The process of developing a project such as the Halo movie is a lot more complicated than it seems. The writing director for the movie, Joseph Staten, revealed that one of the major obstacles in getting it right was who would be the character star of the film?
In an interview conducted by joystickradio.com last year and just recently released, Staten says the process of determining who would be the focus of the movie was a difficult one, althought it would seem rather obvious to Halo fans.
"I think what it boiled down to with the film was really a question of ‘Who is the main character of the movie?’ Is it the Master Chief or is it somebody else? And 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. There are these kinesthetic responses that he’ll have which will really easily communicate the character and what he’s feeling.
"That’s hard to carry as a main character for an entire film. But you can certainly surround him with people who don’t have helmets on and you can see their faces. They’re normal actors doing their thing."
As far as the background of Master Chief, would there be any more elaboration on his past and where he came from?
"In the film, the other characters begin to comment on Master Chief’s anonymity, like ‘Who is he?’ and ‘What’s his story?’ 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."
As most Halo fans know, the progress or non-progress of the Halo movie has been delayed several times and has for all practical purposes, been declared dead due to movie studios Fox and Universal’s non-confidence in the film. But hopefully, there is still a glimmer of light for the Halo movie finally appearing one day. Let’s just hope that if it ever does come out that it doesn’t degrade into a two hour frag fest.
