HALO
LEGENDS (SINGLE-DISC EDITION) (2010)
Halo Legends (Single-Disc Edition) (2010)
Actors:
James Faulkner, Andy McAvin, Emily Neves, Deke Anderson, David Wald
Directors:
Daisuke Nishio, Frank O'Connor, Hideki Futamura, Hiroshi Yamazaki,
Koji Sawai
Format:
AC-3, Animated, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language:
English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Japanese (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles:
English, French, Spanish, Japanese
Region:
1 (U.S. and Canada only)
Aspect Ratio:
1.78:1
Number of discs:
1
Studio:
Warner Home Video
DVD Release Date:
February 16, 2010
Run Time:
120 minutes
Movie:
  
Disc:
 Remember
The Animatrix - that collection of several anime
shorts made to further "flesh" out the fictional universe of the
Matrix movies that went straight to DVD way
back then?
Well, Halo Legends follows the same formula.
It is a collection of seven short films set in the same
fictional universe of Microsoft's hugely popular
Halo science fiction
videogame.
The collection kicks off with Origins I & II,
which come across as one of those cut scenes you must sit through to get
the back-story to whichever videogame you're about to play. It's
annoyingly portentous and self-important in the way only anime and some
modern videogames can be. It's also set to a female voice-over designed to
lull the viewer to sleep . . .
"Should I be taking notes?" I thought to myself watching
this dry piece of future history about man colonizing the stars and
endlessly fighting alien races as well as themselves. Replace "Covenant"
with "Nazis" and you might as well be watching some dull history newsreel!
Things don't get much better with the next sequence, which had me going
"maybe if I knew the games better then all of this would mean something to
me!" The animation style used is also murky and it is difficult to follow
the action, which easily makes it the worst of all the segments contained
on the disc.
And that's the problem with Halo Legends really:
it is aimed squarely at die-hard Halo gamers and is almost
completely inaccessible to newbies. In that way Halo Legends reminded us
most of the recent meaningless and dull
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
movie, which didn't even please the fans it was aimed at. Unlike the
somewhat similar Dead Space: Downfall and
Resident Evil: Degeneration,
Halo Legends is for fans only.
However even long-time Halo fans on Amazon.com
admitted to being disappointed. Boring and uninspiring one calls them.
Uneven, says another. They are both right. The first three stories are
downright awful and the rest of the stories are only passable in
comparison. Best of them all is Odd One Out, a demented and
humorous episode which features kids and their pet Tyrannosaurus Rex
(don?t ask). It is a welcome respite from all the over-seriousness on
display.
WORTH IT? Things only improve with the second
batch of short films. Maybe you should skip the first handful of stories
if you're already familiar with the Halo universe.
RECOMMENDATION: For die-hard fans only, but even
they might be disappointed. How about making a full-length CG animated
flick out of Neil (District 9)
Blomkamp's unused Halo screenplay next time?
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