Halo: The Fall of Reach

In the far future, Humanity has encountered a foe that seeks its utter destruction: The Covenant.  Conventional weapons are useless against the might of this Alien conglomerate and it seems Humanities end is inevitable.  One lone scientist, Doctor Catherine Halsey, has been preparing for this possible threat.  Gathering a group of children, Halsey begins readying these youth for all combat imaginable.  Changing them, molding them, Halsey creates the perfect soldier: the Spartans.  One of these Spartans will find his name placed firmly in the pages of history.  This is the story of the beginning of the Spartan known as John 117…better known as “The Master Chief”.

Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund is one of my favorite Halo novels of all time.  Every page is epic and it felt like a great origin story for the Chief.  By the time I finished the book, I wanted to play the actual Battle of Reach in a video game one day (a wish mostly granted in 2010 with Halo Reach).  Still, a Fall of Reach movie isn’t a possibility I would rule out, it wouldn’t be a bad way to show off all of the novels awesome imagery and epic majesty.  The actual film we got…is pretty far from that.

It’s hard to pick where to start with this one but I guess it all blends together in the end.  First off, the title is misleading.  This isn’t “The Fall of Reach” rather it’s the “Origin of the Master Chief”, which is basically the first half of the novel.  The film covers the conscription of the Spartan II’s and ends just after their first mission against the Covenant in their new Mjolnir Spartan Armor.  I remember looking at the films timeline and briefly praised it for cramming in so much in such a short amount of time…only to realize that we weren’t going to get the whole package before the movie was over.  Why bother titling the movie after the novel that inspired it when you aren’t going to commit to telling the whole story?  There isn’t even a “Part 1” added to the title, so I guess this is all the filmmakers were ever going to tell and that’s all.  That’s pretty upsetting if you ask me, especially if you’ve waited forever to see the Chief and his old team square off with the Covenant as their home burns around them.

The theres the animation.  Yeeesh this is just cringe worthy.  When the Spartans are in their armor and moving around, it isn’t too bad.  But every human model looks like a soulless mannequin with very few facial expressions that match the rather decent vocal performances being matched to them.  I wonder if this artstyle could have worked if this was a motion comic instead of a movie.  For the actual film, it’s a definite turn off.  That’s a shame because the voice acting in The Fall of Reach is actually pretty good.  The main cast really sells the bonds of family built between John and the original Spartan Blue Team and you feel for them when they lose friends along the way.  We also get some nice universal connective tissue bringing in Jen Taylor to reprise the role of Catherine Halsey from the video games, as well as a small cameo by the present day Master Chief, voiced by his OG actor Steve Downes.  So I guess it’s good the production got one half of the character work right.  It’s just a shame the actors had to do all of the hard work getting you to feel for these character designs when the animators did such a poor job giving these models a soul.

Halo: The Fall of Reach is a film I think only die hard fans of the series might have to see.  The sad thing is, if this had a different title and much, much better animation, it could stand alongside other Halo features like Halo Legends and Halo 4: Forward Until Dawn (in the end, the voice acting and the music are the movies only saving graces).  As it is though, The Fall of Reach only does partial justice to the story that inspired it and I think the staff should have committed to telling the full origin in its entirety rather than throwing in the towel midway through and leaving one of Halo’s greatest stories left unfinished. 

3/10