Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Director: Matt Reeves
Writer: Mo Buck & Dominic Wilkins
Based on the video game series
Prequel to Halo
Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Robin Wright, Clive Owen, Sarah Gadon, Keri Russell, Josh Holloway, Ciaran Hinds, Lee Pace, Milla Jovovich, Letitia Wright, Chadwick Boseman
Plot: In a distant future, by about thirty years before the events of Halo, a much younger Dr. Catherine Halsey (Robin Wright) presents the SPARTAN project to Lieutenant Jacob Keyes (Clive Owen), on board of the Han, a UNSC diplomatic shuttle. The human race has tried twice before, to create super-soldiers, the first one failed after the subjects died and the second tentative succeeded, but ended after they were deemed dangerous and the program was too expensive to maintain. She managed to get the financing this time, and she wants to relaunch the program, but not by taking existing soldiers, by taking young children who have a rare gene that would make them able to sustain the armor the SPARTANs wear. She said she found one of these kids, here on Eridanus II, in Elysium City. Before they leave the Han, she takes a clone by the hand, a small child and carries it with her to the outside.
In Elysium City, Catherine, the clone and Keyes don’t lose their time, despite the jaw-dropping landscape and the wonderful, advanced city. They head straight to an elementary school, where Catherine uses a device to find a kid who looks exactly like the clone she takes with her. She finds him, a head taller than everyone, playing alone, building a sandcastle, all innocent and young. She tells the clone that he’s now called John. She orders Keyes to take the real kid with them and to leave the clone in the playground. Nobody saw anything and to leave with the real John. Halsey administers him a powerful sedative, she he won’t be a problem.
When they get back on the Han, Halsey and Keyes enter a dark room with a chair lit by a spotlight, where they sit John and wake him up. She tells Keyes that she wants to test his alleged high intellect and verbomotor skills. She tells John that he doesn’t need to panic and he doesn’t. She enters the room and she takes John’s coin. She says she’s going to flip it in the air and he has to guess on which side it will land. She flips it and John gets up his chair, catches and the coin and correctly guesses the side. Halsey congratulates him and says he can keep the coin. She looks at Keyes, smiling. She sedates John once again and they put him to bed. They are joined by Officer Frank Mendez (Josh Holloway). She presents Frank to Keyes, he’ll be the one in charge of the training of the future SPARTANS, alongside, Déjà (Keri Russell), an AI. He will teach team, courage, teamwork, skill, combat skills, athleticism and much more, no matter what the price is. If they die during the process, it’s because they were too weak and didn’t deserve their SPARTAN armor. Keyes is shocked by all of this, but he has no choice but the approve. The upside is too big to pull the plug, but anyways, it’s too late, everything is already financed.
A couple of months later, Halsey, Keyes and Mendez are back on Reach, where the SPARTAN-II program is based. She has kidnapped 75 little boys and girls for her program. In a montage, we see Mendez and Déjà training the soon-to-be SPARTANs and they don’t go easy on them, almost like a concentration camp, all of this under the watchful eye of Dr. Catherine Halsey. It’s now time for their first training mission outside the facility. They will throw them in Reach’s wild without any map and they’ll need to come back to the facility on their own. Déjà will monitor their every move, so no freestyling and no violence will be tolerated. Keyes thinks it’s almost cruel to send them out there with nothing, but he believes in Halsey Mendez to make these young kids the next race of super soldiers.
On February 3rd 2525, a mysterious ship enters the orbit of a Earth colony called Harvest, an agricultural world, the most remote Earth colony at the time of its founding, to the bafflement of the population. The authorities send three ships to initiate the first contact protocol, initiated years ago. Vice Admiral Preston Cole (Ciaran Hinds) as the honor to be the first one to initiate contact with extraterrestrials. He leaves with the Heracles, the Arabia and the Vostok. When he tries to initiate contact, the ship fires at them destroying both the Vostok and the Arabia. Preston Cole retreats with the Heracles and he makes a space jump directly to Earth, where he meets with member of the government who are less than happy with his decision to run to Earth like that. Together, they set up the Cole Protocol, which is a series of measures to make sure that we don’t give out the Earth’s location in case of contact with hostile aliens. When they are done, they give him an entire fleet with only one mission in mind, reclaim the Harvest colony and stop the Covenant advance.
