Red Vs. Blue's Matt Hullum On Bringing The 21-Year-Old Series To An End In RvB: Restoration

Red Vs. Blue: Restoration is the feature-length conclusion to the 21-year-long series that was written by Burnie Burns and directed by Matt Hullum. The Red Vs. Blue series started with Burnie Burns’ voiceovers over Halo gameplay clips before evolving into its own popular web series as a Machinima and then an Unreal Engine production.

[WARNING: The following interview contains major story spoilers for Red Vs. Blue: Restoration.]

After the series’ four-year break, Red Vs. Blue Restoration sees one of the universe’s greatest villains, The Meta, returning in a terrifying new form, forcing the remaining Reds and Blues of Blood Gulch to set aside their differences to save the galaxy one last time. Screen Rant sat down with Matt Hullum, co-founder of Rooster Teeth Productions who voices Sarge, Doc, and Wyoming and has served as a director, writer, producer, and editor throughout Red Vs. Blue‘s run to discuss bringing the beloved series to an end, and reflect on some of the best moments he has had both from interacting with the fans and his time working on the show.

Screen Rant: Red Vs. Blue: Restoration was announced last year as a finale and certainly ties everything up with some satisfying send-offs to beloved characters, but earlier this year you had to change the structure from a final season to a feature film due to Warner Bros Discovery announcing the closure of Rooster Teeth. Can you talk a bit about that process and did it impact the story plans at all? Were there specific parts you had to cut for time, or did you manage to get all that you wanted in there?

Matt Hullum: I mean, actually, we wrote it as a feature, so for us, it was intended to be a feature, but then we had thought about along the way how we were going to break it up into natural chapters that felt intentional for a web release, because we do like doing both and I thought that has been one of the innovations that we’ve prided ourselves on with Red Vs. Blue over the years, is that it basically had to come out as an episodic release in the old days, like, in the really old days back in 2003, because we couldn’t even upload a file that big if it was going to be a feature. It’s just like, the infrastructure of the Internet wouldn’t allow that, and people would be downloading for days on end just to try to get it, so you know, it was little quick times back then.

So, like, in 2003, I think there was the intention and kind of the thought process that we wanted to make the season feel like one continuous story that had a nice arc and flowed in a serialized way, even though they were broken up into episodes, and for this release, you know, fast forward to 2023, now 2024, you know, we were really thinking about, like, “oh, let’s write this as a feature, but make sure that people who prefer to experience it as episodes, that there’s a path for that, too.” and, of course, with the way things turned out, you’re only seeing it as a feature now, which is, I guess, ironic. I don’t know what the right word is, is for that. I need to go back to our treatise on irony that we did in Season Two and kind of re-understand what this all means.

But, yeah, I feel like this is the most feature-like a Red Vs. Blue release has been. You know, if you bought the DVD’s in the past of the old seasons, you’d see them cut together as features. We always took the episodes and cut them together as features and depending on the season, that worked better or worse depending on how it had been structured.

But this one from the beginning, it was intended to feel like a feature and I think with what we did with the music and the mix and the way it’s kind of framed overall, that it feels like that to people.

Because I have now watched it many times, as you can imagine and it feels appropriately like a feature to me, so I’m excited to get people’s reactions to that part of it and have people experience something that they have known and loved for a long time, but hopefully in a way that feels new to them.

Screen Rant: Yeah, absolutely. I watched it and I thought it flowed as a feature really well, so I fully get that.

One of the most shocking moments for me in restoration was the death of Sarge.

Matt Hullum: Did you cry? Did you get a few tears going?

Screen Rant: There was definitely a sniffle or two! What was it like for you to come to that decision after all of these years, and even having him go back to save Caboose, a Blue no less! Was that something that was discussed fairly early on when planning Red Vs. Blue: Restoration?

Matt Hullum: Yeah, definitely. You know, there were some things, I think, about the story that Bernie and I just instinctively knew we needed to do in order to have closure and also in order for the story to feel like it has real stakes. I mean, that’s a big difference, right, between, you know, a feature presentation like this and an episodic show is, you know, you feel like everything resets every time when you’re watching, you know, a tv show or web content or whatever, and we wanted this to feel like these characters are, they have real stakes. There’s real danger and real urgency to their situation and at the end of it, for the characters and the audience, hopefully, to have closure on what’s been a really unique 21-year experience and ride.

