Fire Up The Warthog!

I've never heard of South African director Neil Blomkamp, nor his award-winning sci-fi short Alive in Joburg, nor of the feature film that led to, District 9, which is set for release this August. I have, however, heard of Peter Jackson, and his refusal to direct (but agreement to executive-produce) a film version of the Xbox phenomenon Halo. Halo: The Movie never made it far past the greenlight room, reportedly because Universal and Fox didn't want to approve something so expensive without Jackson directing. The story goes that Jackson put forward Neil Blomkamp's name to helm Halo. The studio response: "Who's going to watch a film directed by Neil Blomkamp?"

Judging by this trailer, a lot of people - myself included.

If District 9 holds up to the quality promised in that clip, I'd look forward to the same director's version of Halo. There hasn't been a good military sci-fi film since Aliens, so we're long overdue. What I would not look forward to is Halo by Peter Jackson, mostly because of his disturbing love of melodrama, amply demonstrated in weird plot additions to The Lord of the Rings that didn't so much render the story more accessible as they did cause my ears to bleed. If Jackson made Halo, he'd probably do something like have Cortana download into a hot human body so that her and the Master Chief could get jiggy with it. And let's face it, their love is strange enough as it is. (Cortana is an artificial intelligence. And the Master Chief is a cyborg, so can he even, I mean, you know?)

But hey! There's a new sci-fi film coming soon, and it promises very good things, so let's all be happy and wait for August (and hope it screens locally).