By Nathan Swyers, GN Writer
Eric Vespe, Contributing Director for Ain’t it Cool News, recently sat down with Neill Blomkamp, director for the upcoming Halo film. Blomkamp worked on such shows as StarGate SG-1, Dark Angel, and Smallville.
In order to take on such an enormous and anticipated project, one must be incredibly excited about the Halo franchise. “From a purely game playing perspective I am a massive fan of the games,” said Blomkamp, “but more importantly, I’m a massive fan of the world and universe of Halo, the science fiction world that the games take place inside of.”
When asked whether or not he was nervous about tackling Halo as his first feature, Blomkamp remarked, “I certainly respect how complex it is, and how much focus is required. There will be some very hard times, with tons of pressure but you work through it. I am so invested in it from a creative standpoint that my eye just stays on the end goal. I keep focused on making it exactly how I want it and treat every day as a path to that final product, plus the support from the New Zealand team is really amazing.”
Fans can be assured that Blomkamp does not plan on altering some of the key ingredients to Halo. “Master Chief is certainly something that I do not want to change too much at all, there are certain things inside the Halo universe that are sacred and he’s the main one,” said the director. “Having said that, there is a need to revise certain parts of him. Just from a purely technical standpoint, he has to actually be able to move, like a human, and the game design right now does not allow for full motion freedom, which we will have to achieve.” Blomkamp added that he is aiming for a real actor, rather than a CGI creation; however, there will certainly be sequences where CG will work better than a live actor.
As far as the covenant, fans may see some fairly drastic changes on how the game translates to film: “The most important thing is that the viewer thinks they are looking at something that lives and breathes, and exists, so from an organic standpoint they have to be believable. They also need to be terrifying, and alien, and the best way to start doing that is to break that human silhouette. Although many of them are bipedal anatomically, you can still shift the overall body to be something very alien.”
In closing, Blomkamp noted that he doesn’t wish to make this film look like every other big budget action movie out there. “I’ve been given the resources and the source material to make something awesome,” he said, “so I have to really invest myself 100% in a film that I love every frame of, and for me to love every frame means it has to have something that sets it apart. Fans of the game should love this film, people who don’t know the game should be transported to a place that blows them away for two hours.”
It sounds like Neill has pretty big plans for the film, and an even bigger budget, so fans should expect a faithful adaptation of the Halo franchise, but they won’t experience it until sometime in 2008.
