Halo Hires A Director

By Josh Tyler: 2006-08-09 00:00:00

A few hours ago an item apparently appeared on Microsoft's official Xbox site claiming that a director had been chosen for their upcoming, much anticipated Halo movie. The guy listed there was Niell Blomkamp, a real nobody with no experience directing anything like a feature film.

One problem though. Within just a couple of hours of posting the story, it's vanished from Microsoft's site. No worries, now it's back and it's right Here.

Here's an excerpt:

"The Halo motion picture will be helmed by Neill Blomkamp, making his feature film debut. Blomkamp is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and original artists currently working in short films and commercial advertising. Halo will be distributed domestically by Universal and internationally by Fox. Visual effects, miniatures, and creature design and creation will all be handled by Jackson's award-winning Weta Digital Ltd. and Weta Workshop, Ltd., most recently known for their Oscar-worthy work on The Lord of the Rings films.

A native of South Africa, Blomkamp directed the acclaimed 2005 short film, Alive in Joburg, that depicted a future in which extraterrestrials have become refugees. Last year, Blomkamp also received three Clio Awards and a Visual Effects Society Award for his television commercial Citroen-Alive with Technology. In 2004, Blomkamp was recognized as "One of the Top Five Directors to Watch" at the First Boards Awards and was a featured artist at the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase at Cannes. He has also been nominated for an Emmy award for his work on an episode of James Cameron's Dark Angel."

So who the hell is Blomkamp? He's a visual effects artist, specifically a specialist in photo-real computer animation. He's never directed anything outside of commercials floating around as cute You Tube clips. Connect the dots people. If this is really the guy they've chosen to direct it, it seems extremely possible that the Halo movie will be using a lot of computer animation. Master Chief is probably going to be CGI. Maybe it won't be Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the release does after all reference miniatures, but hiring a guy like this means you're making an effects first, story second movie.

Up until now this has been a project with fantastic potential. That potential has been drastically diminished right here. This should be a massive, epic, science fiction movie. Instead, we might be getting high resolution in-game cut scenes.

What a waste if that's true. If they were going this route, they might as well have hired the guys from Red Vs. Blue to direct it. At least the fans would have been behind it.

Halo's still happening, but most of the excitement over the project just got sucked right out of it. Several other sites are now reporting that they've gotten a confirmation from Universal, so it seems likely that even though Microsoft pulled it from their site, this is for real.

Still, the guy at least has a flair for realistic looking computer animation. This is better than getting stuck with Uwe Boll or Paul W.S. Anderson. Check some examples of Blomkamp's effects work below and hold off on total despair for just a little bit longer. Maybe Blomkamp is worth giving a chance.