartans. I was like...oh my god...that's so evil! I mean...it's like next level evil. Like Dr. Mengele evil (real-life former Nazi doctor). I wonder how she's going to outdo herself in season 2. Maybe she will just kill millions of people or something like that, and justify it to herself as "saving billions." What a monster.

Additionally, I learned just yesterday that it has been renewed for season 2. I can't wait.

Did anyone else watch HALO, or are you in the process of watching it? If so, what did you think?

The Halo pilot on Paramount + was pretty good.

I watched the pilot of HALO on Friday evening on Paramount + (a streaming service formerly known as CBS All Access). I did like it quite a bit, even if the action was a bit "floaty" at times with some questionable computer-aided imagery thrown into the mix. I never played the game, so I had no idea what to expect aside from the fact that the Spartan skin-hugging armor that Master Chief wears has become ubiquitous as "cool" in nearly all speculative fiction stories from the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers to Iron Man to G.I. Joe.

And G.I. Joe via Snake Eyes kind of established the "modern" ninja look (which we've also seen done in video games like Mortal Combat and Crysis). In other words, it's not much of a stretch to say that Master Chief's armor in HALO is "Japanese "inspired." Anyway, because I knew that this thing was being adapted from a video game, I wanted violence, and the show did not disappoint. It became pretty clear that this was going to be a war of some kind on an interstellar scale, pitting humanity against genocidal aliens. This isn't exactly a new trope, as we've seen it in all kinds of stories. One that comes to mind right off the bat is Old Man's War by John Scalzi. To state it another way, the Covenant weapons were extremely brutal just causing people that got hit by their ammunition to explode violently (or die in some other horrible manner).

If you don't know what I'm talking about, the Covenant is the alien species that seems to be the big antagonist in the show. The pilot shows them wielding fantastical technology and displaying some kind of religious reverence for an artifact (I have no idea what this thing is). But when Master Chief touches the artifact, it seems to reprogram his brain so that he now has empathy (which I guess is bad for a super soldier). As far as the set pieces go, I really miss the cinematic quality of Star Trek: Discovery, which must command a much higher budget than HALO. I mean...it's pretty obvious. Everything looks too plastic and clean. The costuming is not all that good. And when we saw the aliens, it made me wish the Henson company was called in to do puppet work for close-ups, because there was just something missing. However, I still liked it. As far as pilots go, it was good.

Another thing I got from the pilot episode is that the UNSC seems to be an organization that is interested in doing the right thing, but only when it suits them. Additionally, what's going on with the Spartans (the elite warriors like Master Chief) seem to all be brainwashed so that they would be good at killing everything that the UNSC saw as a threat. So at first blush, it also seems to be a story of a military dystopia kinda like Starship Troopers. 

Anyway, those are my first impressions of the show. Did anyone else watch? If so, did it meet your expectations or did it disappoint? One last fact that surprised me...the executive producer of the show is Steven Spielberg. With his name attached, I'm honestly surprised that the pilot didn't look more polished.

The trailer for the HALO series has me convinced that the March debut will knock it out of the park.

The new trailer for HALO dropped this last week. I was never a player of the games, but I watched some friends play. As a first-person shooter, I was intrigued. And I also liked the sci-fi armor suit, which has been a staple of science fiction for twenty-five years, and before that a staple of comic book type stories.

I expect that people will draw comparisons with Arcane from League of Legends, which really knocked it out of the park as far as a video game adaptation goes. However, the track record on video game adaptations to this point has been bad. I'm sure that going into this thing, which premieres in March of 2022, there will be plenty of people posting the equivalent of, "I hope the writing is not garbage." This is a peculiar comment to me, mostly because I know what goes into writing. And I've never been impressed with most video game writing. What I saw of HALO didn't qualify as good either. So it's weird that people used to consuming such low-hanging fruit would suddenly feel compelled to raise the bar on the writing now that it's getting a live-action adaptation. It's as if the old spoon-fed garbage they consumed for hours is suddenly not worth their time if there is no game attached. (Shrug) I just notice these things; I can't say that I've ever understood them.

That being said, the trailer (which is embedded below) does look good. I like that there is a "Cortana" as the friendly artificial intelligence. It reminds me that this whole thing is a Microsoft property, and why they named their Windows assistant "Cortana." There is also a rumor that they spent $200 million on the first season of this thing, so it may be a pretty spectacular first season. Paramount + (thus far) has been worth every penny I've spent on it since first signing up to watch Star Trek: Discovery, and I'm looking forward to a second sci-fi franchise with now baited breath. Anyone else have any opinions on Halo?