During the mission, some of the kids are uncomfortable and want to give up, but under John’s leadership, they move on forward. They separate into groups and they cartograph their surroundings, until a small group spotted two Pelicans nearby. John, the de-facto leader believes it would be for the best to take the Pelicans, they already know how do pilot them, thanks to Mendez’ training. From afar, Halsey is satisfied with John’s performance and she already sees big things coming for him. The young trainees arrive at the facility unharmed, to the joy of Halsey and Mendez. Franklin sees John playing with his coin, his last remaining souvenir of his home planet. Mendez takes it, he doesn’t live in the past anymore.
Jacob Keyes has to leave the Reach installations to serve in the UNSC. He’s been promoted to Commander and he assumes command of the UNSC Iroquois. He leaves Halsey and Mendez with a heavy heart, but he says he trusts them to develop the next kind of super soldiers. Halsey takes Keyes out for a walk before he leaves. She says she knows their relationship is over, but they still need to discuss about their daughter’s future. She has the genes to become a SPARTAN and Catherine called her to other day, just after she graduated from military school and offered her to become a SPARTAN, but refused. She can’t believe her mother would ask something like that to her own daughter, since then she refused to talk to her. Halsey says that she could force her to do it, but she wanted to ask Jacob to ask her first. Jacob says she’s completely out of her mind and he won’t ever let her touch his their daughter again. He will place her in protection and he doesn’t want to hear about it ever again.
Some time later, Halsey signals the beginning of the augmentation procedures, where the now young teens will have their strength increased by three times, the reaction times improved, their bones rendered practically indestructible, the increase of blood flow to the eyes to allow them to see in the dark and a catalytic thyroid implant which will accelerate their development, a procedure invented and perfected by Halsey herself. She is skeptical about it though, only the strongest will survive the procedure. Over the course of next weeks, several teens are subject to the operation, about half them die, she’ll have to do with the remaining group. The only unexpected outcome of the surgery, a radical change in appearance, which makes them look much older than they really are. Halsey then takes a break and gives total control of the SPARTANs to Mendez, she needs to work on something on her own.
The space battle between the UNSC and the Covenant is completely one-sided. Even with Preston Cole’s intelligent tactics, for every Covenant ship destroyed, three UNSC are destroyed, which is far from good for the human race. The moral is at an all-time low and the UNSC loses every battle. Despite the bummed out attitude of his soldiers, Preston does everything he can to keep them on board. On his end, Keyes was going in a battle that he really thinks he can win. His heavy ship the Iroquois, against two Covenant frigates. But he was surprised to see that there was four ships when he arrived. What he did next saved the life of many. He dodged the missiles launched by two frigates and hit full speed with the missiles trailing them. Keyes launched a nuclear warhead in that appeared to be the wrong direction. He then hit the destroyer with his ship and he brutally changed his trajectory. The trailing missiles hit the destroyer instead, destroying it. Keyes used its momentum to slingshot around a planet. The nuke explodes damaging the two frigates and when he completes the orbit around the planet, he fires at the vulnerable ships to earn the first UNSC victory. The fourth ship, a carrier fled the scene. This tactic, dubbed the Keyes Loop promoted him to captain, but heavily damaged the Iroquois, prompting him to go to the nearest human colony, Reach.
Halsey is back from her hiatus. Following the rejection by Miranda, she went in a retreat and worked on something else, a new AI, she named her Cortana (Sarah Gadon). She designed her based on herself a, her knowledge and her experiences. She shaped her like her own daughter, a daughter she’ll never have thanks to Miranda’s rejection. Keyes reunites with Halsey and Mendez. They show him the rapid progress they made during his absence. They split the SPARTANs in teams, the best one is clearly the blue team, composed of John-117 (Alexander Skarsgard), James-005 (Lee Pace), Linda-058 (Letitia Wright) and Kelly-087 (Milla Jovovich). But what Keyes didn’t know is that the Covenant followed him to Reach and are now attacking the planet. The marines were able to defeat the small group of Covenants. Keyes asks Halsey and Mendez to take the SPARTANs with him to fight the war, but they refuse, stating that they aren’t ready yet. Keyes takes them with him anyway. As an act of defiance, Mendez leaves the planet. Halsey finally agrees after Jacob promises her to talk to Miranda about talking to her mother again. Halsey says Cortana is staying with her, she'll be able to communicate with John, he's the chosen one. They all board the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, the biggest ship on Reach and they leave. Halsey remains on Reach.
