Halo: The Fall of Reach (2015) User Reviews

if you actually like halo for the story, it's worth a watch. if not, don't watch it.

[ddDerp · 7/10 · 31 December 2015]

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.

If you ignore the terrible animation, it's fun.

[siderite · 6/10 · 19 October 2019]

It all felt like someone strung up all the scenes from a game to make a story. I asked myself if it were fan made. The animation wasn't only weak, it was slow. The whole thing's an hour long, but at what I consider normal speed, it's probably more like 45 minutes. I watched at 2x and it was OK. Also there were some scenes that were perfect candidates for eye candy, like the explosions of ships and the fights. They had no budget for those.

Now, about the story, it's an origin story of this character in a game called Halo that I have never played or seen played, so I can only comment on it as an independent thing. Young children are abducted and turned into supersoldiers just in time to fight an aggressive alien species. I don't know why they called it The Fall or Reach, since nothing fell. Just as I was getting invested in the story the film ended.

Bottom line: nothing spectacular, not in terms of production or storyline, but it is an animation probably made using a game engine for a novel written for that game. What did you expect?

Disappointing... (spoilers if you haven't read the book)

[evulbunny · 5/10 · 29 December 2015]

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.

Shame animation doesn't match visuals

[neil-476 · 6/10 · 19 June 2016]

Children are recruited for a top secret military project. After brutal boot vamp and physical enhancements, they form the basis of a strike force against an alien invasion.

This feature-length CGI animation is a 3-part mini-series joined together, based on a novel and video game, neither of which I know much about.

The story is fine, albeit very reminiscent of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, intertwined with assorted rites of passage stories, not to mention Wolverine's origin.

The backgrounds, props and sets are great - strongly effective visuals, well designed and executed.

The characters and animation are downright poor, especially for something created in 2015. The faces are inexpressive and far too similar, the facial animation is unconvincing, and the characters are extremely badly integrated into the scenery.

The voice acting isn't very good, either.

This could have been much, much better.

Sick of book comparisons.

[milobarbin · 6/10 · 11 November 2018]

This mini-series is not the best I've seen but not the worst either. I like it and think it is worth a view if you like Sci-Fi to any degree. What I am really tired of is all of the reviews from people who have "READ THE BOOK" and are disappointed that it's not the same. Really? Haven't we all learned by this time that anything from book to film/video is never going to be like the book. Get over it man.

Ancient stuff of the last generation

[quincytheodore · 4/10 · 3 December 2015]

Halo has been a flagship title for Xbox consoles for more than a decade, it has spawned numerous titles and spin-offs, but apparently animation movie is not a priority. The CGI is incredibly stiff and design is equally lackluster, there is barely any shred of production value of the game here. This will no doubt disappoint the fans while probably won't attract any casual movie viewers.

It tells the story of John / Master Chief, the main protagonist as he goes through his training and childhood. He is not the easiest character to transition to cinema as he's a silent protagonist on the game. The animation delivers his story by narrations from other characters, while Joh himself is pretty one dimensional. His interactions are mostly military oriented, leaving little room to expand.

To make matter worse, it utilizes the same formulaic sequences like those in Universal Soldier films. Also, characters' facial expressions are extremely bland. Animation can barely produce any quality equivalent to today's game cutscenes. It's just plain rigid motion and uninteresting setting for one hour, and that short runtime will not amount much in term of narrative anyway.

The low quality visual will most likely upset gamers, and it's certainly not the introduction story Halo would like to represent the franchise on animation genre.

Terrible, horrible. F.

[rjhall-291-668108 · 2/10 · 3 March 2016]

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.

Missing the heart of the book it was based on

[matthewprevallet · 4/10 · 12 February 2017]

I have read the Halo: The Fall of Reach book a few times and was actually reading it around the time I saw this movie.

Basically the movie follows the outline of book fairly well, but...

Somehow they managed remove the parts of the book that made it so good.

In the movie: John is kind of a dick, there isn't really any relationship between John and Chief Mendez (John is supposed to really look up to him and respect him), Captain Keyes is kind of a dick, the relationship between John and his fellow spartans is hollow. Everybody felt very 1-Dimensional. I think these problems are because of the lack of detail in the movie and the bland animation, the sometimes very off-key voice acting.

Honestly, if the people who made this movie would have just payed attention to why the characters in the book were so good and why the relationships were compelling we might have gotten something much better. That's too bad.

The book has great potential for a movie, but it was wasted with this attempt.

