Absolutely brilliant

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Nightfall absolutely NAILS the characters, all of them are different from one another. Not only that, but it keeps you on your toes. The plot advances at a very good pace, but it may get dull to some. The tone is very Halo esque (no spoilers here). It really characterized Locke better than Halo 5 did, but then again, Halo 5 had little to no character development. Action was very fast paced and motives are clear. Sometimes an actor may mis-say a word, or just not be clear, but that is the only flaw. Worth every penny.

Halo. Ever since it came out, it has engaged audiences around the world with not only its addictive gameplay, but also with its exciting story, lovable characters, and expansive universe. Attempts at a big screen live-action movie have been tried but are so far halted and rightfully so given that film adaptations of games generally have a poor track record. In the mean time, we've had a few small screen films/series to keep us entertained. "Halo Legends" was a superb film composed of different action-packed anime-styled shorts that expanded on the lore of Halo. "Forward Unto Dawn" had a laid-back tone that might bore some people were it not for both decent character development, nicely-done effects, and some really great action in the last quarter. Then along comes "Nightfall", which had potential considering Ridley Scott's role in making it, but BOY did it become the first official dud on the cinematic part of the franchise. Why? Well, you'll see since the spoiler warning is warranted.Plot: On the planet of Sedra, an Elite terrorist sets off a device that kills several civilians. The device is powered by a newly discovered element, which Agent Locke and his team have traced back to one of the remains of the first Halo ring, now orbiting dangerously close to a sun. With some assistance from a few local Sedrans, including former SPARTAN Aiken, the team lands on the Halo fragment to destroy the deposit of the new element. However, things quickly go wrong when swarms of Lekgolo/Hunter worms attack and damage their ship, attracted by the energy signature of their equipment. With only hours left before the deadly heat of the sun comes up and the Hunter swarms closing in on them, the members of the Locke's group will be forced to make some difficult choices.This web series had potential. The initial set-up is intriguing and the effects and social commentary are pretty good. I especially love how menacing the Hunter worms were. Having played the games, I've seen first-hand how tough the Hunters can be but to see them swarm like this and even going as far as to try and trick the soldiers by appearing as one of them in the distance was a genuine surprise and made them scary. We also get the pleasure of seeing a member of an all-new alien race called Yonhets, humanoids with gill-like structures on their heads. Agent Locke, a playable character in Halo 5, is introduced in this series and we see who he was before his hunt for Master Chief. These are the only few positives I have found in this otherwise piece of crap.After the first two fifths of this show, it all goes downhill from here. Most of the characters are just boring, even the ones the audience is supposed to care for. They express very little emotion beyond brooding, desperation, and later insanity, which I get given the grim situation but they were pretty much like this even before the freakin' mission. It was blatantly obvious would was gonna betray one another, who gets to die, and who gets to live. I especially hate this one guy named Michael Horrigan, who was a complete arrogant @$$hole right from the start, caring little about anyone and stabbing everyone in the back. He becomes so infuriating that I'm glad he becomes Hunter chow. Locke and Aiken are the most tolerable characters and yet, despite being introduced to them, we still know little about them (ex. why did Aiken quit the SPARTAN program?). "Forward Unto Dawn" at least showed where Lasky came from and developed his character.Despite the initial swagger of effects and a chase scene on Sedra, most of that is traded for dull landscapes and green screen effects once the mission on the Halo fragment starts. Ridley Scott usually knows how to bring a sense of isolation while still enthralling us with the look of his desert-canyon environments in films like "Alien" and "Prometheus", but here the environments did little to impress. For a franchise that markets itself primarily on action, very little action actually happens in this series. Barely a few shots were fired at the Hunter worms, even at the climax where the crazy people naturally should be fighting them. "Forward Unto Dawn" had a much lower budget and yet it still delivered some great action scenes, but "Nightfall" was so much more interested in being a survival story that it might as well not be connected to Halo. There's not even a climactic fight scene between Locke/Aiken and Michael, clichéd as it would been, but it would still show some action going on in this bore-fest. $10,000,000 and this is what we get? Forget this! Also, the soundtrack is completely forgettable.Where did Ridley Scott go wrong? Not doing the Halo franchise any justice, that's what. A good start to the story, creepy aliens, and some nice designs were hampered by wasted effects, dull characters, predictable plot points, no memorable music, and overall boring tone. Even non-fans will find this piece of crap a bad series overall. Don't give "Nightfall" a second thought and just pass up on this. You will be spared 90 minutes of your life.

The worst thing about the pilot is that it is not that sci-fi. It starts promising, detailing the threat and "the mission", it shows the characters, then they all go to an isolated place where technology works against them. So basically, an entire setup for a medieval like quest, only on an alien world.Other than that, the plot is predictable, but not terrible, the acting is good and it kept me watching it, even if I knew how it would end from the first half of the movie.As I have not played the game, I have no quarrels with that aspect of the movie, however it did seem that it had nothing to do with how a specialized fighting force would behave in the 26th century. Also, it didn't really say anything about the Halo universe. As a complete noob, I had no idea who MasterChef (he he!) was and what a Halo was.Bottom line: forgettable, but not that terrible. It did seem really low budget, though, and I have to ask myself what is the purpose of a low budget sci-fi series pilot which brings nothing in terms of story or characters? It only prepares an even less worked on series, right?Update: didn't realize that "the pilot" was the whole first season. Heh!

Halo Nightfall is pretty good, I enjoyed watching it and think it's a good background story of agent Locke who we are going to be seeing in the next halo game. Although its storyline is not the most intense I've seen in a sci fi series, it at least has a storyline that one can follow and a storyline of which does not suck at least. I also like the fact that the story explains what happened to the alpha halo from "Halo Combat Evolved" and shows the true powers of the "Lekgolo", which the hunter infantry units of the halo games are made of. When comparing Nightfall to Halo Forward Unto Dawn I think that both are good added story elements to the halo storyline, although I like the the plot of Nightfall more, being that it's one of a team of soldiers carrying out a dangerous mission in a hostile and mysterious environment. Of coarse it does not take long for the situation to become almost hopeless for the characters and some start to turn on one another, although I think this shows what some people might do in certain desperate situations. All and all I think Nightfall is pretty good and I cannot wait to see how or if its story will tie into that of Halo 5 Gaurdians.