It was one of those things I think where I don’t remember who said it first, you know, between me and Bernie [Burns], but I think it was just one of those things that’s like, we both knew that that had to happen and when it had to happen in the story, in that it needed to reveal something about Sarge’s character and about the larger themes around Red Vs. Blue and, you know, who they are, how they relate to each other and what it, you know, what it says about all of us and what the theme of Red Vs. Blue is where our differences aren’t as big as they make us, as we make them out to be, that kind of theme. We wanted that to really resonate here in this last release.

Screen Rant: Absolutely. I thought that was very powerful at the end with the final moments as they’re flying away and Caboose thanks him and Sarge says his goodbyes to the others.

Matt Hullum: Yeah, we did have a really hard time. We did have a really hard time coming up with Sarge’s final line.

Screen Rant: Yeah, I can imagine.

Matt Hullum: We had a lot of great ones. One of the ones I think Bernie threw out was reusing an old Sarge quote where he says, “Today feels like a good day to die”, but he just says, “Today feels like a good day…”, and then just drifts off, you know, which I think was pretty great, but we didn’t want to make you laugh right in that moment and thought it might have made you laugh. Then mine… That was really inappropriate. Mine was just he holds his hand out to Griff and says, “Pull my finger”. That wouldn’t have been good. Humorously inappropriate. So you got the more serious, more subdued, more emotional ending there for Sarge.

Screen Rant: I think it was really well done. As I said, for me, I was shocked. It was a moment where I was sort of like “Oh, yeah, this really is the end.” Obviously, I knew going in that it was a finale, but that was sort of a moment where it cemented that for me.

Matt Hullum: You’ll be equally shocked to know I’m announcing a red versus blue spinoff. It’s called, it’s called Zombie Sarge! Back for the dead. Back from the dead for one more blast… And no, we’re not doing that. [Laughs]

Screen Rant: Ah! Had me sitting here as a journalist salivating like “I’ve got a scoop!” [Laughs]

Matt Hullum: [Laughs] Yeah, he’s only undead in our hearts.

Screen Rant: So on a more lighthearted note, Red Vs. Blue: Restoration opens with a scene in Retro Convention with some “totally not fansplainers”. What have been some of your favorite or most amusing interactions with fans over the years?

Matt Hullum: Oh, man, we’ve had so many good ones over the years. I was just thinking the other day about how crazy it is that we’ve had people get married and engaged in front of us in the Halo suits as RvB characters getting engaged and having kids, you know, and the kids growing up, I mean, if you had a kid our first season, and many did, I mean, we did, you know, me and Bernie and Geoff [Ramsey], like, all of had kids early on and they’re all grown now. We had people bring, you know, their babies to meet us and tell them how they would watch Red Vs. Blue in the middle of the night when the baby would cry and they’d get up, and now those babies are 21 years old.

So, you know, we’ve had everything. I mean, I love when we have moments where, like, fans point out stuff to us about the story that we maybe hadn’t thought of or considered or things that were meaningful to them and speeches in Red Vs. Blue that they really took home and we wanted people to have like, a lot of those kind of, like, lasting moments.

I mean, the one, you know, kind of bummer about what’s going, you know, where we are now is that we won’t be able to go out and experience, you know, some of that, that interaction with people, you know, since there’s not another RTX to be had. So, you know, but I will be reading the comments online and look forward to, you know, what people have to say about this one and I hope it brings it all home for everybody.

Screen Rant: Yeah, it certainly did for me, so hopefully, everyone else feels the same.

Despite telling its own story, Red Vs. Blue is intrinsically linked to the Halo franchise, starting with Burnie’s voiceovers over gameplay before turning into a Machinima, and then becoming its own Unreal Engine production, and you’ve done official crossovers too. With Red Vs. Blue being around since the very first Halo game, have you had a favorite game in the series to either work with as part of the show, or just to play as a fan?

Matt Hullum: Oh, my answer for both is probably
Halo 3
.

Screen Rant: Yes! That’s my favorite too!

Matt Hullum: Yeah, I mean, I love it. I mean, I love all the Halo games. One thing that’s been really fun for me, I keep talking about kids and stuff, but it’s so linked to me is the experience is that, like, in the progression of making Red Vs. Blue, my older son has started playing Halo with me and we would do the campaigns together and now he is good at Halo and I’m terrible. I like. I mean, I can do head bobs for machinima and do my puppeteering for machinima and move the characters around to have them look like they’re doing something dumb, but in the game, I just get slaughtered.

