One thing which Garland and Beattie have both recognized is that one cannot directly port the events of Halo: Combat Evolved verbatim into film form. And they’re right. It just wouldn’t work. Even Staten has admitted that in the final draft of the script, the Chief’s central role as perceived in the game had to be altered for the treatment. [01/15/2008]

A game’s presentation is wholly different than that of a film’s. One is an interactive experience with low points and high points dictated largely by the player, a schematic designed to be functional and changeable, whereas a film is static and has specific peaks and valleys dictated in advance. It is not changeable, nor is it interactive beyond the audience’s suspension of disbelief. What works in a game, doesn’t necessarily work in a film. Taking ten hours of gameplay and cinematics and truncating them to a two hour highlight reel, doesn’t work.

In the case of Staten’s claim, for example, it was suggested that the Halo story be presented from various third-party perspectives, using the Master Chief as a supporting character rather than the lead. It is a reasonable and well-based suggestion given that the Spartan is wearing a masked helmet the entire game. That being said, films such as V for Vendetta and the first Star Wars trilogy have worked incredibly well with masked central characters who were both emotive and iconic. One can hardly argue the palpable sense of contradiction and remorse felt by Darth Vader toward the end of Episode VI: Return of the Jedi as he watched his son being burnt alive by the hands of his own master. All done without the need of a human face.

Then there’s the “Starry Night” trailer, which, in many ways, completely defies the notion that a faceless hero can’t be compelling. Fans still get goosebumps watching it almost two years later – hearing him utter the timeless words: “Not yet.” Brilliant and powerful, the computer-generated teaser expresses in sixty seconds what many films have a hard time doing in ninety minutes. From his defiant gestures to his fearless physicality, the Chief comes across both timelessly heroic and very real.

But could the Spartan evoke such a presence throughout the length of a film?

The world may never know.

The “Starry Night” Halo 3 commercial is rife with inspiration for a live action film. From the dire atmosphere to the Chief’s utter lack of fear, this trailer embodies everything a Halo film would hope to capture and sustain.

In addition to the Master Chief’s anonymity, Halo: Combat Evolved has some rather significant hurdles in its story – questions which needn’t be answered for players who are frantically following mission objectives while staying an arm’s length away from the drama around them. When considering a film, however, these issues might not be so well-veiled.

For example…

• Why didn’t the Covenant fleet of thousands destroy the Autumn when it had an opportunity to?
• Why did the Covenant take Keyes alive instead of killing him as it had done to billions of other humans?
• Despite all of their resources and deference regarding the Forerunners and their artifacts, what series of events caused the Covenant to foolishly release the Flood?

There may well be fictional answers to these and other questions, but they are not answered in the game. If such a film were to be made, those fissures would likely have to be sealed. Perhaps this is why Garland and Beattie depart from the subject matter so dramatically.

In the case of Garland, you have a film which follows the events of the first game in a vague and almost distant manner, only covering superficial elements without allowing the audience to be impacted by the eccentricities found at the game’s core. Elements like Johnson’s levity, the Chief’s “relationship” to the Forerunner technology and the Covenant’s shortcomings are ignored or replaced by characters and scenarios from a Halo novel.

Although not as emotionally riveting as the “Starry Night” trailer, Halo Wars’ cinematic trailers are intense, frenetic and visually impressive.

Beattie has taken an entirely different route, pulling from before the trilogy – an origin story of the Master Chief. It couldn’t be further from the heart of first game, only sharing about five minutes of the introduction of the Halo installation at the very end of the film. And there would also be the gaping concern about showing the Spartan’s face as he grows older, a fictional aspect which many fans would likely spurn as it might infringe on the character’s legend. One might concede that Beattie’s trilogy as a whole would be a more complete representation of the spirit of Halo, but we can’t ignore the fact that creating a “prequel” as a leading film is somewhat disconcerting for the several million fans who would likely expect a Halo film to represent the games, not the backstories.

And that brings us to the purpose of this piece.

I fervently and profoundly believe that a film can be made solely using the source material of Halo: Combat Evolved as its vertebrae and building off of that with the backstory which was implied during the events of Halo 2 and Halo 3. I don’t believe there should be an aggressive use of supplemental material from the novels to fill in the gaps. The latter games in the trilogy provide ample characters and side stories of their own which can be easily weaved into the first game’s fiction.

There’s also sufficient evidence to suggest that other methods can be employed effectively to allow a faceless and stoic Chief emerge as a powerful central character. Rather than make him simply an important peripheral character, a writer could build around him a cast of characters who both respond to him and reflect from him the aspects of his persona we’ve taken for granted while playing through the game. In this way, the emotive elements of the story are shared by a variety of characters and the Spartan fulfills his ultimate role as a silent but deadly killing machine at the heart of the tale.

I’ll let you be the judge if those requirements can be met, because for the better half of the last three weeks, I’ve written a full-length script myself…

Continue to Treatment Ancillary and Caveat.