If you want some quick general backstory on Halo, watch this. If you want entertainment and a compelling story with compelling characters - read the book.

Great adaptation, and excellent way to visualize the first book

[josh-97675 · 9/10 · 21 December 2015]

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.

It Doesnt Even feel like you are watching a movie

[rowangibbons-22239 · 3/10 · 18 November 2018]

I just started at the screen laughed twice at the terrible animation and moved on with my day like nothing happened. It felt like I lost 1 hour to the void

Missed the Mark

[Blueyzj · 4/10 · 10 March 2016]

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.

Some of the worst animation I have ever seen!

[Darkside-Reviewer · 3/10 · 24 January 2021]

Halo: The Fall of Reach (2015) was originally an animated mini series adapted from the novel of the same name. The original novel was a brilliant story of the origins of Spartan 117 also known as Masterchief. The story gave fans a much more detailed look at Masterchiefs backstory including his time in the Spartan II program which transformed him from a six year child into a genetically altered super soldier in one of the most brutal and painful ways imaginable.

The Halo video games were where fans first got to know Masterchief as a character however his character wasn't always as talkative as he is in the later entries of the video game series. Masterchief was given very little backstory in the early days of the game series and if you were a big Halo fan and wanted to know more about Masterchiefs backstory and really get to know the man behind the helmet you had to take the time and actually read the novels and graphic novels based on the Halo series.

This movie does provide some of the backstory detailed in the original novel but sadly a lot of what made the novel such a joy to read has been watered down into another generic origin story. Only very poorly animated.

I would highly recommend reading the original novel over watching this poor excuse for animated movie. The animation is absolutely horrendous to look at and is honestly some of the worst looking animation I have ever seen in a big budget animated movie. Every scene looks like a cutscene from Halo Combat Evolved which was released in 2001. The bodies and heads of every character is shaped like a block with sharp edges. The hair looks like something from the Lego movie only with less detail, shape and colour. The audio doesn't match the characters poorly animated lip movement.

Overall Halo: The Fall of Reach is an absolute travesty of a film in every possible way avoid it at all costs.

poorly put together

[Hassan_Scarborough · 4/10 · 11 March 2016]

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.

Halo The Fall of Reach Review

[ericthegoob · 8/10 · 8 February 2016]

I enjoy The Fall of Reach for what it is. However I like Forward Unto Dawn more, the Animation I like the style of it. But I have only one problem with this Animated feature. The title is a darn lie! If your series doesn't even deal with The Fall of Reach or part of what was covered in Halo Reach, don't even call it The Fall of freaking Reach! Just call it either Halo Origins or Halo Blue Team and it'd be done. Look I know that this is based on the Novel, but still it doesn't make since when you think about it. Halo Origins would have been a better title. And even still, so with all odds Halo The Fall of Reach is best of what it can do. I give it a 8 out of 10.

Red vs. Blue If Done By 343

[sammie_sambal · 4/10 · 14 March 2016]

I am one of many who has read the novel on which this movie is based off of and which I loved so you could say I went in with high expectations. I would be lying if I said i didn't have any. I will however say that I tried to lower those expectations and be open to a different view. Besides, book adaptations are rarely if not ever better than in it's original form simply because our own imagination plays a mayor role in it. It's hard to live up to those standards which are different for each and any individual.

Unfortunately lowering my standards was not merely enough to be able to enjoy this movie. I would even say that if it weren't for me being a fan of the source material I would've given it an even lower score and it might have even scared me away from the franchise completely. The only thing that actually kept me going was me liking the universe the books created and my interest in how the team behind this production envisioned this prelude to the Halo games.

And that's why it baffles me so much that it's this bad because this is coming from the people that have the property in their possession and who work on the current games in the franchise. Everything is there and checks out, from the original voice actors down to the lore, even small details like the HUD indicators from the games, and yet they have managed to produce a lackluster representation of an otherwise great story written by Mr. Nylund with stiff voice-acting and even stiffer animation work that resembled something closer to in-game graphics from last generations game consoles than anything. If I didn't know any better I could be fooled in to thinking I was watching a not so funny episode of Red vs. Blue. I know and agree that looks aren't everything but then at least get the emotion part right one way or another, especially because The Fall of Reach is one of emotional heavier tales in the franchise, if not the heaviest.

The movie adaptation of the Fall of Reach ended up being quite a disappointment to me and I wasn't even expecting all that much of it to begin with, and to make matters worse, to top it all of, we didn't even get to see the full story. We have seen Reach, but the falling bit as mentioned in the title is a big part of it too. Either 343 didn't think so or this is a 2 parter.

