Blueyzj While I agree with some that the graphics are not important, a lot of emotion was left out of this story because of that lack of graphics. There is also blame for this on the voice acting, but perhaps the actors themselves realized there wasn't much to go on. Look, I for one am not one of those "the book was better" people, but in this case they forgot key points from the book altogether. If you wish to understand, read this excerpt from the book that talks about a cave drill in chapter 8 page 67. http://s3.amazonaws.com/szmanuals/dda956e6212b5299176ca2678f51bad8. In just this one excerpt it shows the emotion that was missing, the level of teamwork that was missing, and just how impressive they were after the augmentation. Watch it if you like, I give them a soft 4 for effort, but this movie was seriously lacking in all areas. If you have the imagination, stick with the book.

timskillman (Note - this review has some spoilers)The Halo movies aren't usually that bad so I thought this one might have 'improved' from the last. However, I've seen better animation and rendering in a late 90's video game than this movie!From the start you watch 6 year old kids getting beaten up - it's just plain unpleasant and unnecessary. John (who becomes Master Chief) is totally unbelievable - almost schizophrenic in his character; one minute he can be slaughtering those who annoy him and then suddenly become the most caring soldier on the block.The 'story' slightly reminds me of Enders Game with John being a very pale-in-comparison 'Ender'. But there's just nothing to like about him or any of the characters. The whole movie consists of short cut- scenes based on the sacrifice of kids as they grow up. It's just plain morose from beginning to end.I haven't watched such a shallow, wooden, stiff, badly animated cartoon such as this for a long time. I usually love sci-fi but you'd have to be a dyed-in-the-wool, die-hard, Halo lover to give this movie any rating above 1!I seriously wasted my money on this one.

Andrew Stanley my only real gripe is that it's not long enough. it has great story telling. i just hated the fact that i was aware of it wrapping itself up. i would've appreciated another hour or so. it does say "series" so if there are more to come, then awesome.as for as the visual quality, it's not AAA quality production. do you love Halo just for the graphics? or the lore. i read the book years and years ago. i don't read books for AAA graphics. there are none. if it WAS done through AAA production, sure it'd be nice. there are two general paths to 3D, photoreal or stylized. this was chosen to be done in a stylized manner. and i actually like how they executed the style and atmosphere.if you're in it for the visual effects, don't watch this. if you appreciate halo for the lore, if you appreciate some storytelling of a once great franchise, then i'd recommend watching this.it helps shed some light as to why 117 is the way he is.

evulbunny 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.