Fallout, the review of the Prime Video TV series that respects the video game and stands out as the boldest product of the year
ORIGINAL TITLE: Fallout. TYPE: Sci-fi, drama. NATION: United States of America. REGIA: Jonathan Nolan, Graham Wagner, Geneva Robertson-Dworet. CAST: Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, Moises Arias, Xelia Mendes-Jones. DURATION: 60 minutes per episode. DISTRIBUTOR: Amazon Prime Video. EXIT: from 12 April 2024.
The signatures behind the project and the production values put in place by Amazon and Kilter Films could only raise very high expectations for the TV series inspired by the well-known videogame saga. Lots of curiosity, but also a worrying sense of uncertainty, given that it wasn't at all easy to bring to the small television screen a product so layered in terms of lore and imagery, but at the same time so poor in substance and recognisability from a strictly narrative point of view. In this Fallout review we'll explain why we liked it so much.
Many people know Fallout, but in each of them what this franchise has been able to trigger depends very much on the chapter they approached and, in some way, also on how they played that episode given that, in full respect of the role-playing tradition of Bethesdathis very famous one Post-apocalyptic RPG it is capable of dragging you into a boundless adventure where the story can easily remain in the background. Yet the series overturns everything, puts the story in the foreground and, under the guise of a first-person adventure, elegantly explains the outline. Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy and above all the showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet they really surprised us. And it wasn't easy at all.
The plot and the trailer | Fallout review
In a dystopian 21st century, in which the American aesthetic and culture of the 1950s has never wanedwhere the advancement of nuclear technology after World War II led to the emergence of a society retrofuturistica and a subsequent war for resources, the world is still divided into spheres of influence between the United States of America and the communist bloc of China and the Soviet Union, under the mutual threat of nuclear weapons. Cooper Howard is a Hollywood star, a western actor who sponsors the government's anti-communist propaganda and has a beautiful family in the hills of Los Angeles, when a nuclear war explodes and the entire planet is reduced to ashes by atomic bombings. Only a few survivors in North America manage to take refuge in fallout shelters known as Vaults, built and promoted by the Vault-Tec to preserve humanity in the event of nuclear extermination in the centuries to come. 219 years later, a young woman, Lucy MacLean, descendant of the first inhabitants of Vault 33, leaves behind the only life she has ever known underground, to venture into the Contaminated areadangerously hostile and wild, towards a devastated California.
We can easily bring up another masterfully successful operation, The Last of Us, to attempt a comparison. However, if what was created by HBO and Craig Mazin perfectly represents the attempt to translate into a TV serialization what is told in the video game which inspired the product, sometimes bordering on a one-to-one copy, Fallout instead presents itself as something that is set in a precise videogame universe and aims to tell a completely new story, even with the inevitable points of contact and very clever winks. The Prime Video TV series is in fact set in 2296, exactly 9 years after the events told in Fallout 4 which is the episode positioned further ahead of all in chronological terms, and therefore presents itself as a real chapter in the saga.
A new chapter in the saga | Fallout review
Going into the details of the eight episodes that make up this first season of Fallout, all of which are around 55-60 minutes in length, we can confirm the focus on three protagonists, whose stories will intersect over the course of the show until reaching a strongly interconnected and, from a certain point of view, choral epilogue. The main character is certainly that of Lucy, played by the talented and splendid Ella Purnell. Her aspiring heroine is the closest thing to a traditional Fallout avatar that we can find in the entire series. She will be forced to leave this refuge to face a Contaminated Zone very different from all the images projected and told during her 20 years of underground existence.
The second character that we will soon learn about, probably the least focused one in the entire show, is Maximus, aspiring squire of the Brotherhood of Steel played by Aaron Moten, who will try in every way to become a Knight or at least make a name for himself within the militarized sect that all Fallout players know well. However, his constant oscillation between genuine ignorance and anomalous perfidy made us question ourselves repeatedly during the viewing on how much he actually exists or does. This is not necessarily a negative aspect, in fact perhaps it is actually intentional.
Closing the trio there is certainly the most fascinating protagonist of all: a Ghoul bounty hunter, played by the talented Walton Goggins. The character is the only one of the three who experienced firsthand the atomic bombing of 2077 which generated the post-apocalyptic world of the series and the most important narrative moments of the entire series focus around his pre- and post-atomic existence . This is a very well-defined character, with an innate cruelty and whose events will constantly shift the viewer's attention towards the characterizing aspects of this universe.
Post-nuclear life: a flood of twists and turns | Fallout review
The series, we can say frankly, is excellent. Jonathan Nolan (Christopher Nolan's lesser-known brother and the man responsible for the masterpiece Westworld)Lisa Joy and especially the showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet have done a really great job, on the one hand in being incredibly aligned with the general tone of the video games, on the other in creating continuous twists.
The Fallout TV series is something that it fits into the brand created by Black Isle and taken up by Bethesda and Todd Howard in a coherent and credible way. In many main elements of what happens on the screen you can perceive the affection, understanding and respect for the original material. The tone is simultaneously dramatic and extremely ironic, at times very funny, and this is a key element of the games. There is a lot of violence, the series is incredibly splatter at times full of bloody elements. The constant contrast between Lucy's naivety and the reality of the Wasteland, the death that is around every corner, the sense of oppression and the risk of being betrayed by anyone, create that narrative dissonance that is a characterizing element of the series created by Tim Cain. Even the color palette adopted, that slightly comical, slightly cartoon style, with the extremely intense, almost pastel tones of the Vaults, which outline devastating events, full of death and desperation, are exceptionally aligned with video games.
Conclusions
The pace picks up steadily until the conclusion, for Fallout fans there will be some insights about the Brotherhood and Vault-Tec which, being canon, will rewrite a lot of their beliefs and, above all, the series is bold and full of surprises.
We leave a couple of things at the end of the Fallout review notes regarding the pure staging in technical terms: we note the great use of props and physical elements to try to keep away the use of low-cost computer graphics, otherwise the comic style is respected. A success from all points of view.
A new concept of apocalypse
Points in favor
- Bold and never predictable choices
- It fits organically into the saga
- Perfect cast and impeccable technical choices
Looking for new movies and new TV series to watch?
Discover the new subscription to Disney+, the streaming home of Disney, Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, National Geographic and now Star. Subscribe now to only 5.99 euros per month on this page.
Bonus: how to have a subscription to streaming platforms and save
There are some services that allow you to share your account best streaming platforms (Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus, NOW TV, Paramount Plus, etc.) with other people and two save on subscriptions, let's talk about GamsGo, GoSplit or CooSub. Thanks to GamsGo, GoSplit and CooSub it is possible to purchase, at a negligible pricea subscription shared with other users in easy, fast and safe way.