All in all I can't recommend this to anyone. And if you're a fan and you're as curious as I was though, take my advise and put the book on your nightstand before hand.

Cheap rip-off of Enders Game

[phantm1 · 1/10 · 19 April 2016]

This video was nothing more than a cheap rip-off of Orson Scott Card's Enders Game. I was surprised how uncreative it was. Read Enders Game, then watch the movie, you will see how this was nothing more than someones attempt to capitalize off another persons ideas. Shameful. I read Fall of Reach a few years back and found it entertaining but again I was saddened at how closely it resembled Orson Scott Card and Heinlein. I was hoping for original ideas, plots, and characters but this was the wrong place to look for it. It is sad how people will spend thousands of dollars on producing a show yet they spend nothing on making sure that show has quality original content. Stick to the video game, and ignore the sad plagiarizing back-story.

Painfully slow story line with animations that looked like it came from the 80's

[dan_fango · 1/10 · 2 April 2021]

I lasted about 35 to 40 minutes, this is one of the worse animations I have ever seen. I had to check the release date and was shocked when it said 2015. It looks that it was from the 80's, the characters have zero expressions, the story line is slooooooow and boring it is really just terrible on all levels and that's from me a big fan of halo but this is just a joke avoid avoid avoid.

Terrible animations

[meabak360 · 5/10 · 3 February 2022]

Well, now that the Halo series is finally around the corner and only 2 months away, I've decided to watch Halo: the Fall of Reach. The first thing I should mention is that this is a low-budget mini-movie and is only 65 minutes. The story goes deep into project Spartan-II and where are they originally from, especially Spartan 117 or the great master chief. CG and animations are weak and terrible for a movie in 2015. However, since it is a low-budget movie maybe you could ignore it. Music except the famous Halo soundtrack has nothing to offer.

Overall, there is nothing much to say about this movie if you are a real fan of the halo it can be recommended. Other than that don't waste your time because you probably won't make it through the first 10 minutes.

A harshly good fairy tale in sci-fi

[tyfyh-89363 · 10/10 · 15 December 2020]

I'm a huge sucker for a good sci-fi. Especially with solid story and believable stuff. Before this movie (how I got to know this movie) I played/watched Halo games (1,2,3). I knew some story, but not all. I liked the story. And when I watched this movie, I loved it and I rewatched many, many times.

This may contain spoilers:

This movie starts from a point of view of a brilliant scientist in very rough times. She needs to do what many good scientists do: unimaginable and risky stuff. We can clearly see all her reasons, and she questions herself, but then she says something like "i will be absolved of all sins" if she succeeds. If not, everyone will be dead. Like in a typical romantic novel, but it works here! After that we follow the life of the main character and his becoming The Master Chief. We see his mistakes, how he handles them, learns from them, he grows and becomes wiser, the man we see in the game. The ideal soldier. Although he is depicted as a "soulless machine" in the games, here we still see him as a caring leader and this is his story.

This movie is like an additional video material from the series of games, like some sort of top secrets (Spartan-2 project) revealed in detail. Some may say that animation is bad, but I liked it.

Summary: Is this a movie? It's animation. Is this a good movie? Yes! Is this a bad movie? Not at all! Will I recommend it? Absolutely.

reminds of mengele

[triquetratat777 · 1/10 · 23 December 2022]

Wow, I enjoyed the first 3 halo games (I bought an xbox 360 shortly after they came out so that I could continue following the halo story with halo 3), I played ODST (I think it was) hoping to find the answer to the origin of halo's main character. But this video was such a disappointment; mengele is what this story reminds one of - this is such an ignoble and deplorable story (but it did come from microsoft and its "leader", so I shouldn't have been surprised). After watching this, I doubt I'll ever desire to have anything to do with halo ever again. If you like halo, you should watch this - so that you have a better idea of what it really is that you think you like.

totally watchable and great writing

[legendmandeep · 8/10 · 4 January 2016]

SPOILER ALERT i saw the movie from games point of view as most of others would who played halo day night it is great piece of work..!! movie was not displeasing at all...!! i was just expecting more AI stuff and more gadgets.. the movie had some drawbacks on backgrounds but the story telling was impressive.. the hard choices characters made were emotional but overall it was just a start and so i would like a sequel..!! actually the movie made me curious and so many that were missing were present in the novel.. so i am gonna read it now..!! i would suggest each and every fan of HALO games fandom you should see it..will change your perspective..!!