Pitch Your Movie: Castor’s “Hλlf-Life”

Today, I’m pitching one of my movie in continuation of our month long blogathon (Check the schedule) following the Hollywood Fantasy Draft we conducted recently. Please share your thoughts and any insights you have in the comments and don’t forget to visit the rest of our site!

Previous Pitches:

• Andrew Robinson’s “Untitled Joss Whedon Project“
• Anna’s “Truth and Lies”
• Novroz’s “Sunset Mystery“
• Kai’s “The Time Jumper“
• Peter’s “Untitled Hallstrӧm Project“
• Marc’s “Once Upon a Time in Z-West“
• Ruth’s “Hearts Want“
• Next: Heather on Tuesday

TITLE: HλLF LIFE

LOGLINE

An experiment on a mysterious material sample goes terribly wrong, opening a multidimensional portal that allows aliens from a distant world to invade a remote research facility.

GENRE

Science Fiction

WHY AM I PITCHING THIS MOVIE

Half Life is my favorite game of all time and actually one of the greatest video game ever created. Playing it is very much the same as being in your own movie and as you will read below, the story of the game, as is, is very conducive to be made into a movie franchise (if done right naturally) and I want more people to be aware of that. I am pitching a two-episode movie (with option for more) because there is way too much plot to fit into one movie.

Note: This isn’t my “main” movie pitch so I didn’t draft my cast for this movie and it’s not as much of a pitch than an overall look into the characters and the stories. I will pitch my main movie on September 23rd after I give it some thought and time to develop…

CAST & CHARACTERS

Gordon Freeman (Christian Bale): Gordon is a newly-hired theoretical physicist working at the Black Mesa Research Facility and involved in an experiment which accidentally opens an inter-dimensional portal, releasing confused, hostile creatures into the complex. Gordon doesn’t talk at all in the game so I don’t want him to be too much of a talker in the movie as well. In the first Half-Life, Gordon Freeman fights through the facility alongside fellow employees to get assistance and then close the space-time rift.

In the sequel, Gordon is introduced to a dystopian world twenty years after the Black Mesa incident, along with an inter-dimensional imperial force known as the Combine that took advantage of the inter-dimensional portals and has established itself as the ruling force on Earth. Gordon joins the human resistance fighters and aids them in their struggle against their oppressors.

Adrian Shephard (Mark Ruffalo): Shephard, a U.S. Marine Gunnery Sergeant assigned to the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit from the fictional Santego Military Base in Arizona, is one of the personnel sent into the Black Mesa Research Facility to kill the aliens and later silence the witnesses, more specifically a scientist named Gordon Freeman, the player character in the original game. However, during the events subsequent to the “Resonance Cascade”, Adrian finds himself separated from his unit and fighting for his life.

Unlike the other Marines, he works with the increasingly distrustful scientists and guards in order to make it out of Black Mesa alive. This is because he never received the orders to kill them, as his helicopter was shot down before he received his orders. The G-Man appears to take an interest in Shephard’s movements, even before the Black Mesa Incident. As early as three months prior, Shephard spots the G-Man during a training mission.

The G-Man (Ed Harris): The G-Man is a mysterious recurring character in the Half-Life series who orchestrated the event at Black Mesa by bringing the specific sample to be tested in the Anomalous Material sector and jamming communications lines between the Black Mesa facility and the outside world. The G-Man appears to be a middle-aged white male with a tall and thin physique, pale/chalky skin, dark brown hair shaped in a military-style crew cut. He is known to display peculiar behavior and operates well beyond the capabilities of a normal human as he is obviously not bound by the laws of physics or even space-time, moving to or from other dimensions as he wishes.  His motives remain almost completely unexplained and seem to be completely independent of humankind’s or the Combine. If there was one character that is perfectly here, it’s the G-Man. Ed Harris would be perfect for that role.

Eli Vance (): Dr. Eli Vance is a physicist, researcher, and Harvard graduate, is the leader of the Lambda resistance, Dr. Vance was the first human being to make peaceful contact with the Vortigaunt species and thus the “first collaborator”, quickly persuading the alien race to ally with humanity against the Combine invasion of Earth.

Alyx Vance (Rachel McAdams): Alyx is the daughter of Dr. Eli Vance and is a prominent figure in the human resistance against the rule of the alien race called the Combine and their human representative, Dr. Wallace Breen. She is a close friend and ally of Gordon Freeman and is considered to be the primary heroine of the series.Her mother died in the events following the resonance cascade at Black Mesa. Alyx was only a child when Gordon Freeman was employed at Black Mesa, but Freeman’s 20-yr stasis between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 has erased most of the age gap between the two characters. I want Alyx to be a strong and resourceful person but still manage to convey her feminine side and not be some pseudo-macho female action hero like they usually turn out in most movies so I think Rachel McAdams would not be as miscast as one might initially think here.

