If you imagine screenwriter/filmmaker Jonathan Nolan spending hours playing Fallout 3, the 2008 video game of the year, then you have an idea of how much love went into adapting “the best video game franchise of all time.” It took him more than a decade — from The Dark Knight Rises to Westworld — before Fallout became a viable project for the screens. Luckily streaming exists, and these stories have more room to breathe there.
And thank goodness for fans — due to positive reviews following last week’s two-episode airing, this long-awaited series drops a day early (April 10) on Prime Video. There’s even a global live-streaming event with the first episode at 6 p.m. PT on Apr 10.
Executive produced by Nolan and his wife Lisa Joy, previous collaborators on Westworld, Fallout boasts some of the best world-building we’ve seen on streaming. It’s 2296; over 200 years after nuclear devastation destroyed civilization as we know it. The world is in shambles. Those few remaining humans who are lucky enough to have survived flock to luxury fallout shelters where they can pretend everything is normal; meanwhile up top on the irradiated surface it’s a wild west wasteland with scarce resources and everyone else fighting just to stay alive — plus no shortage of post-apocalyptic mutants that would look right at home in a PG-13 spinoff of The Walking Dead.
Fallout Is a Great Show That Loses Momentum
Bold, fun and witty, it’s great entertainment, capturing the heart, detail, irony and self-aware tone of the games without just being Fallout fan service: It’s bingeable AF. Propelled by an ensemble cast led by Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets), Aaron Moten (Emancipation), Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks), Leslie Uggams (American Fiction) and Walton Goggins (Justified) as The Ghoul, the eight-episode series starts off strong.
Then somewhere around episode six, the fatigue sets in. The narrative loses steam. Not a lot — but enough to make you long for more action and wonder how co-creators Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel, Tomb Raider) and Graham Wagner (The Office, Portlandia) will stick the landing on their puzzle-box mysteries, leaving you hungry for more. But they do stick it. You will want more of Fallout when it’s over; but you get the feeling that the show’s greatest adventures may lie someplace other than where you are — over in Seasons 2 and 3, perhaps. Still: Fun now!
One of Fallout’s best moves is that it grounds its main story with three characters from above ground and below ground. They’re all trying to survive, obviously; and they’re all very different from one another. This keeps things relatively focused across the series as a whole and sets up all subsequent emotional beats quite nicely.
At the very beginning of this series, we are introduced to a vault called Vault 33 which is situated underground. This place is inhabited by people who have never experienced life on the surface. As it turns out later on in the episode however, something has gone wrong there and so Lucy MacLean (Purnell), who seems like she might be a little naive but actually isn’t at all — heads up into the light. Lucy promises she’ll come back for her brother Norm (Moises Arias) and Betty (Uggams), among others; but living above ground proves difficult for her when she realizes how rude everyone is. The creators have some fun with that early on, but with each passing episode they must continue to adapt Lucy more and more. She’s looking for something/someone that will restore balance to this vault.
Meanwhile Maximus (Moten) has his own major learning curve ahead of him too as one among many young men who’ve pledged themselves over to serving under what can best be described as an extremely cult-like Brotherhood of Steel following their militaristic agenda; he goes off on a mission alongside another senior member from within those ranks played by Michael Rapaport when basically flexing alpha male muscles – equipped head-to-toe in powered infantry armor suits (which seem like standard issue for higher-ranking Steel bros). These technological wonders-of-armament are loads of fun visually because we get shown just how intimidatingly threatening these things look from outside before being taken into them where everything becomes even more so still… But ultimately both Maximus and Lucy come face-to-face with the fact that maybe life ain’t anything like what they’ve been told.
The Ghoul serves as our wickedly wild card in this series – he’s a mutated outlaw wearing cowboy hat who lives out his days within drug-infested shell formerly occupied by good guys only now concerned about keeping themselves alive any way necessary after all hell broke loose. He doesn’t give two s–ts about anything other than continuing surviving so will kill anything that stands between him and that goal; and my oh my does Goggins have some fun disappearing into this role, causing trouble at every twist turn between western twang constant swagger dulled facial expressions (through hideously gruesome prosthetics no less) making for one of year’s most memorable TV characters from actor standpoint.
Beyond Goggins, Purnell, and Moten though the all-star ensemble keeps on giving – Kyle MacLachlan plays Hank while Sarita Choudary is Lee who may or may not pose threat to vault life forever among other things). Michael Emerson brings personality as Dr. Siggi Wilzig-an eccentric researcher with key information… Writers do nice job building curiosity around these big people then bouncing us off an array side players we meet along our way; we want know about world like this one what happened during “Great War.” Speaking of…
In early episodes they tell us it was October 2077 when everything went to s–t. The scenes leading up there are powerful; but more importantly it gives context to everything else onward throughout time spent watching series unfold before our eyes. Late 2200s carry themselves well enough across screen so can be followed easily – words like “ghouls” start meaning something troublesome beyond just being name for bad guys now that we’ve seen couple them already (in various stages decay…or awakening).
RadAway is a drug that fights and can cure radiation poisoning completely. Everyone wants it, especially if you’ve been through a couple of centuries’ worth of post-apocalyptic suffering. Of course, the surface is dangerous as all get out. There are some great moments with the Gulper, which is an enormous salamander that eats people. Not fun. Elsewhere, like The Walking Dead and The Last Us, everyone is out for themselves.
The writing evens things out enough so that this interplay between characters (and tones) mostly works. The writers — they’re from shows like The Office and Captain Marvel on the big screen — know character development and comedy. They also know how to dangle a lot of creative carrots on sticks in front of your face.
Speaking of which, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note (and praise) Howard Cummings’ exceptional production design here. Dude apparently made his team watch fan-made videos about the Fallout game while incorporating real junk into the Wasteland sets and … yeah man, that’s commitment. Ghoulish cowboy hats off to you and all the other creatives here who clearly had fans of the game in mind when building up the elaborate and intricate world of Fallout around them. Ultimately, the creators/EPs stay true to the massive scope and indelible tone of their source material here, but fill it with enough twists and turns to offer something for everybody — dystopian drama fans; sci-fi lovers; those who dig oddball dramas set in strange worlds.
Maybe that’s where things hiccup creatively: In trying to satisfy everybody here — Fallout game fans; newbies — this outing tends to get weighed down by “story” instead of fun. Which is a curious thing for something derived from what was essentially a bunch of spectacle strung together with … well … more spectacle. But hey, world-building takes time? More to come? (We hope.) In the meantime, between the slick gadgetry, dystopian dysfunction and compelling characters, Fallout is still one hell of a good time.
