Warning: This article contains spoilers for Halo episode 1.
Pablo Schreiber, Master Chief, or Spartan-117 on the new Halo TV show, confirms that the Mjolnir suit holds him back in mobility. Spartans wear the Mjolnir armor in the Halo game series as both a suit of body armor and an augmentation to their already incredible physical prowess. A visual staple of the series, especially in the Master Chief’s iconic OD green, the Mark VI armor makes its return in the Paramount + series.
Halo, the game series, follows Master Chief in his and humanity’s initial confrontations with the alien races comprising the Covenant, the parasitic Flood, and later in the series, the Prometheans. The TV series picks up during the former confrontation, with the Covenant attacking a human outpost on the planet Madrigal in the year 2552. The Covenant warriors manage a great deal of damage to the outpost, and a number of casualties happen on the outpost before Schreiber’s Master Chief and the silver Spartan team put a stop to it.
Schreiber confirmed while speaking with Screen Rant, that the show’s armor was difficult to move in. Much like the in-game version of the armor, the Halo TV show’s armor is heavy, though that doesn’t seem to be the problem. Schreiber describes the armor as a key difficulty in portraying Spartan-117’s superhuman acts of power and agility:
“It is. I can confirm. It’s about 55 pounds, but heaviness is actually not the defining feature of the armor. It is the fact that it makes you almost entirely immobile and incapable of movement. So, learning how to move in a way that looks superhuman and super capable while being constricted to such a degree is the defining challenge of our show.”
The immobility mentioned by Schreiber does mean that he will be limited during filming to some degree. The armor, in-universe, weighs significantly more than the TV show’s props, clocking in at around 1,000 pounds. The Spartan-II graduates, including Master Chief, are attached to their armor via a neural link, removing the limitation of weight and mobility that would be felt by any other armor user. Their armor is also run in part by artificial intelligence, like the Cortana intelligence from the games. While Schreiber may not need to deal with a half-ton of bulletproof plating and alloy, he does not have the assistance of his own Cortana or genetic modifications.
While the mobility is no surprise to Halo veterans familiar with Dr. Halsey’s unethical medical procedures, the lack thereof in the TV series is concerning. By limiting Schreiber’s movements, the series will need to think of creative ways to make Spartan-117 feel as powerful and superhuman as the games. Regardless, the Master Chief is still able to save the day in the new Paramount + series, and is prepared to earn the “Demon” title he was given.
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