Static Thoughts - Forward Unto Dawn

Halo is a game franchise I’ve always regarded with a certain amount of fascination if not quite favor.  I’m not saying it’s a bad series and I’ve really enjoyed a lot of the entries; Halo 2 is a super fun shooter, Halo 3 was the go-to game throughout all of high school for my friends an I, and Halo: Reach’s story was actually pretty well told and engaging.  All of that said, I’ve never quite engaged with the Halo universe story the way I would’ve liked, or might’ve expected given its prevalence and importance in defining the modern era of shooters. 

I respect Halo for its massive success and its place as a seemingly universal touchstone of gaming, especially after witnessing the insane fervor over Halo 3 got me back into gaming again, but with the exception of Reach I’ve always found the games’ stories to be a little uninvolving.  So, with the release of Halo 5 I decided to revisit the Halo franchise through a more narrative-based medium, namely the 2012 made for streaming Forward Unto Dawn Halo mini-series produced as a quasi-prequel to Halo 4.

Forward Unto Dawn takes its name from the ship Master Chief was left on in cyronic sleep at the end of Halo 3.  The Chief’s time in suspension serves as sort of a two-part framing device for the story as each episode opens up with us checking in on Cortana and Chief as the ship drifts through deep space.  The actual story actually takes place entirely in flashbacks being experienced by one Thomas Lasky, a Captain whose vessel has discovered the remnants of the Forward Unto Dawn.  The story is basically just Lasky remembering back to the first time he met Master Chief during his time as a cadet training to enter the military. 

This essentially has the effect of making most of the series a young adult novel that just happens to be set in the Halo universe, one that’s decidedly in the same vein as Ender’s Game only without the self-awareness.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing to be sure, Ender’s Game is a hugely influential book series for a good reason and its emphasis on military service fits well with Halo’s own stylistic and narrative obsessions.  There’s also a good deal of Starship Troopers around the edges of the story but I’ll get more into that later.

The basic set-up is that we follow Lasky and his unit as they prepare to undergo their final exam before graduating to active military personal, all of which is taking place just before the Covenant first attacks and makes themselves known.  The squad of kids may not be the most original or well developed but they’re all at least afforded personal arcs and struggles before the Covenant and Master Chief show up in act 3 to throw the entire school into upheaval.  Lasky is our main focus though, which is where the series is at its most Starship Troopers-esc. 

Lasky is the son of a well respected general whose brother was killed in a previous battle and is now undergoing major doubts about his military service and the way the UNSC tends to view its grunt soldiers as disposable.  Though he’s getting there for different reasons his situation and the events of his story are pretty much exactly in line with Johnny Rico at the beginning of act 2 of Starship Troopers.  Both are talented soldiers who are undergoing a crisis of faith in their chosen direction only for a sudden and unexpected war to throw them back into military service. 

The similarities to Starship Troopers and Ender’s Game are in no way surprising given that those are the two wells Halo has always drawn on the most.  The problem, and it proves to be a thoroughly off-putting problem, is that Forward Unto Dawn ends up caught between both influences without seeming sure which one it wants to really commit to.  The series has a ton of the original, literary Starship Troopers type ideology about military service and the chain of command being the most important thing in life, with Lasky’s central arc being that he needs to learn to stop asking questions and just follow orders like a good soldier while sacrifice and service are framed as the highest possible virtues.  All of that would be fine if the way those ideas were imparted wasn’t so deliberately off.  We’re constantly confronted with first officers teaching these kids they need to be willing to die if a superior officer says so, without question, and there’s even a thoroughly creepy sequence where we see the words of their oath of service are etched above their beds.  The kid’s experiences with the UNSC’s values are framed as brainwashing rather than learning. 

This all leaves the first half of the whole series seriously confused.  It honestly feels like two different people were working on the series with two radically different ideas about how Forward Unto Dawn would relate to franchise values and ideas.  The show regards the UNSC’s military grade brainwashing as far too noble and heroic to frame is a negative or even to avoid judging it all together.  Meanwhile, whenever the story seems like it’s finally found a solid tone of admiration for the values of service and sacrifice some new, awful, brainwashing element pops up to obfuscate the situation.

Thankfully, most of this tonal uncertainty tapers off at around the ½ way-to-1/3^rd mark when the Covenant show up and attack the academy.  At this point things go from young adult sci-fi military thriller to more of a straight sci-fi action story.  The kids end up some of the only survivors of the Covenant attack and must try and survive in the rubble of their former school while working their way towards UNSC forces, their only hope: Master Chief.  This is where the show becomes amazing and I am being totally serious. 

Master Chief looks amazing probably one the best physical realization of a game character in real life since Pyramid Head in Silent Hill.  It’s Daniel Cudmore in the armor and he brings great physicality to the role with an imposing physique that never feels threatening in the wrong manner.  Alex Puccinelli is providing the voice and though he’s not as good as Steve Downes he’s a solid stand in that still feels very much like the Chief.   

This part of the film is in line with a lot of great tag along sci-fi flicks where the amazing hero is escorting a group through a hazardous obstacle course, movies like Escape from New York, Purge Anarchy, and 28 Weeks Later so it’s in good company.  The visuals are a big part of what sells the sequence because they look amazing, the effects work is top notch and seeing Master Chief take out a whole squad of Covenant mooks single handedly is spectacular in live action. 

It’s so good I wish it had been the whole movie, just Master Chief silently clearing out a city before the main UNSC troops come through.  It would’ve been weird certainly and run the risk of coming off shallow but there’s enough room for experimentation in that format that you could still turn in a good movie and I think the silence could add to the immersion and realism in a meaningful way. 

I’m not sure that Forward Unto Dawn has made me any more inclined towards the story and universe of the Halo franchise but it has made me more certain than ever that there’s real merit to this universe beyond cranking out fun and interesting shooter mechanics.  I’d still like to see some Halo extended universe material that takes a more hard and firm look at the culture of the UNSC and the Halo universe as a whole and how that’s been shaped and impacted by the extreme militarism of their culture but as a no frills, unpretentious sci-fi military action adventure film you could do far worse, and as far as video game adaptations go you could do infinitely worse. 


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