There was actually one time when Halo 2 was about to come out and Bungie was still making the game.

At that point they were very nice to us and invited us up to see Halo 2 before it was released and we asked, oh, well, can we record a little bit of stuff? So we recorded some episode stuff for… I think that was season three of Red Vs. Blue in Halo 2 before it came out.
But we were on their land, on their internal network playing and we didn’t realize that there were Bungie employees that were on with us in the game. We would set up our characters to do this big scene and get all ready and then somebody would snipe us and the characters would die, like right when they’re about to say their line like, “What is going on?” Then eventually we came out of this little room that we were in.
We were huddled up and we saw there was, you know, a bunch of Bungie employees that were just laughing at us. This prank that they were playing on us the entire time. [Laughs]

I don’t know where we started in this question, but love Halo 3. I’ve loved all the Halo games. I think we have used or tried to use every Halo game in one way or another and I guess somebody’s gonna prove me wrong about that, but we’ve tried to and we’ve enjoyed that because they’ve all been different. They’ve all had challenges in terms of the machinima aspect of it, but also, you know, we’ve discovered fun things like, when we started this, I hadn’t been on that map that we used for the opening before, and I didn’t know that they had those space roosters running around on that map. So we really liked that map and then saw the space roosters and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is meant to be” like, we’re definitely using this.

So you never know how those serendipitous things are going to come out about and they were so fun. The other thing is, like, each level, you know, each map means so much to so many people. People feel like they have their favorites and those places are like places they know in real life, you know what I mean? Blood Gulch and Zanzibar and, like, those places, like, those are, those are like going home to people, you know?
So I felt like we’ve always enjoyed shooting in them because it’s almost like when somebody films a movie in your, in your neighborhood. It feels so personal, you know? So I hope people get the same experience out of this one. We had more maps that were kind of constructed in Unreal Engine this time, but we also have some maps straight out of the game and things like that. So it’s a really fun mix, I think.

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Screen Rant: That kind of runs into my next question, actually. The Halo series has changed and evolved so much since its debut in 2001, particularly with some of the story and the direction some of the characters have taken following the move from Bungie to 343 Industries. What are your thoughts on the status and trajectory of the Halo game franchise at the moment and is there anything in particular you’d like to see from it going forward?

Matt Hullum: I’d love more like a co-op campaign in person, you know, that functionality I love. I mean, have loved every single Halo game and I’m excited for everything that they continue to release. Like I said, it’s so much fun for me now because, you know, my kids play with me and that’s like the best thing of all.

But I think they’ve done a great job developing new bad guys and filling out the world. It’d be interesting to see if the
games connect with the TV show
in a big way or, you know, other things like that happen. To me, Halo is like Star Wars, you know, it’s that big of an idea and a universe, and I think there’s just so much more that they could continue to do in other places, other areas, with other teams like you had with Reach, and other things like that where you just keep going and expand and find new corners of that really cool universe to explore. I don’t know what they’re going to do next. I have no idea, but, you know, I’ll be a fan waiting for it like everybody else.

Screen Rant: Yeah absolutely! So back to Red Vs. Blue! With the showreceiving such acclaim over the years from Webby Awards and being credited by many for bringing more mainstream popularity to the Machinima movement in its early days, what are your personal highlights from working on the series?

Matt Hullum: Well, we’ve got to see so much of the world and meet so many people because of it, and I think that has been the most amazing thing. In the first few years, in many ways, it was viewed as, like an avant-garde art project, and we were getting invited to all of these artistic institutes and museums, and we did that, like the museums in New York and Germany and Italy and just really all over France. Then as it evolved and it felt like it was more of a staple piece of entertainment, you know, getting invited to every corner of the world. Australia and New Zealand have been really great to us over the years, and Canada and UK and the rest of Europe.

I can’t even believe this now, looking back on it, but one of the first licensing deals we ever did for Red Vs. Blue is it got redistributed in Russia and was dubbed into Russian back in, like, probably, like, 2005 or something. And then, you know, and all over the place, I mean, there’s been so many, but it’s been really fun to think, like, this game where a lot of people play it, you know, in isolation, really, like many you play games, has actually gotten us out of the house! [Laughs] But it led us all over the world to meet a lot of people who are doing the same thing and t
hat spirit of community has been really amazing, and I think inspired us to keep going over the years and is also why we wanted this release to, you know, put a real button on the series and be a thank-you gift to all the fans who have stayed with us over the years.

