The Master Chief Wouldn’t Have Been The Main Character In HALO THE MOVIE?
The world of video game to movie translation is a tricky one. For the most part, they’re pretty damn horrendous (Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter or Super Mario Bros: The Movie anyone?) but in some cases they work like….uh…..help me out here….um……Resident Evil? OK, maybe that didn’t work that well but you get my point.
Anyway, when it was first announced that Microsoft & Peter Jackson were going to develop a movie version of Halo I’m sure there were plenty of people who were pretty damn concerned about what they were going to do with the story and character. Me, I could have cared less but not by much!
But now, according to FilmJunk, there’s a little bit of news about what was being planned for the movie that makes me think they might have been heading in kind of the right direction with it before it got shelved. In an interview with Newsweek Bungie writing director Joseph Staten revealed that the Master Chief (for those of you who don’t know the Master Chief is the character you control in the games) wasn’t actually going to be the main focus of the movie:
“…Over time I think everybody around the table agreed that the Master Chief is best left as the most important supporting cast member. Where the Master Chief doesn’t have a face, but he has a whole body to emote with, whether it’s his spine, or his shoulders. or the tilt of his head, or the way he slumps or reloads his weapon… He becomes a really wonderful source of mystery, a sort of anonymous problem solver. So we definitely worked on that. In the final version of the script the Master Chief was certainly absolutely critical to the film, but there were other characters around him which carried most of it, that did most of the emotional heavy lifting. The Master Chief was there in support of their story.”
Interesting, eh? So from that I’m going to guess that they would have had a central core of characters fighting against the Covenant (the big bad aliens in the game) while the Master Chief appears occasionally to save them. Or even that the Master Chief is referred to in a mythical way, to give hope to the normal marines that there might actually be someone who could help them while no one really believes he exists. Until he turns up at the end and saves the day of course.
Either way, it’s interesting to me that the main character from the games wasn’t going to be the main character in the movie. While that might have some of the fanboys up in arms it actually makes sense. Just imagine how much shouting and screaming there would be if the Master Chief was the main character and he took off his helmet? I think we would eclipse the feelings that were felt when Judge Dredd took off his helmet and turned out to look like Sly Stallone!
Still, it’s a moot point as chances are we’ll never see a Halo movie. But that won’t stop the rumours!
[Source - Newsweek via FilmJunk]
One Response to “The Master Chief Wouldn’t Have Been The Main Character In HALO THE MOVIE?”
Halo is one of the best games ever made….
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