Wallace Breen (David Morse): Doctor Breen was the administrator of the Black Mesa Research Facility at the time of the “Black Mesa Incident,” the events depicted in Half-Life, but he was neither seen nor mentioned by name. (He was instead referred to always as “the Administrator.”) After the Seven Hour War, he “negotiated” a peace agreement with the Combine that saved humanity, but at the cost of enslavement. Doctor Breen was appointed as ruler of Earth — a puppet of the Combine, who have little physical presence on the planet.

Barney Calhoun (Russell Crowe): Barney was a security guard at Black Mesa before becoming a key Resistance leader. Barney works as a mole for the Lambda Resistance in the Combine Civil Protection Forces and helps several times over the course of the series. In the game, there is a running joke that he owes Gordon a beer, so let’s have that joke in the movie as well ok?

BRIEF PITCH FOR THE FIRST HλLF LIFE MOVIE

The first Hλlf-Life movie is set in a contemporary setting (say 2010) at the sprawling and secret Black Mesa Research Facility located in an extremely remote part of New Mexico. From the first moment, the movie should emphasize the humongous size of the facility that stretches for miles both above and underground with an advanced tram transit system connecting the various sectors of the facility. Various installations such as an hydroelectric dam, chemical waste treatment plant, dormitories and office complexes pepper the surface of the facility while numerous research laboratories are located deep underground.

Gordon Freeman (Bale) is a recently employed research assistant in the Anomalous Material (sounds familiar?) sector who is on tap to begin an experiment analyzing an unknown crystalline artifact that morning. This experiment however turns awry, knocking Gordon unconscious and triggering a resonance cascade which opens a multi-dimensional space-time rift between Black Mesa and a distant Alien world called Xen. Alien creatures (later called the Vortigaunts) sees the portals as escape routes from their besieged planet and immediately begin to confusedly swarm Black Mesa and kill many of the facility’s personnel.

Gordon awakes in the ruined test chamber. There is fire, smoke, sirens and debris everywhere and he confusedly looks around for help. He sees scientists and staff dead or badly injured all around him and is immediately asked by the few survivors to get to the surface (they are deep underground) to get help for the injured but he soon realizes that the resonance cascade has had effects that reach well beyond the test chamber. Worse, the facility is now overrun with all kind of hostile alien creatures and communication lines are mysteriously jammed. The movie should work on a strong atmosphere of isolation in a gigantic installation that is in complete utter chaos with the few remaining humans hiding and aliens running amok. Think debris everywhere, no power in parts of the facility, collapsed walls and ceilings, witnessing trapped scientist becoming meals for aliens etc… Gordon should also get a few brief sightings of the mysterious G-Man who seems to be monitoring his progress. Freeman’s adventures are based around being directed by one terrified scientist after another, in the hope of getting help and then closing off the rift in space-time that is allowing aliens to overrun the facility.

Simultaneously, the movie should follow the story arc of GySgt Adrian Shephard (Ruffalo), a member of a specialist US Marines unit, the Hazardous Environment Combat Unit (HECU). The HECU is quickly dispatched in to contain the situation and silence the Black Mesa facility. Unfortunately, it becomes quickly apparent that the Marines are there to cover up everything and this includes eliminating any human survivors caught in the crossfire. Shephard and his squad of Marines are shot down before they receive their orders and their helicopter crash land into the midst of the carnage at Black Mesa. Shephard and his men do their best to fight off alien hordes while trying to link with fellow Marines. When the tide of battle turns against the human forces, Sergeant Shephard’s team try to escape the facility, only to be abandoned to their fate by their superiors.

Freeman fights through the facility against both alien creatures and US troops to get to the surface. There he realizes that the Marines are progressively being overwhelmed by the Alien soldiers and are beginning to pull back from the war zone, leaving stranded groups of Marines to meet their fate. He meets with several other scientists and learns that there may be a way to close the portal through which the aliens are invading Black Mesa. They decide to travel to the alien dimension to see what is holding the space-time portal open. On Xen, Freeman eliminates Nihilanth, the alien “leader” who kept the portal open. He is confronted by the G-Man, who offers Freeman employment before putting him into stasis. Back in Black Mesa, a second alien race begins an invasion, but are stopped when Marine GySgt Adrian Shephard and the remains of his squad, collapses their portal in the facility. The G-Man then destroys Black Mesa with a nuclear warhead, and detains Shephard in stasis.

