It’s no secret that fans of theHalofranchise have wanted a live-action television show for quite some time. The franchise has been around now for two decades, and it was high time that somebody took a crack at bringing the Master Chief to life. His tragic backstory and impeccable loyalty to the USMC and his fellow Spartan soldiers make him the perfect protagonist for a television show. However, fans were decisively split when it was announced that the show wasn’t going to be following the same story or lore of the video games, and they’ve stayed that way since the show began airing its first season.
Regardless of how fans feel about the split from the video game lore,there’s one particular critiquethat has nothing to do with the change in the story – it’s about the lack of action. While the creators and writers have made it clear that they have their own vision of the Master Chief and the entireHalouniverse, the show has had a surprising lack of fight scenes from a franchise that is notorious for being action-packed. So, with that in mind, there are a few specific reasons why the show really needs to implement more action sequences.
It’s a Sci-FI/Action Show, Not a Drama
This is by far the biggest reason why the show needs to pick up the pace. Now, we as an audience need to be willing to giveHalothe benefit of the doubt for its first season because the visuals of creating the Covenant and the futuristic weapons/armor/machines can’t be cheap. Hopefully, a bigger budget will come for the next season. That being said,Halois a sci-fi/action franchise, not an interstellar-explorer franchise.The Master Chief and the Spartansare literally referred to as “humanity’s greatest weapons,” yet we’ve seldom seen them be weapons in the show.
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Again, the creators and writers have made it clear that they have their own vision of theHalouniverse, and it involves humanizing the Master Chief and the Spartans and making the audience relate to them. There’s no problem with that. However, the show can do thatandinclude action sequences for the Spartans to take part in. It would make sense to implement more fight scenes because it would give the audience a chance to watch the Spartans struggle with their newfound inner turmoil.
A similar sci-fi/action show inThe Mandalorianhas proven it’s quite possible. There’s not a single episode that doesn’t involve an action sequence or fight scene, but it also makes Mando connect with his human side instead of his bounty hunter side. If they did it, so canHalo.
Fight Scenes Are the Best Part
This particular point is subjective to each individual viewer, but again, theHalofranchise is known for being a sci-fi/action franchise, which pretty much implies that the built-in fanbase are fans of action. So,with a video game as action-packed asHalois, audiences could have predictably expected to see more than two fight scenes in the first half-dozen episodes. Nevertheless, even with the lack of action sequences, most fans that have been split on how they feel about the show thus far have implied that their favorite scenes have been the action sequences.
Now, while a viewer might be subjective on this, it’s clear that the creators ofHaloalso know that this is true. The very first scene in the entire series was a 20-minute action sequence that saw the Master Chief and his fellow Spartans tear through the Covenant Elites in ways that did proper justice to the video-game mechanics. Sadly, that scene has felt more like a bait scene to get viewers hooked since the next action scene didn’t come until four episodes later. Fans almost unanimously agreed that the action scene in episode 5 was the best in the series so far.
Straying Too Far From the Lore
While the creators' vision for the show hasn’t been exactly what fans were expecting, it’s only understandable that they wouldn’t want to make a carbon copy of the video game franchise in television format. It’s well known that video game stories are so long and detailed that they’re challenging to transfer to a TV series. That being said, even with all the changes that the creators are making, the show is straying too far from the known lore in terms of the action that fans are used to.
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Showing the human side of Master Chiefand his fellow Spartans isn’t outright a bad thing (even if it wasn’t what most fans were expecting), but not showing the Master Chief’s full capabilities in terms of combat is going to cause longtime fans of the franchise to potentially give up on the series before it even gets a chance to get off the ground. After all, the Master Chief might be human, but he’s also a Spartan – humanity’s greatest weapon, and he’s the greatest of them all. Getting the audienceto relate to him on a human levelis necessary, but we also need to see the action that the Halo franchise is known for.
