2024-04-20 11:01:18
About a year after the popular The Last of Us, another generous TV series based on the successful dystopian video game was created. Fallout, newly available on the Amazon Prime Video platform, also asks the question of how people behave after the end of civilization. Apparently, nothing good is in store for us.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the third highest-grossing film of last year, ends with a chilling foreboding of nuclear war. The satire Let the World Be the World, the science fiction The Creator, the continuation of the Hunger Games saga, and the series Twisted Metal and Silo also recently had an apocalyptic touch. We would find many other examples in literature and video games.
The age-old fascination with self-destruction seems to have intensified in recent years. Perhaps due to ongoing wars, political instability, environmental and economic crises. Perhaps because “the end of the world is a product,” as we hear in Fallout, the latest entry into the post-apocalyptic genre.
Although the statement sounds in the distant future, like all events in this eight-part series, it can be related to today. Who profits from fear, uncertainty and wars? Superpowers? Corporations making weapons and cutting-edge nuclear shields? Spiritual leaders? Fallout treats everyone with the same vitriol.
As long as conflicts serve to gain power, control and make money, people will have no reason to live in peace, the series says. But at the same time, according to the creators, there is always hope in the form of individuals who think of others. At least sometimes. In the retro-futuristic world of Fallout, with a kitsch aesthetic reminiscent of 1950s America and cyberpunk style, young Lucy is such a character.
Severed head
219 years ago, tensions between the US and China escalated with a nuclear holocaust. Now, Lucy hides in underground bunkers and, like the other survivors, hopes to one day repopulate the infested wasteland above. But the community is attacked by foreign invaders and kidnaps the heroine’s father. Lucy therefore has to surface to track him down. He finds an ally in Maxim, a soldier in robotic armor who serves a militant religious order called the Brotherhood of Steel.
Ella Purnell plays the optimistic Lucy. | Photo: JoJo Whilden
The disjointed first episode, directed by Nolan’s brother Jonathan, like the following two, also introduces a third important figure, the ominous Ghoul. He used to be an influential movie star and loving partner, as we learn in flashbacks that delay the narrative considerably. After the atomic bomb, he mutated and now roams the countryside, making cynical remarks and hunting people for a reward. Apart from his nose, he has no mercy for anyone who disturbs his plans. Even if a piece of former humanity still survives in him.
All three characters are chasing the same object that promises salvation. In the exaggerated spirit of the series, it is a severed head. But the goal is not as important as the alliances that arise and disappear during the pursuit of it.
Few interesting characters
Different ideological principles clash in Fallout. Despite the increasing evidence of human cruelty, Lucy does not lose her optimism, Maximus believes in God’s justice, and Ghoul clings to nihilism. “Everyone wants to save the world,” Maximus says. “They just don’t agree on what the rescue should look like,” he adds insightfully.
In parallel, we follow the actions of several other characters, such as Lucy’s brother Norm, who uncovers dark family secrets in the underground. The narrative is generally quite often oriented towards the past, not forward.
In blandly directed dialogues, the heroes discuss what happened once upon a time and explain to each other the workings of the various levels of the fictional world.
The last episode, trying to answer as many questions as possible, clumsily piles one flashback on top of another. The very creation of this universe represents a more significant content of the series than the fates of individual actors. Their interest mainly depends on the charisma of the actors. And unfortunately, the only memorable character is the Ghoul played by Walton Goggins.
The constant expansion of the fictional world could be seen as a hallmark of series producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. Their previous sci-fi Westworld had already expanded to a similarly immodest breadth. Due to the nature of the template, it was more of a screenwriting necessity.
If the strength of the video game The Last of Us was linear, for the serial narrative as a made-up plot with clearly defined characters, the original Fallout still lacks a solid plot skeleton. The multi-part saga from the RPG genre, the first part of which was released back in 1997, takes place in an open world where each player creates his own hero and story. The experience depends on what missions and how they complete them.
The authors of the adaptation therefore decided to follow the path of the original theme with the blessing of the Bethesda development studio. However, they kept a lot of plot motifs, especially from the third part of the game, iconography and characters.
The Fallout series can be seen in the Amazon Prime Video video library with Czech dubbing and subtitles. | Video: Amazon Prime Video
Little urgency
Fans will appreciate that the colors, costumes and architecture correspond to the original thanks to the series’ considerable budget. The mere possibility of spending eight hours in a non-interactive expansion of their favorite video game will probably bring them satisfaction. However, the question is how attractive Fallout will be to the uninitiated.
Guilty of an incoherent narrative and flat characters who are in no hurry to get anywhere and kill time with various side missions, the series lacks urgency and disintegrates into a kaleidoscopic band of more or less funny or bizarre skits. In addition, they often recycle ideas from other films and series.
The western shootouts cleverly mimic the combat system from the game, but when you watch the slow-motion action scene for the third time, in which the comically exaggerated violence is underlined by a relaxed jazz song by Ella Fitzgerald or Bing Crosby, it feels a bit dull.
The series also uses other genre clichés without the ironic detachment and sense of morbid or deranged humor for which the games became famous. The jokes are thick with a rather juvenile quality, and the ending in particular drowns in sentiment at times. Jonathan Nolan thus once again shows himself as a great designer interested in big ideas, but a somewhat cumbersome storyteller.
In Fallout, due to the younger target group, he does not engage in the same dark and deep thoughts as in the prematurely ended Westworld. Food for thought – for example, about the clash between society and the individual or the human inability to peacefully coexist with the environment – is ultimately the most valuable thing that can be taken away from a lengthy and chaotic introduction to an eclectic world. This is also why, not only because of the joyless vision of the future, at the end, rather than the expectation of things to come, there is relief that it is all over.
Serial
Fallout
Producenti: Jonathan Nolan a Lisa Joy
The series can be seen in the video library of Amazon Prime Video.