Red vs. Blue (2003)

Genre

science fiction film, science fiction comedy

Country

United States

Length

19 seasons, 351 episodes

Rated

TV-14

Rating

7.5 of 10 from 82 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Two teams of soldiers are stuck in a remote box canyon, fighting a pointless civil war. They bicker and get into absurd situations while the real nature of their mission is gradually revealed.

comedicsatiricallightheartedabsurdtalkyself-awarewittyplayful

What happens

Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is an American animated web series created by Burnie Burns with his production company Rooster Teeth. The show is based on the setting of the military science fiction first-person shooter series and media franchise Halo. The series centers on two opposite teams fighting in an ostensible civil war—shown to actually be a live fire exercise for elite soldiers—in the middle of Blood Gulch, a desolate box canyon, in a parody of first-person shooter video games, military life, and science fiction films. Red vs. Blue emerged from Burns' voice-over gameplay videos of Bungie's First-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved. The series is primarily produced using the machinima technique of synchronizing video footage from a game to pre-recorded dialogue and other audio. Footage is mostly from the multiplayer modes of Halo: Combat Evolved and its followups on the Xbox consoles. Initially intended to be a short series of six to eight episodes, the project quickly and unexpectedly achieved significant popularity following its premiere on April 1, 2003. The series consists of twenty seasons and six mini-series. The series concluded with the final season, Red vs. Blue: Restoration, which was originally released as a feature-length movie on May 7, 2024, with an episodic version later released on November 16, 2025. The series has been generally well-received. Praised for its originality, the series has won four awards at film festivals held by the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences. It has also won the award for "Best Animated Web Series" from the International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV). It also won a 2013 Webby Award for Animation, as well as nominated in 2014. It has been credited with popularizing machinima and gaining the medium mainstream exposure. Graham Leggat, former director of communications for Lincoln Center's film society, described Red vs. Blue as "truly as sophisticated as Samuel Beckett". Rooster Teeth created episodes, some under commission from Microsoft, for special events. The voice actors from Red vs. Blue appear in cameos for Halo 3 and Halo 4. The series is also referenced in Halo: Reach and Halo Infinite. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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