They also seem to have invented an entirely new alien Covenant race just for this movie, and it seems the sole reason for this is so they could have a human actor in prosthetics playing an alien rather than using CGI for recognisable Covenant races. Just really basic things that highlight how limited the production values were. I also noticed there are no shadows or effects on the water from the Covenant drop ship as it flies over the lake. The Sangheli's movements are really cartoony and unrealistic. For some bizarre reason they didn't use motion capture for it, instead it is hand animated and it really, really shows. The opening sequence with a Sangheili (Elite, to all you Halo philistines :P ) looks really suspect. Physics I just leafed through when I was bored." had me rolling my eyes). There's also a few too many character cliches going on here - the plucky young 'rookie' who happens to be a borderline genius in both maths and physics but is nonetheless content to be a low level military grunt, is a little much (the line ".R-regional Nav. The supporting characters are largely uninteresting - I didn't care about a single one of them, so watching them drop like flies was not exactly engaging for me. It was a nice idea but it didn't really work. There's lots of long drawn out narration sequences where the narrator (one of the characters) drones on about 'god' and being a 'warrior' and some such nonsense.I mean, this takes up about 10 minutes of the movie altogether, and I personally don't feel it adds anything to it. Now, the bad stuff: the movie is far too slow, even the action scenes don't feel nearly as exciting as they should. So yeah, a story we've seen a thousand times before, but never in the Halo universe, so its addition is not unwelcome. The bulk of the movie is the characters being picked off one by one by these creatures whilst turning against each other as they realise only two of them will be able to make it off the Halo shard alive. To make matters worse, a sentient creature or creatures appears to be on the ring too, and seems bent on their destruction. Of course, once they land their method of evacuation is compromised and they are then stranded on this piece of the Halo ring with only 16 hours until they are all fried by the heat of the local sun. New character Locke is tasked with taking a team of marines as well as colonial officers to track down the source and destroy it. The story of Nightfall is really, really simple the Covenant Remnant (as they're now known) has got its hands on some element that is basically toxic to humans, and humans alone, that was presumably manufactured by the Forerunners, as its source is traced to a piece of the original Halo ring (yep, the one from the first game that Master Chief destroyed). What it does have is a sense of sombreness, what it means to be a soldier and all that jazz, a simple, focused story that admittedly we have all seen a thousand times before, but never in the Halo universe, and we get to see some live action Halo tropes with near-Hollywood production values (I'll explain why 'near' in bit). It's kind of doing its own thing in terms of tone, which is fine to an extent. It's a little slow - slower than a live action Halo story should be, I fear, and it's also a little 'dull' - this doesn't have the same tone, feeling or atmosphere as any of the Halo games, or even any of the books. Let's all be real about this this is no 'Halo Movie' substitute, and it's not exactly going to blow anyone's mind. Halo: Nightfall has gotten some flak since its release in November, and some of it is justified.
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