Sweet Halo 3 Ad Is the Future of Game/Movie Symbiosis

By Jake Ward Posted 07.11.2007 at 6:42 pm 4 Comments

As long as the people who make games continue to be limited to the type of people who play games, they'll never succeed in making the games look cool to the rest of us. But this Halo 3 ad, which debuted during E3 this week, would turn even my grandparents on.

A massive ship blots out the sun in the distance—there's a bit of To Live and Die in L.A. in the cinematography—and earth begins arming itself for war. We're whisked inside the military-industrial complex of tomorrow, where robots forge steel into 22nd-century rifles and floating warships. Then, of course, they have to go and muck it up by throwing in real live human actors dressed for futuristic battle (they instead look like they're in line for a comic-book convention), but hey. It's a step toward Hollywood's movie/videogame/cartoon future. —Jacob Ward

4 Comments

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popsci

07/13/07 at 4:32 am

FYI, its not an ad for Halo 3, it's the first of series of short films directed by Neill Blomkamp, with WETA Workshop and Origami Digital LLC. Yes it mentions Halo 3, and it may be used to promote it to a small degree, but it's not really an ad.
It can be downloaded in HD from Bungie's website: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=ethreeblowout
Scroll down, past the screenshot.
The setting is the Misrah Armories factory on Mars. The warships are thought to be unfinished Marathon class cruisers.
I would disagree with the statement that the marines look like "they're in line for a comic-book convention" I reckon they look pretty good, though the bit at the end where a plasma bolt hits the ground next to a marine was a bit tacky.

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popsci

07/13/07 at 9:11 am

Archaos said what I was going to say, and that is that this is not an ad for the game in any way. This is from the team that was originally developing a feature length Halo film, but now the project has shifted to short films, this one apparently called Arms Race. Great ad, anyway.

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popsci

07/13/07 at 9:45 pm

Haha, I can only imagine if the Halo movie DOES turn out to be like this...

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popsci

07/14/07 at 9:28 pm

BTW, in the Halo universe, those weapons aren't 22nd century but rather around 2550 so 26th century.

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