Halo: Nightfall (2014)
Starring Steven Waddington, Siennah Buck, Mike Colter, Christian Contreras, Alexander Bhat, Luke Neal
SYNOPSIS:
While investigating terrorist activity on the distant colony world of Sedra, Jameson Locke and his team are caught in a horrific biological attack that exposes them to a much deeper danger.
Halo is easily one of the biggest franchises in gaming to date, with an epic story full of grandiose sic fi tropes and strong characters by the bowl full. So it was always going to be a difficult prospect to translate its story into a live action TV show. Forward Unto Dawn was the first attempt and despite some flaws it pretty much got the tone spot on and by choosing to focus on human characters rather than good old John Spartan aka Master Chief, a lot of that burden was lifted.
Fast forward to the announcement of the Xbox One console and we were shocked but excited to find out that Ridley Scott, or at the very least his production team, will be taking on a brand new series. Ridley Scott, Mr Sci-Fi himself, handling Halo? What more could fans ask for, right? No one could do a better job, and that this would no doubt be a masterpiece!
Well after months of mishandling the show’s release, with some of the main actors themselves not even sure how to view the final product, I’ve now had the chance to watch Nightfall to its conclusion – and I was left feeling just a bit disappointed. It’s not the worst series I’ve ever seen, but after all its build up and some of the names involved (including Prison Break’s Paul T. Scheuring and Battlestar Galactica’s Sergio Mimica-Gezzan), it’s just not what it could have been.
Set between the events of Halo 4 and 5, Nightfall shows us a peaceful earth that is finally safe from the Covenant, but tension is still palpable as the UNSC remains suspicious of the Covenant due to the increasing amount of illegal spying missions. The series kicks of with a team of ONI intelligent officers, led by Jameson Locke (Mike Colter) travelling to a small colony and becoming embroiled in a terrorist attack that leaves the planet infected with a virus that simply kills humans and humans alone. Forced to work together with the colony’s own guard including soldier Talitha Macer (Christina Chong) and the mysterious Colonel Aiken (Steven Waddington) the team must race against time to find a way of stopping the virus.
From the get go its clear that this is a more ambitious take on the Halo franchise than Forward Unto Dawn could have handled, with the games weapons, technology and costumes scattered all across the screen with an almost heavy hand. Unfortunately there are some incredible awkward CGI moments and an almost inconceivable lack of cohesion with the show’s own plot.
The first thing that irked me somewhat was during the initial terrorist attack. It’s peace time, so alien races and humans have integrated yet the only two we see, at all, are two villains who are up to no good. Now I could understand citizens’ lack of surprise to see these characters appear if the crowd was littered with a mixture of different races, in fact that would have brought the show to life a little bit more, but when one of them was an Elite Zealot, something that the cast kept repeating almost as if fans would fall of their chair with joy from hearing, I would expect at least a bit of fear to ripple through the crowd.
This 6 foot tall, poorly CGI modelled beast, clad in purple armour, looking like a Photoshop job from the game itself and wielding a huge gun, just casually strolled through a shopping centre with not a single person batting an eyelid, before dropping a bomb. That just didn’t sit right. This shaky CGI riddles the entire series, as the shows monsters and aliens just look dated and stick out.
The concept of an alien virus that only kills the human race is actually one that I enjoyed; it leaves so many options for the writers to spark up a war with the Covenant again while the human race is at its weakest, opening the show into a somewhat investigative drama with action at its core perhaps a bit like Fringe. Sadly however, almost as soon as we’re given this plot device, the show just disregards it completely.
Just over half an hour in and you’ll never hear of earths plight again. It’s not the end of the world however, as the series shifts focus onto the Halo Installation that was destroyed during Halo 3, and the team become stranded, with a short amount of time to find a means of escape before being fried by the sun’s rays. At this point the series takes a turn into a much more ‘survival horror’ theme which I thoroughly enjoyed the concept of, occasionally hitting some good beats and grim ways to die. Being eaten alive by a sea of worms on steroids is easily one of the worst and yet best to watch.
As the show goes on though, it becomes clearer and clearer that I just don’t care about any of the characters. Agent Locke is about as charismatic as a bowl of Shreddies, while much of his support cast are just as uninteresting. Locke has no story (at least in the show) worthy of note and his unflappable, best of the best character just leaves me cold. Okay he’s the best at his job, but no one really enjoys the unstoppable, golden boy hero. Give him an edge of darkness, make him break rules or at least go Shia LaBeouf and make him a bumbling good guy. Just something, anything!
The only character I fully got behind was Aiken (played by Steve Waddington), a former Spartan who was discharged before disappearing is suddenly in command of a small colonies armed forces. Tortured by the death of his daughter and bitter at the ass kicking earth received from the Covenant, he was forever going toe to toe with Locke and playing devils advocate with the surrounding cast. He was a great anti-hero who often was the only reason I pressed on with the show, full of blind rage and distrust at the treat, it’s simply a shame his character wasn’t delved into more.
It’s clear Agent Locke is the focus, simply because he’s inevitably going to become the games lead character, but forcing him into the lead role of this show just feels like a complete miss step. Given a bit more time to unravel his character, Aiken would have been a more suitable lead with perhaps some cameos from Locke to slowly ease him into the universe as opposed to being thrown in under the premise we all get behind him and believe that he is the new Master Chief.
Overall Halo: Nightfall is just an overblown, missed opportunity. The story has the ability to be an interesting one but is simply handled poorly, with its pacing just feeling completely off. With a cast of characters I couldn’t care less about, some really poor CGI and a criminal underuse of its assets, Nightfall is just another okay-ish sci fi web series that was clearly created to simply shoehorn Locke into the game’s lore. Nothing more.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Ben Rayner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONsp_bmDYXc&feature=player_embedded&list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
