This is a short movie/series so ill keep the review short as well, or maybe i wont.
I was expecting a book adaptation like any other, with some scenes missing and so forth... but what i got was even worse. (i have read Fall of Reach multiple times) The reason why i think its worth solid 5 is because the story of Chief is followed to the letter... which is good, but some details are outright wrong and completely opposite of the book.
Before I go into the story details, let me just say that the animation was fine... visuals were okay... it was unique style, might have been cheaper production wise like people say... I didn't find any significant complaints in the animation, could have been better of course but it was good enough. Reminds me of those other Halo Waypoint-series's which are done in similar fashion.
However the main issue that this movie has (i own the blu-ray) is the story details. Multiple scenes were outright weird and did not belong... they had already been described in the book, so why not use that description and make it look like it? Instead it looks like that they didn't bother... just slapped something similar to get it over with.
Some of those details can be overlooked because they are merely formalities like the way the kids dispatched the 2 soldiers during their training, in the book they beat up the last one of them instead of merely throwing a few rocks and stand around him... that was supposed to look like a pack of wolves taking down larger prey. However i can forgive that... maybe they threw the rocks so hard they didn't need to beat him anymore. Moving along... The details that i could not forgive were scenes like when the kids were first time introduced to their new place and told what they were gonna be... nobody tried to leave, it seemed like they didn't care... 6 year old kids would care and they would want to get back to their parents (like in the book...), but there was not a single bit of reluctance visible during that introduction.
The next scene i found unacceptably wrong was the Mjolnir-armor suit up... that was the first armor suit the Spartans were going to use... they were supposed to look exactly the same, but somehow... someway.. they all had unique helmets. WHAT!. Correct me if I'm wrong but in general only Halsey was able to distinguish Spartans from each other while they were suited up... well, i guess every officer in the UNSC is too stupid to notice that they all had UNIQUE helmets to further make themselves distinguishable...duh.
Okay the last scene i found disturbingly out of place was the first fight against a covenant ship... in the book the UNSC ship was like 3 times more massive than the covenant ship, and thus they thought it wasn't a threat... but its plasma weapons did far more damage to the unsc ship than they expected and it had energy shielding, on such a small ship! SURPRISE FACTOR!. But in this adaptation... what the heck, the covenant ship was like 10 times bigger than the UNSC ship. The superiority of covenant ship-technology was immediately made insignificant because their ship was so much bigger.
The whole point of Halo story - Human-Covenant War - has been the humanity's struggle to survive against overwhelming technological superiority. This movie forgot that.
If the major wrongness's were fixed... i would give this movie 7/10, if it was exactly as accurate as the book it would get 8.5/10. The Animation only takes 2 points in my book... it was good enough for me. The dozens of minor plot-changes and the few major ones took the rest... so i will end up with 5/10.
In reality i should give 4/10 but i love halo so i want to give it 5/10... pity point i guess.
I was expecting a book adaptation like any other, with some scenes missing and so forth... but what i got was even worse. (i have read Fall of Reach multiple times) The reason why i think its worth solid 5 is because the story of Chief is followed to the letter... which is good, but some details are outright wrong and completely opposite of the book.
Before I go into the story details, let me just say that the animation was fine... visuals were okay... it was unique style, might have been cheaper production wise like people say... I didn't find any significant complaints in the animation, could have been better of course but it was good enough. Reminds me of those other Halo Waypoint-series's which are done in similar fashion.
However the main issue that this movie has (i own the blu-ray) is the story details. Multiple scenes were outright weird and did not belong... they had already been described in the book, so why not use that description and make it look like it? Instead it looks like that they didn't bother... just slapped something similar to get it over with.
Some of those details can be overlooked because they are merely formalities like the way the kids dispatched the 2 soldiers during their training, in the book they beat up the last one of them instead of merely throwing a few rocks and stand around him... that was supposed to look like a pack of wolves taking down larger prey. However i can forgive that... maybe they threw the rocks so hard they didn't need to beat him anymore. Moving along... The details that i could not forgive were scenes like when the kids were first time introduced to their new place and told what they were gonna be... nobody tried to leave, it seemed like they didn't care... 6 year old kids would care and they would want to get back to their parents (like in the book...), but there was not a single bit of reluctance visible during that introduction.
The next scene i found unacceptably wrong was the Mjolnir-armor suit up... that was the first armor suit the Spartans were going to use... they were supposed to look exactly the same, but somehow... someway.. they all had unique helmets. WHAT!. Correct me if I'm wrong but in general only Halsey was able to distinguish Spartans from each other while they were suited up... well, i guess every officer in the UNSC is too stupid to notice that they all had UNIQUE helmets to further make themselves distinguishable...duh.
Okay the last scene i found disturbingly out of place was the first fight against a covenant ship... in the book the UNSC ship was like 3 times more massive than the covenant ship, and thus they thought it wasn't a threat... but its plasma weapons did far more damage to the unsc ship than they expected and it had energy shielding, on such a small ship! SURPRISE FACTOR!. But in this adaptation... what the heck, the covenant ship was like 10 times bigger than the UNSC ship. The superiority of covenant ship-technology was immediately made insignificant because their ship was so much bigger.
The whole point of Halo story - Human-Covenant War - has been the humanity's struggle to survive against overwhelming technological superiority. This movie forgot that.
If the major wrongness's were fixed... i would give this movie 7/10, if it was exactly as accurate as the book it would get 8.5/10. The Animation only takes 2 points in my book... it was good enough for me. The dozens of minor plot-changes and the few major ones took the rest... so i will end up with 5/10.
In reality i should give 4/10 but i love halo so i want to give it 5/10... pity point i guess.