SET UP FOR MOVIE 2

I

The events of the second movie take place twenty years after the Black Mesa incident. During that time, “Portal Storms”, most likely a side-effect from the resonance cascade, formed dimensional rifts between Xen and Earth. These Portal Storms spread outside the confines of what is left of Black Mesa and throughout all of Earth, providing temporary, chaotic, and destructive gateways between Xen and Earth. Alien creatures (from Xen) of all types are teleported all around the globe causing utter fear and chaos to erupt on Earth. The freed Vortigaunts use these portals as a ticket out of Xen and onto Earth, fleeing from the Combine, a multidimensional empire that has been enslaving them.

The Combine, who had been monitoring the situation on Earth since the resonance cascade, finally decides to take action. They launches an all-out assault on Earth to enslave both Vortigaunts and humans in one swoop and prepare the planet for a total Combine migration. They teleport troops and gun-ships through the Portal Storms, and onto Earth. Once there, the Combine uses the same technique that they used on Xen on the humans, building a super-army called the Overwatch out of the combination of the DNA of the most dominant species on Earth (the humans) and Combine technology.

The Overwatch

The primary Citadel is established in City 17. This enormous structure is home to the Earth based Combine control center. Combine armies are produced here as well as vehicles and armaments. Combine presences are established in other cities around the world. While fighting each other, the humans and Combine also have the threat of Nihilianth’s race. The freed Vortigaunts ally with the rebel forces, wanting revenge against the Combine.

The next stage of the Combine’s plan is to appoint former Black Mesa administrator Dr. Wallace Breen as the Administrator of Earth, acting as a puppet leader for the Combine. Breen’s first act is to surrender Earth to the Combine after 7 hours of combat, explaining that the Combine have arrived for good, to immortalize humanity, convinced by the Combine that the loss of life is inevitable in this transition period as Earth joins the Universal Union. After The Portal Storms, mankind is in such chaos and despair that most want to believe in something like this. Ruling by fear, the Combine assure to continue to protect human cities from the outside aliens, and thus fearful humans continue to live in the cities out of fear for their families and themselves. The Overwatch’s brutal oppression begins…

SUMMARY FOR MOVIE 2

The G-Man brings Freeman out of his 20-year stasis and inserts him into this dystopian Earth ruled by the Combine. In the Eastern European settlement City 17, Freeman meets surviving members of the Black Mesa incident, including Barney Calhoun (Crowe), Eli Vance and his daughter Alyx Vance (McAdams), and aids in the human resistance against Combine rule. The Xen aliens, the Vortigaunts, who have been enslaved by the Combine, also assist the resistance. When his presence is made known to Wallace Breen (Morse), Freeman becomes a prime target for the Combine forces.

Gordon continues to slip out of the Combine’s grip and at Nova Prospekt, lands a huge blow against the Combine. This sparks a massive revolution among citizens, who begin a much larger rebellion than before and turn City 17 into a chaotic battlefield. Wallace Breen and the Combine Overwatch try frantically to end the spreading revolution, and the Citadel is put into full attack mode, with Combine soldiers flooding the streets.

Eli Vance and his daughter are subsequently captured by the Combine, and Freeman helps the resistance forces attack the Combine’s Citadel to rescue them. Breen attempts to flee in a teleporter, but is presumed dead after Freeman and Alyx destroy the dark energy reactor at the Citadel’s top. Time stops and the G-Man appears. He comments on Gordon’s successful endeavors and then places his pawn back into stasis.

The G-Man is interrupted when the Vortigaunts liberate Freeman from stasis and place both him and Alyx Vance at the bottom of the Citadel. The two discover that the Combine are attempting to destroy the reactor to call for reinforcements from the Combine’s native dimension. Gordon and Alyx attempt to stabilize the reactor while citizens of the city evacuate. They steal Combine data and then move through the war-torn city to the train station to take the last train out of the city. The Combine destroys the reactor causing a massive explosion that wipes out the entire city and causes the train to derail. Freeman awakens in one of the wrecked train cars with Alyx outside, where a forming superportal is visible from where the Citadel used to stand.

They begin a journey through the White Forest to a resistance-controlled missile base in the nearby mountains. Along the way, Freeman and Alyx are ambushed and Alyx is severely injured. However, a group of Vortigaunts are able to heal her. They are able to reach the resistance base and deliver the data, which contains the codes to destroy the portal as well as information on the Borealis, an enigmatic research vessel operated by Black Mesa’s rival, Aperture Science. The base then launches a satellite that is able to shut down the superportal, cutting off the Combine from outside assistance. However, as Alyx and Freeman prepare to travel to the Arctic and investigate the Borealis, they are attacked by Combine Advisors, who kill Eli Vance before being driven off. The movie ends here open ended for a sequel…

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Source and References

• The Half Life Wikipedia
• The Half Life Saga Story Guide