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I saw Guardians of the Galaxy today.
I've seen a lot of comparisons of it to Star Wars, and I can definitely see it. It feels more like the Galaxy Far Far Away than what we got in the prequels - at times seedy and pristine, high and noble and then gritty and grimy, with a diverse cast of characters all with their own motivations, and a story that, while relatively simple, still bobbed and weaved through the narrative course in a way I found delightful. It's even more reminiscent of Mass Effect is Renegade Shepard had some blastin' tunes. It had a sense of scale that I haven't seen in a long time. It also had a sense of sheer fun that I found immensely refreshing. And that soundtrack! Best film soundtrack I've heard in a long, long time. I'm not even a child of the 80s and I love those tunes, so it's hardly surprising I loved it. Is it the best Marvel Cinematic Universe movie? I'd probably still go with Avengers Assemble, personally, and then Iron Man, but this would come a close third.
But despite the comparisons to Star Wars, what I kept thinking as I was watching it was "now THIS is how you should do a Halo movie."
The parallels are perhaps not obvious, but I saw them. For one, there's a moment set in the giant corpse of a celestial being (I don't think this is a spoiler, since that alone doesn't really affect the plot), that was reminiscent of the dead Reaper from Mass Effect. But in a few brief seconds, if conveyed the sense of being something vast, ancient and borderline incomprehensible. A significant chunk of the film occurred in a prison, and seeing Rocket in a prison jumpsuit was pretty fantastic. Gamora felt a little too frail at brief points to be a Daughter of Thanos, but on the whole she was treated better than many female "kickass" characters in action films these days. Considering I saw the trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before it, where April literally causes her driver to crash because he's staring at her ass, it looks downright feminist in comparison. The team as a whole felt really tight by the end, friends, like the cast of Firefly, and Starlord has a very Mal Reynolds vibe to him. And Groot...I swear, he's going to be a huge hit among kids, and if he's not, my faith in future generations will be gutted like a fish.
But in Halo terms, it just felt...right. Xandar, the "good" planet, felt a little like what I imagine a Forerunner world would have looked in its heyday, all modernist blocks and spirals and towers gleaming white, populated with a humanoid race that assumed the role of galactic police force. And the villain of the movie, Ronan, seemed to me to be a very Didact-like villain - a zealot fighting in the name of his people, whether they want him to or not, to eradicate an ancient and largely peaceful enemy in the form of the Xandarians. The ships themselves were breathtaking in their mass and grace, and I'd love to see a Paris-class frigate or a Prowler animated in this style. The MacGuffin itself felt ancient and unfathomably weird and powerful, and the stakes always felt high. I'd love to see a Halo story done this way - let's take a rogue bunch of Outer Colonists who don't like Earth or the UNSC, but like the Covenant, or the rogue Forerunner constructs that menace them, even less. Give them a ship, and put them in a universe populated by weird and colorful characters of diverse species with differing motivations. ONI infiltration teams spying on their erstwhile allies, the Sangheili. Jackal pirates, privateers and slavers. Brute raiding parties and mercenaries. Sangheili religious zealots, and the Arbiter's forces trying to keep a lid on their activity. Human colonials just trying to get by, Innies actively trying to separate the colonies from Earth's control and the UNSC hunting them down. Hell, introduce a few new, mysterious and little-seen species that you could introduce us properly to in a full game. This is such a complex interstellar political situation that I would be incredibly excited to see a film set in this setup. You don't even have to base it on the story of a Spartan - if anything, I'd prefer they didn't. I didn't mind the characterization of the IIs and IIIs, but the IVs don't feel like Spartans. They feel like Marines in powered armour, which is arguably what they still are. ODST had the best mix of diverse characters and motivations, I think, and is still my favourite story. Imagine the stories you could tell if you gave Dare and Buck's team a Prowler, an unlimited budget, and turned them loose on the enemies of humanity.
So in conclusion: loved Guardians of the Galaxy, and am also perversely hyped for a Halo movie! -- Qura 'Morhek The Autocrat of Morheka 00:03, 25 August 2014 (EDT)