On March 14th, 2001, I went down to my local Game Station (UK video game chain) and picked up my Xbox along with Halo: Combat Evolved, Dead or Alive 3, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. I am trying to let you know that I have been a Halo fan since day one and it is one of my all-time favorite video game series. And I was actually quite excited when I heard that a Halo TV series was coming.
How to Download Halo (TV series)
You can download or stream the film from Paramount+. Click on the Download button at the end of this review. Check out also our reviews of Halo Infinite and Halo 5: Guardians.
The Movie Review
To me, the story of Master Chief and humanity trying to fight off the forces of The Covenant is the perfect material for a movie or a TV series. I greatly enjoyed the expanded Halo universe material which has been released over the years and I thought that there was no way you could mess this up.
Boy, was I wrong, right now I am going to say that for me, Halo is one of the worst video game adaptations I have ever seen. This is coming from someone that paid to see the Super Mario Bros movie in a theatre in the 90s! As I started to hear more and more about this before it dropped, I started to get nervous, but I had no idea it would be this bad.
The idea of humanity being at war with the alien race known as The Covenant is still front and center here. We still have Master Chief; we still have Cortana and there are many other things from the games that are here. However, Halo the TV series is very much its own take on this story, hell, the people behind it have stated this and it is its own “silver timeline” which from what I gather is an excuse for them to do whatever they want with it.
To be fair, the special effects of the show are good and if you came into this with zero knowledge of the Halo franchise, you may think it is a decent sci-fi TV show. I did also like the casting of Natascha McElhone as Cortana and felt she was the best thing about the show. Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief though was just straight up terrible, this is not a good representation of Master Chief at all.
I am really struggling to say anything positive about the show. No way am I giving season 2 the time of day! I just do not see any way to turn this thing around. Perhaps with this being so bad and not being well received by the fans of the games. It may make someone want to make a more faithful adaptation in the future. Oh, I just remember, they do not even use the iconic Halo music in the game either.
Another annoying thing about this is that I had zero interest in signing up for Paramount +, but I did just to watch this and I ended up having to pay for a month to see it all! I tell you; I do not think I have felt as ripped off paying for a movie or some other kind of media as I did with Halo the TV series! If you are a fan of the games and still have not seen this, do yourself a favor and do not bother, you will not like it!
