Halo

The obvious parallels are with The Mandalorian, another show about a seemingly invincible, murderous space warrior who embarks on a path towards becoming a total sweetie. If that’s the long-term plan here, neither the show nor Schreiber has quite nailed it yet.

The series’s cinematography, like its narrative priorities, is uneven. ... How Halo is choosing to spend its time, though — that strange artifact, an endless war, and political backstabbing — isn’t yet as compelling as whatever weirdness could be happening in the forgotten corners of this universe.

The first couple of episodes represent a decent start that, despite its best efforts, failed to stun me. But it didn't drive me away, either. Without question, one detail the producers got right is casting Pablo Schreiber ("American Gods," "Orange Is the New Black") as Master Chief. The man has range, and that makes the possibility of what he could bring to "Halo" exciting.

Seeing the world through a vacant perspective might work for a game in which the audience has its own agency, but not for a show that requires its own point of view. In its first two episodes, “Halo” doesn’t quite have that yet. But as another entrant in the ever expanding “Halo” universe, it at least has enough ambition to make it worth a closer look.

Schreiber and Ha have good hero-sidekick chemistry, and there’s an element of dedicated sci-fi weirdness that keeps things from feeling too rote. (Bokeem Woodbine, for instance, is having a lot of fun in a second-episode role as literally the only person John knows who is not a government-altered killing machine.) But the whole thing is brought down by the writing—which never goes for a second-draft line when a first-draft line will do—and by an abiding and pervasive sense of cheapness.

While “Halo” features a few minor pivots in these early hours, there’s very little to spoil and even less to spark curiosity that’s not already present. Perhaps most surprising is how smoothly the initial narrative plays out, given how many creatives came and went during development.

Yet the main problem with "Halo" is that if you're at all familiar with the movies mentioned above and their ilk, it actually feels like bits and pieces of everything you've ever seen, just wrapped up in shiny new armor.

“Halo” may be a perfectly competent action story in space, but it feels like a lesser version of things that have come before, including its own source material.

Maybe Halo does play as more exciting and specific if you have an internal checklist of game elements — weapon types, helpful acquisitions, character or planetary allusions — you’re looking to have acknowledged. For those of us who don’t necessarily crave or appreciate those things, Halo has a generic story, limitedly engaging characters and a clearly high special-effects budget that yields respectable but unremarkable results.

The story variously tilts toward canonical completionists and confounded newbies, with dialogue variously impenetrable and explanatory.