Fallout - One Hell of a Blast
“A veritable Camelot of the nuclear age.”
I’ve just finished watching Amazon Prime’s latest production, Fallout, and put simply, it’s great. Something I was not at all expecting. Fallout is an honest homage to one of gaming’s most popular franchises. The show was clearly crafted with passion and reverence for the source material - a welcome surprise given the last decade of video game adaptations.
Jonathan Nolan, a director on Amazon’s Fallout and one of the minds behind HBO’s Westworld, has made his love and obsession for Fallout 3 no secret. When compared to how The Witcher’s show writers “actively disliked the books” culminating in Henry Cavill’s departure from the series, or how the Halo TV showrunners proudly boasted “We didn’t look at the game. We didn’t talk about the game.” only to deliver generic sci-fi slop with unrecognizable plots and characters, we can begin to see why Fallout is refreshing for fans both old and new.
Audiences aren’t stupid. They can tell when the pawprints of a conceited writer attempt to tweak the works of other (often greater) creators with their own shoehorned “message” or when a studio simply cashes in on a payday with a previously established IP. Fallout’s answer to this growing trend? Make it fun, make it a spectacle, and make it true.
A million times hotter than TNT
“A veritable Camelot of the nuclear age.”
Fallout’s overarching plot is serviceable; it follows a similar story beat that many of the games do: vault dweller and stranger to post-apocalyptic America, Lucy MacLean, embarks on a quest to find her missing beloved father lost to a nuclear wasteland.
Lucy, amicable to a life of relative ease, peace, and luxury, is forced to face the realities of the real world beyond the refuge of her fortified shelter and longtime home, Vault 33. Taking place in California 200 years after a cataclysmic global nuclear war, the surface world of Fallout is one of ruin and mystery; its harrowing secrets come to hold more for Lucy than mere mutated monstrosities. Alongside Lucy, there is The Ghoul, a roguish irradiated bounty hunter and blackguard weighed down by two centuries of suffering, and Maximus, a selfish, often deceitful, and traumatized conscript of the zealous and technophobic Brotherhood of Steel. The three characters become intertwined in a common pursuit of a wasteland-spanning conspiracy as they bond, split, and explode. The plot is woven well, and with only eight episodes it does not overstay its welcome.
Immediately, it’s all too familiar to a Fallout fan. But that is no bad thing; quite the contrary. Where the Fallout games shine is not in the intricacies of the main plot, but rather in their unique characters with complex motivations, moral quandaries, and, most of all, the nostalgic 1950s vision of the future torn asunder. All of which the show captures almost perfectly; down to the inclusion of the happy-go-lucky mid-20th-century soundtrack fans have come to expect. The Inkspots especially continue to hold a special place in the series’ musical motifs.
The show is also stunningly beautiful. Barring a few minor blemishes in CGI with the Power Armor, the effects are indicative of an extremely high production value. Fallout is not plagued by the overly dark blacks and unequal sound mixing found within all too many movies and television series today. It feels like a blockbuster film every episode; pure eye candy.
Despite the many nods to preestablished and canonical events or easter eggs from the games, Fallout does not feel like fan service either. Rather, it masterfully weaves its way through a world that has been in the making for over twenty years. The showrunners have stated that they treated the series as though it were Fallout 5. A wise decision in my estimation, and something I believe they pulled off, as it wields its callbacks sparingly and uses what would be considered fan service in lesser adaptations as an opportunity to further develop the world. Some notable examples of this are Lucy’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats outlined in the show’s opening, the subtle use of the in-game slow-motion V.A.T.S. effect in combat, and even the canine companion Dogmeat - a mainstay character across the franchise. Fallout never uses indulgent exposition or demands recognition of these hidden surprises. It simply says, “If you know, you know”. What’s more, I’m surprised they did not take more “easy wins”, as the creators have clearly saved some of the more interesting factions, locales, and monsters for later seasons. Something that will keep those familiar with the series hooked and new fans engaged.
Fallout Trailer by Amazon Prime
The performances are great, specifically, Walton Goggin’s The Ghoul, and the character arcs are satisfying enough, if not slightly underdeveloped. The most notable arc is Lucy as she goes from naïve, wide-eyed, and innocent to a more weatherworn and wisened wanderer trying to maintain her charitable humanity in life outside of the vault. But what I found most amusing with the three protagonists is how each was representative of a common playstyle found within the games. Lucy is the do-gooder who attempts to peacefully resolve conflicts with diplomacy and eloquence. For Maximus, the ends justify the means. He has his own goals and no qualms using all in his path to achieve them - a practical player. The Ghoul is the shoot first and ask questions later type; a veteran of frontier wasteland justice. It was a joy to watch.
Old world blues
“War, war never changes.”
One element I appreciated about the show was that the whimsical and borderline goofy themes of Fallout were maintained. The games never shied away from political commentary, specifically with their parody of Cold War American patriotism and the “Reds” of the Russian and Chinese communist regimes, or the results of unmitigated corporatocracy, but it was always in the name of fun first. The games do have their touching moments and there is always plenty of room for genuinely profound storytelling, but they never felt like they were selling one specific ideology. Fallout knows what it is and is happy to maintain its mode. The show has chosen to fall in line.
The subject matter of nuclear annihilation is anything but a joke, besides the obvious absurdity of the fact that it is a real possibility - but this is indeed the absurdity that the games are built on after all. Nevertheless, by looking around at most of the contemporary media that we are constantly inundated with, political messaging and dystopic, bleak visions of our future are omnipresent. I can’t help but feel it must have been at least tempting to drive some modern political talking points into the show, especially given its context, but the focus never left its characters or its world. I am not saying there isn’t anything political about the Fallout show, as, obviously, it is political and for good reason. Vault-Tec and their extremist capitalist drive are responsible for as many horrors in the Wasteland as any other faction, and the show suggests they may be more than responsible. But it always serves the story and not as a vehicle for a lecture. I cannot help but think of the latest films and shows like the newly released Civil War, about a political conflagration in the modern U.S. between the “two” Americas; or the bleak world of Fallout’s antithesis The Last of Us; or the nightmarish and increasingly accurate Black Mirror, and how they all betray the signs of a preeminent force rampant within our modern zeitgeist. We seem hellbent on telling stories of our own destruction. I daresay we even idolize it; at least Fallout has some fun along the way.
The nuclear option
“Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every god damned time.”
Whether you’re a longtime fan of the franchise or have never dipped your toes into the irradiated waters of the Wasteland, I think Fallout is definitely worth a watch if for no other reason than to be honestly entertained. Despite its seemingly dreary setting, it’s one hell of a blast.
Thanks for reading,
Sam