Hassan_Scarborough
I just couldn't get past the animation and the egregious lack of diversity. I mean it's an animated film for crying out loud. Movie makers have to realize that adapting a story-line from a video-game is easy. Just don't add in more than it needs to be. It's funny because a die-hard gamer friend of mine warned me to stay away from pretty much most video game adaptations and he was right.This starts out just too entirely bloated in terms of meaningless dialog. The set-up is just too long winded and no way is this much set up needed for an action film. The dramatic moments are absent and there is no reason for such a set-up. We all know what the end result will be.I can't believe this is a Microsoft product. The animation is almost amateurish. The emotions have to register on their facial movements and I can't even get an even palate on the characters clothing. It's like watching stick figures talk to each other. The Final Fantasy films run circles around this film.If you haven't seen this yet don't bother.
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.
Robert Hall
First off, let me start off by saying that I've read the book, off of which this movie is supposedly based, cover to cover, multiple times over. If you're a fan of the book, you're going to be very disappointed.This movie is deplorably bad. The voice acting is absolutely terrible. Dr. Halsey is voiced by the same voice actress who voiced Cortana, which is appropriate based on the books. In addition, the voice actor who voiced the chief - Steve Downes - has a few lines. This is where the good stuff ends. The rest of the voice acting is absolutely terrible. Sometimes their tone is off, sometimes the children sound like they're shouting - for literally no reason at all. You truly never realize the importance of talented voices in an animated film until you don't have them.Moving on, the writing is terrible, too. Heath Corson, a screenwriter with nothing to his name besides a web series, a couple shorts, and a handful of superhero cartoons, bears the blame for this monstrosity. Anything of value from the book has been stripped away from the script, including its namesake - the fall of Reach. That's right, the climactic end of the book is nowhere to be found. The dialog from the book - which was powerful in its own right - is practically nonexistent. The parts of the story which do exist are only partially correct, seemingly re-imagined for brevity instead of drama. Kellogg's should sue this guy, because the dialog in this movie makes them all sound like Fruit Loops.But maybe bad writing and poor voice acting could be saved by good cinematography. That is, if there were any. The space combat, all three minutes of it that exist, is the diamond in this proverbial pile of dung. The 3D animation in this movie could've been great if they'd used any of the technology created in the last two decades. Instead, we get stiff, poorly animated characters who rival marionettes controlled by a triple amputee. Their mouth movements have zero effect on their face, their body movements are glitchy and copy-pasted to the little chief and all his companions. The camera angles are atrocious. The action is sloppy and mundane. There's zero tension in any scene throughout the entire movie. Nothing looks natural. It's visual heresy.The worst part of this movie is that they had the audacity to say "based on a book by Eric Nylund", because that's an outright lie. If you paid a cent to watch this, you should be furious. I had the opportunity to watch it free of charge, and I still feel ripped off. Your move, 343.
josh-97675
What the first reviewer obviously doesn't realize is that this episode was based on the novel, written by Eric Nylund, "Halo: The Fall of Reach" in 2001. Excuse me when I say that this guy is flat out wrong saying "there is barely any shred of production value of the game here". This wasn't meant to resemble the games but more what we read in the book and saw in Halo: Legends, However there are some cameos that relate back to the game.I love how Said reviewer goes on to say that most of the chiefs actions are military-oriented, Which is only part true since there are so many examples when he is not, in a military-oriented series... Now lets talk about the visuals, I had no issue with them, but this is a different age where everything has to look like "quality equivalent to today's game cut scenes" as he says.He fails to realize yet again that the action sequences ("formulaic sequences like those in Universal Soldier films") are almost identical to the ones in the book and are nowhere near the cliché "Universal soldier films". To me Halo has always been a, come for the awesome game play and stay for the lore. Obviously I wouldn't expect some hardcore gamer who only cares about KDR to look at this. However when you say that the "Low quality" will most-likely upset gamers, I will make an account for the first time on IMDb just to write a review explaining how wrong you are.In my own personal opinion this is as true to Halo as it gets and I would definitely recommend a viewing as I was brought back to when I read the book a few years ago. In terms of visuals, like I said before, It reminded me of Halo: Legends and even a lot of the scenes in that looked worse than what people are making this out to be. The narration is also top notch as you'll notice through-out and I could not be more pleased. I feel like one thing that could be improved upon if anything, is the facial animations but even that has a particular style I suppose. Halo: The Fall of Reach is definitely a nice addition to any Halo fans collection and I would also like to apologize for going off on a rant if this what you would like to call it, I was just logically disapproving of another persons deception and ignorant statements, and who chooses to be unstudious about what he reviews.