Screen Rant: So… the Ferris Bueller post-credit scene. Can’t go wrong with a Bueller homage.

Matt Hullum: That was just something that Jason [Saldaña] and I did in the booth when he was recording. I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but, you know, we were just talking about recording for the last time, final lines and stuff like that, and started riffing on that and, and it was, it was fun.

And it’s just great to work with folks like him because he’s got a great sense of humor and great personality, and I feel like that’s been a strength that Red Vs. Blue has had is just that great group of people that we’ve hopefully found opportunities to let their personalities come through and shine in the series. So, you know, if you like what Jason did or, you know, Kathleen [Zuelch] or Geoff or Gus [Sorola] or whomever, you know, there’s, like, a lot of everybody’s personality in the show.

Screen Rant: It specifically said in that scene, “Red Vs. Blue is over”. After 21 years, how does it feel to have that closure on the show, or are there stories or are there more stories you wish you could have told or things you could have done differently looking back?

Matt Hullum: Oh, sure. I mean, there’s always things like, “Oh, gosh, I wish I’d done that or changed that” or, “We could have spent a few more hours on this thing or that”, but it’s like, all that goes and is water under the bridge after 21 years.

I mean, the main thing is to be able to have that long a career making something that people enjoyed, you know, as they have and touch people’s lives as it has. It’s amazing. It’s an amazing stroke of luck and a gift, and I’m really thankful for it. You don’t ever expect to have something like that come along in your life so I’m incredibly appreciative for what it’s brought to my life and my family’s life and all the people that I work with. It’s just been great. So I’ve got no complaints…
Except I always hated doing interviews. Other than that, everything’s been great. [Laughs] No, I’m just kidding.

Screen Rant: With Red Vs. Blue ending and the wider shutdown of Rooster Teeth, what’s next for you? Do you have any future projects in store or ideas knocking around that you’re keen to do?

Matt Hullum: You got a lead on a job for me? Do you know somebody?

Screen Rant: How’d you feel about journalism? [Laughs]

Matt Hullum: [Laughs] Well, my dad was a journalist, and so maybe it runs in the family. Maybe I could take a crack at that. We’ll see.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, this has been an overwhelming life experience. I probably need a good half hour to process it all and figure things out, but, yeah, I mean, I’d love to make some more stuff and do something that people will enjoy.

I don’t know that lightning can strike twice in a lifetime like this, but I could make a few rain clouds at least. We’ll see.

Screen Rant: Well, whatever comes next, I look forward to seeing it.

Matt Hullum: Thank you. I got a new idea. This is actually my son’s idea, but I’m gonna steal it. Orange Vs. Green! He made a great video the other day. It was like a LEGO stop-motion. It was like. It was truly brilliant and I was like, “Orange Vs. Green… It’s pretty close to what Dad does.” And he goes, “Yeah, plus yellow.” [Laughs]

Screen Rant: [Laughs] Nice whole marketing campaign right there!

Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today about this. I’ve been a fan since 2003. In secondary school my friends and I would watch Red Vs. Blue and quote it often in the classroom. So, it means a lot. Thank you.

Matt Hullum: Well, it means a lot to me. Thank you for being a fan and watching. And I guess, did you pass around CDs that were burned with red versus blue with your friends? How did you guys share it, or did you guys download it?

Screen Rant: We would gather around each other’s houses and watch whoever had the best Internet connection.

Matt Hullum: It is so funny. It was so much of a communal experience back then because of things like that. I love that we were at that point in the journey of the Internet, too. Because it’s very different, obviously, today. So that’s great. Well, thank you. Appreciate it a lot.

Red vs. Blue

Cast

Burnie Burns , Matt Hullum , Geoff Ramsey , Gus Sorola , Jason Saldaña , Joel Heyman , Dan Godwin , Kathleen Zuelch , Becca Frasier , Shannon McCormick , Jen Brown

Release Date

April 1, 2003

Seasons

19

Writers

Burnie Burns , Cathy Jones

Directors

Burnie Burns , Matt Hullum

Creator(s)

Burnie Burns , Cathy Jones

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