io9: master chief

Master Chief And Optimus Prime Are Saints Fanboys

Meredith Woerner — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:00:00 PDT

When you have Optimus Prime AND Master Chief cheering from the Superdome, is there really any doubt which team is superior? I have to give it to the New Orleans Saints' fans, they've got great taste and a whole lotta free time. They look fantastic. No word yet if Opty will travel to Detroit to take on his foe Calvin Johnson, otherwise known as Megatron, when the Saints play the Lions in December. We're just one T2 silver unitard away from the best fan base ever, full pics below.

Looks like Optimus has undergone some upgrades over the years. Lookin' good.

[Myspace, SI Fans Of The Week and Geekologie]

Will The Master Chief Be A Movie Star?

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:00:00 PDT

After three different scripts, the Halo movie has fallen into development hell due to "cockblocking" from the control freaks at Microsoft. So screenwriter Stuart Beattie (G.I. Joe) has decided to try and break the logjam by writing a Halo script on spec. Minor spoilers ahead.

Based on the Fall of Reach prequel novel, Beattie's script follows a soldier named John from his conscription into the USNC to his transformation into the Master Chief. Then we see the horrific first contact with the Covenant, leading to the fall of the USNC base on Reach, which only the Master Chief survives. Beattie also has sketched out the plots for two sequels. Now will Microsoft pay attention? [Latino Review, which swears this isn't an April Fools thing.]

Halo's Master Chief Is A Major Literary Figure

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 10:40:23 PST

The books tying in with the Halo game may be bringing younger readers who've never heard of Heinlein to military science fiction, says John Scalzi, author of Old Man's War. We wrote to Scalzi to ask his thoughts about the "milSF" sub-genre's prospects, and he was pretty upbeat, if not quite Souza-esque. His thoughts, below the jump.

David Drake says that the genre of military SF contracted in the late 1990s, due to too many "opportunists" jumping into the genre, and the downsizing of the U.S. military.

I freely admit to being one of those who opportunistically jumped into the genre: I wrote Old Man's War in no small part because I walked into a bookstore in late 2000, saw lots of milSF (including books by what I called the "Three Davids" — Drake, Feintuch and Weber), and said "well, I guess I'll try writing that, then." But since OMW wasn't published until 2005, I can't be blamed for anything that happened before then. Not my fault, dude.

Do you think that the genre has rebounded since then?

My impression at the moment is that military science fiction is doing fine; the sales of the sub-genre are brisk relative to most other SF sub-genres, especially if you expand "milSF" to include the Halo series of books, which are pretty much outselling everything else in SF at the moment (give or take a Star Wars tie-in). We're all still getting our clocks cleaned by fantasy, but that's par for the course these days. But in SF, milSF is chugging along fine.

Is the audience for books like Old Man's War the same as the people who were reading Drake's books in the early 90s?

I'm sure there's overlap; from what we know of OMW's audience it contains a fairly wide spectrum of readers. I'm pretty sure I and David Drake (then and now) share some readers.

Now, if we grant that the Halo books qualify as milSF (which I think we should), I doubt that there's much overlap there at all, since in the early 90s the people who are reading the Halo books today were, like, five. What Drake and other milSF folks can hope for in that case is that the readers of the Halo books do a little stretching and try other books of a milSF bent (i.e., "Hey, this doesn't have Master Chief in it, but it still might be cool.")

Master Chief Takes Backseat In Halo Movie

Kevin Kelly — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:10:13 PST

The Halo video game trilogy has sold quadrillions of copies, spawned spinoff novels, a new strategy game coming out this year, a clothing line, and along the way has solidified itself as a pillar in the gaming community. So why would you make a movie about the game, but change the main character into a supporting character?

Bungie writing director Joseph Stattten oversees all of the writing that goes on for the games that the studio pumps out, and he has a deep knowledge of the storylines as a result. When he was asked if fans would want to see the always armored Master Chief's face in the oft-delayed Halo feature film, he said

I think what it boiled down to with the film was really a question of "Who is the main character of the movie?" Is it the Master Chief or is it somebody else? And over time I think everybody around the table agreed that the Master Chief is best left as the most important supporting cast member.

But what about our beloved hero who we've been through so much with? Looks like he'll be relegated to "emoting" with his body language, since we never see his face throughout the games, and they want to keep that up in the movie.

Where the Master Chief doesn't have a face, but he has a whole body to emote with, whether it's his spine, or his shoulders. or the tilt of his head, or the way he slumps or reloads his weapon. There are these kinesthetic responses that he'll have which will really easily communicate the character and what he's feeling.

In other words, prepare yourself for Halo: The Pantomime.

Interview with Bungie's Joseph Staten [Newsweek]