When the Pillar of Autumn gets in space, they are surprised by 314 Convenant ships entering the system. Keyes decides to turn back and to retreat on Reach. Keyes activates the Cole Protocol, which means that nobody can leave for Earth and that every data leading to Earth must be destroyed John-117 comes up to him, based on Cortana’s advice. He wants his team to take a smaller ship within the Pillar of Autumn, a Pelican and to go activate the auto-destroy function on the Circumference, a ship docked in a orbital station. Keyes accepts, so John, Linda, Kelly and James leave. On his end, Keyes and his crew land back on Reach to defend the installations while the Orbital Defense Platforms try to destroy the Covenant fleet. Keyes is able to destroy a couple of ships while going down, but as a hard time navigating through the falling Covenant ships destroyed by the Orbital Platform. John and the rest of Blue Team zig zag through the battlefield and try to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. As the Pillar of Autumn lands awkwardly on Reach, John crashes his Pelican on the station on which the Circumference is docked.
The battle is well underway on Reach ‘s surface. The Covenant are dominating the UNSC, even with the SPARTANs, who are vastly underprepared for a real-time combat situation. Most of them are killed in action. Dr. Halsey is still running, trying to find a safe spot to hide. She finds an underground facility that nobody has ever seen before. She opens the door and descends in the tunnel. She makes sure to close the door behind her. John and the Blue Team are able to kill Covenants around the Circumference. They’re surprised to see that some Marines are already there, led by Sergeant Johnson (Chadwick Boseman). Together, they enter the Circumference after they clear the platform. They’re surprised to see that Covenant were able to enter and Linda is fatally shot in the back of the head by an enemy. They kill the entire Covenant contingent and activate the auto-destruction protocol. When they try to get out, they’re ambushed by Covenant. With the help of Cortana, John is able to find a way out, but unfortunately, not everyone is able to make it out in time, including James and Kelly. James explodes with the Circumference, but Kelly gets out at the last second. She’s unable to speak and Johnson and John think she’s dead. They get on Johnson’s ship and they go down on Reach. Kelly, the only remaining member Blue Team except John steals a Covenant ship and flies away to the unknown.
When they land on Reach, the situation isn’t looking good for the UNSC. The Covenant have the upper hand and most of the SPARTANs are dead. The Covenant managed to deactivate the Orbital Defense Platforms and now everyone is landing on Reach. Everyone gathers on the Pillar of Autumn. John is shot on his way in, so Keyes and Johnson carry him in, while Cortana fights to keep him alive. Johnson places him on a cryogenic pod to heal his wounds. Keyes removes Cortana from John’s helmet and inserts her to be the Pillar’s AI. She calculates a random itinerary and they fly away.
The Covenant continue to fight against the UNSC on Reach. Halsey is hiding on the ground. She feels the ground shaking and she holds tight to a picture of her daughter. She’s relieved to know that she found a safe place with all that chaos, or else she’d be dead. She finds a small work desk with scientific installations and she starts to work on something to send a signal to say she’s still alive.
The Pillar of Autumn finally stops traveling at the speed of light. Keyes looks ahead and doesn’t recognize where they are. He receives a message, ordering him to go back to Reach. They need to retrieve Cortana, a team is extracting her. It's a really important matter, she's too important and knows too much to be captured by the enemy. Keyes turns the ship around and once again activates hyper-speed.
Post-Credit Scene : Halsey awakens in her cell. After another séance of interrogation at the hands of the mysterious ONI man who knows too much about the SPARTAN-II program and everything immoral she did to get in underway. She’s transferred to the UNSC Infinity at the same time John is leaving the Infinity to transfer to another sector thanks to Admiral Hood (John Slattery)’s orders. When she’s escorted to her cell, she sees Sarah Palmer (Sophie Turner) and she looks at her with interest. The ship is then boarded by Jul ‘Mdama’s contingent and they manage to kidnap Halsey. Just before she boards ‘Mdama’s ship, Palmer manages to shoot her in the shoulder, tearing her arm off. ‘Mdama says they’re going to take care of her, but he needs her to help them. Halsey accepts.
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