Halo Reach, Our Generation’s Dirty Dozen February 29, 2012

War movies used to be little more than propaganda to encourage positive support for the country’s war effort. Then, in 1967, The Dirty Dozen was released. It is, to this day, considered one of the greatest war movies of all time, and probably is up there on some lists of the greatest action movies of the last generation.

Based on the bestselling book, The Dirty Dozen told the story of twelve American soldiers during World War II who had been found guilty in a military court-martial and had sentences ranging from death to extended hard labor. Instead of serving their sentences, the military cut them a deal and trained them for a mission to France. Their goal was to break into and eventually destroy a château where several high-ranking Nazi officers were staying and disrupt the Nazi chain of command just before D-Day. It was, by all accounts, a suicide mission. While they were promised exoneration for their crimes if their mission succeeded, if anyone, even anyone in the army, found out their identities or what their mission was, their deal was off and they would be sent back to serve their sentences.

E. M. Nathanson, the author of the original novel, was inspired by the urban legends and rumors that were traded among the soldiers after World War II. He had heard stories about a mythical dirty dozen who were made up of condemned men, and then when he later asked what happened to them he found out that they all perished on their mission. While the US Government and the book’s author readily acknowledge the story as a complete work of fiction, many believe that the story of the dirty dozen was true.

The movie was made after World War II and ironically enough many actors who had served in war through various branches of the armed forces brought that experience to their role. Lee Marvin, who starred in the picture and was the soldier assigned to lead the dozen had been a Marine. Ernest Borgnine, who played a General responsible for overseeing the mission, had been in the Navy. (Yes, McHale really was in the Navy.) As for members of the dozen, Clint Walker had been a Merchant Marine, Charles Bronson and Telly Savallas were in the Army. You can tell that war experience was influential when seeing the actors in their roles. The people who watched him on the movie’s set said Marvin’s performance was “…all Marine” and watching him in the role, you can tell.

Everything about that movie worked in its favor, and it turned out to be a fantastic picture which pulled no punches in its graphic depiction of war. Many believed that something like it could never had been made again. Even the three direct to television sequels of The Dirty Dozen failed to reach anything near the acclaim of the first movie.

In 2010, Halo Reach was released.

Here was the story of six soldiers, called the Noble Team, of extremely differing backgrounds forced to fight in a war with overwhelming odds against them. Just like the dozen, they never had the chance to get to know each other very well. Only five of them knew each other, Noble Six was a recent replacement for a squad member who had died. They also never trained together. Noble Five, (Jorge) was part of the SPARTAN-II program, the same program that produced John-117, the Master Chief. The others were part of the controversal SPARTAN-III program, which was made up of revenge motivated orphans of war. They were developed in secret after the success of the SPARTAN-II program, in a way to be more cost-effective they were not given training or armor nearly as good as the SPARTAN-IIs had, as, like the dirty dozen, they were considered expendable.

One thing I found interesting was that Halo Reach and The Dirty Dozen were both shot in the same aspect ratio. While this could be played off as a mere coincidence, Bungie did also make Halo 3 and Halo 3 ODST for the Xbox 360, and chose to Letterbox those game’s cinematics, so that they would have black bars even when displayed on a widescreen HDTV. In Halo Reach, the cinematics are not letterboxed, and display at the same aspect ratio as the rest of the game, which ironically enough is the aspect ratio The Dirty Dozen has.

Like The Dirty Dozen, Halo Reach cast members did have military experience. Noble Two (Kat) was played by Alona Tal, who, according to the game’s Legendary Commentary, had served in the Israeli Defense Forces. Heck one of the guys who played a soldier in the game, Ron Livingston (who you probably remember from Office Space) had some experience. He went through military basic training (probably in preparation for Band of Brothers), and the Reach developers remarked that he did the whole recording session while in character (even calling the people at Bungie, “Sir”). When they asked him why he did that, he said he had to since that was how he was trained.

Just to warn you guys right now, I’m going to wrap this article up with some spoilers. As those of you who have played through the game, you know that one by one, the members of Noble Team are killed in action. The game’s promotional material, as well as very early foreshadowing in the first cinematic of the game makes it clear to the player, that Noble Team is on a suicide mission, not because of choice, but out of necessity for the survival of the human race.

It would be a lie to assume that everyone in a war would simply be able to walk away from it just because they’re likable. The Dirty Dozen dared to show that to people at a time when other movies kept that away from audiences. Forty years later, it would take a video game to bring that same message to the next generation.