Movie Review: HALO Nightfall (2014) *Spoilers*

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Taking place between the events of HALO 4 and this December’s HALO 5: Guardians, HALO: Nightfall offers fans a feature-length look at one of the main characters for Halo 5: Locke (Mike Colter) an ONI Agent who teams with a group of UNSC troops lead by ex-Spartan Aiken (Steven Waddington) to investigate what seems to be a biological attack by the Covenant.

HALO: Nightfall

Now, either you understood all that in the intro or your eyes have glazed over and are looking at the pretty pictures.  The HALO Universe may not be as deep as Star Trek and Star Wars, but give it time and it may get there.


HALO: Nightfall (the first – and best – ) episode of the five that comprise the feature was made for The HALO Channel on Xbox One.  Yes.  HALO has a channel.  For fans who don’t have the One, I wouldn’t worry.  This will be on Blu Ray in a blink.  After the biological attack on the UNSC world (good guys), ONI (good guys in the way the CIA is good) trace the elements that comprised the bomb back to the ruins of the original HALO ring from the first game.  Locke joins Aiken and his squad to land on the ruins of the ring, where the temperatures vary wildly day- to-night.

Have you seen Aliens?  Excellent.  We’re done summarizing the plot.


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What was good?  Playing in this sandbox is a treat (though I would recommend the far superior HALO: Forward Unto Dawn)  and it again brings up the baffling question of why there isn’t a HALO feature film to put a capstone on the canon and move this universe mainstream?  You could sink $500 million into it and if you actually spent a good portion of that on the script, you’d quintuple your investment.  I know Steven Spielberg is working on the Showtime series, but that’s not where HALO belongs.  It was made for IMAX screens and glorious space battles.

The cinematography of the film was quite nice for what was essentially a TV movie and you get a chance to check out Marvel’s new Luke Cage.  Locke (Mike Colter) has been cast  in the second of the four Netflix series that will begin this year with Daredevil.  He certainly looks the part, but it’s difficult to judge his acting skills because the script is painful.


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What’s not good?  It’s the plot of Aliens.  With dialogue you could hammer together on a Speak ‘n Spell.  Couldn’t tell you another character a day after watching the movie aside from Aiken and Locke.  The money was clearly pumped in to the F/X and script and score (which is so annoying people in the other room were asking what that noise was?) got stinted.

HALO has so much potential and is in no danger whatsoever of burning out.  I’d just like to see how glorious a full-throttle motion picture could be.  This, this is just a hint of a hint.
5.0/10

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