I'm half an hour into this. Why is it focused on some whiny kids that I have no reason to care about? Why is the military training 14 year olds to be officers? Are they trying to be Ender's Game?
Last Halo game I played was 2. Don't know why Master Chief is floating around in space or why Cortana is freaking out.
Alright finished watching it.
So ignoring the majority of the stupid crap (annoying whiny kid would've been court-martialed long before for disobeying orders and then assaulting another cadet) and skipping to the ending (ugh shaky cam). An alien invasion was able to wipe out the inhabitants of an entire planet in minutes; but they weren't able to kill a couple of kids in a car? Then they also weren't able to shoot down a slow moving drop ship with all of their technologically advanced war ships?
I can only suspend my disbelief so much, movie.
Dear movie makers, having kids try to act like adults is just a bad idea all around. Stop it.
1. There was no need to court marshal the kids. They were in an Academy school, not the actual military.
2. To me, it looked like the drop ships were literally dropping from the sky, not slow moving as you stated. How much faster were you looking for? Speed of light, because that would be more believable?
3. The kids weren't acting like adults. They were acting like scared kids, and trying to survive certain death. Should they have just wept in the corner, because that would have been a fun movie?
I'm actually with you on much of that, amkus. Not court martialed but he should have been ejected from the academy on the spot, high ranking mother or not. (we of course got to see later how a kid using their 'high-ranking parent' to get what she wanted got her)Disobeying orders especially in a combat situation, that's generally considered by any military (or military academy) as serious sh--.
I think too much of this movie was spent on scenes of this kid going through long minutes of introspection. After the first few times I had pretty much gotten the gist of it, that he's conflicted and anguished inside over his anti-war sentiments vs what happened to his brother. We get it already! Yet the movie just had to keep on wasting time with it over and over. Thank God for >>>FFWD on the PVR.
Shaky cam shots I can live with, it's the rapid-fast switching of camera shots that I've come to loathe, in this and in so many other of today's TV series' and movies. It's like directors and producers think the entire world suffers from ADD or something. Having 15-20 rapidfast camera shots in the span of as many seconds gives me a headache after a while.
Other than all that I enjoyed this instalment. Nice to see them stay true to the game in so many ways... voices (MC, Cortana, etc), varieties of Covenant, various weapons, ships, armor, the warthog, etc. Acting was decent.
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Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! THIS IS THE WAR ROOM!
"It's like directors think we have ADD"....
"Had to keep showing the kids introspection.... Thank god for fast forward"
Quotes aren't exact but they're pretty close. Also, they're contradictory. You couldn't stand them building the relationship with his brother because you "got it" after the the second time? One of the videos wasn't even being watched by him. Then it gets to the action and you complain the directors think you have ADD- kind of ironic for someone who has to FFWD through slow parts of the movie.
If you play Halo 3 (and maybe the beginning of 4) the Cortana/Chief thing will make more sense. Or maybe you can just watch the cutscenes from the game.
In response to your other points, I think having read up on some of the other Halo novels would help your understanding of this as well. The situation in the galaxy was pretty grim at that time. Humans had formed the United Earth Government, and out of that had come the United Nations Space Command (UNSC). Other humans on other systems who didn't want to be part of the UEG had formed an armed insurrection and were hitting other civilian targets to try to break away. It turned into a bloody conflict, which is why the SPARTANs (including Master Chief) were originally created. Possibly because of the success of the SPARTAN program, which involved kidnapping kids around the ages of 5 or 6 and training them to become super soldiers, the UNSC decided to start up its military academies to bolster their officer ranks early, rather than waiting until they're in their 20s and 30s the way they do today.
And to the point of court martialling Lasky, he's a student, not a soldier. They're trying to train him, and that doesn't necessarily mean a court martial for a fight. When I was at basic training we had people who would disobey their squad leaders' orders (the squad leaders were other soldiers in training, like they were) and would get into fights, but the drill sergeants would usually use that as a teaching moment...often including some intense physical training...rather than say, "You're a bad egg, and you're outta here."
I'm sure it's a case of my experience informing my opinion, but I watched this and thought, "Yeah, I get it."
"Hey! If...if we had some rope, we could make a log bridge...if...if we had...some...logs."