Fallout Series Review: Since the beginning of the 2000s, there has been speculation about an adaptation of Fallout, the successful video game series originally created by Interplay and then acquired by Bethesda Softworks, but it was never possible to get to checkers because, according to the company's top management American, a proposal important enough to be considered worthy of the narrative carried forward by the saga has never reached their ears. Then came the winning idea of Jonathan Nolan (also director of the first three episodes of the series) and Lisa Joy, minds behind Westworld – Where everything is allowed, which also coincided with an optimal historical period for a project of this kind, given that intellectual properties (gaming or otherwise) have now become a fundamental reality for the US audiovisual industry.
The series, created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, is therefore placed at a favorable moment in the panorama, boosting the appeal of a recognizable title much loved by its fandom and a strong original gimmick around which to build its narrative. A winning formula not only on paper but also in the final result, which gives the public a title that, in addition to fully respecting the premises, also manages to construct a linguistic tone that is very faithful to the original material, which is rather particular given the nature of dystopian imagery and the irony inherent in everything.
Fallout, the Amazon and MGM original series arrives on Prime Video on April 11th with 8 episodes capable of outlining an engaging journey that starts from different roots, wisely using an ensemble cast composed of Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Walton Goggins, Kyle MacLachlan, Moisés Arias, Sarita Choudhury and Michael Emerson, and managing to build a credible mythology and world, as well as a significant plot between references to the contemporary and to tradition and, finally, creating a nice mix of genres between westerns, war movies and sci-fi.
The apocalypse is just the beginning
The world as we know it ended in 2077 following the extreme consequences of a war between China and the United States of America divided into a Commonwealth and with iconography and technology stuck in a suspended era, attributable to the real 1950s, precisely the moment in which we were experiencing the terror of a possible nuclear conflict.
After the multiple atomic detonations, a large part of humanity became extinct within a few minutes, while the few who were saved did so thanks to the Vaults, super-technological villages created by a very powerful multinational specifically to survive underground because of the apocalypse. In one of these, number 33 to be precise, the story of the series begins, more than two centuries after the end of the world as we know it.
There we meet Lucy (Purnell), daughter of the Superintendent of the facility, Hank MacLean (MacLachlan), who will find herself forced to go out to the surface, discovering how her life took place under a glass bell jar, while the world outside it went in a completely different direction. The direction of chaos and oppression, in which factions such as the Brotherhood of Steel try to restore order thanks to their invincible armor and mutants reign supreme in improvised cities. It is in this context that the young woman will have to survive, while her path will be complicated by the acquaintance of the recruit Maximus (Moten) and a Ghoul gunslinger with a dark past (Goggins).
World Building
Despite the many critical issues found in the thinking and work of the Nolan-Joy duo, what cannot be denied is their ability to build a credible universe and a recognizable imagination. In this case, they didn't even have to invent too much, given that the Fallout video game saga has among its main advantages that of having given life to a dystopian world so precise and effective that the duo needed nothing more than to propose it again.
However, since nothing can ever be taken for granted, then we must underline the goodness of the operation, which manages to involve the viewer not only with effective writing, net of the various paroxysmal and deliberately exaggerated nuances of the dystopian reality and the black irony (sometimes still too playful) which peppers the logic, but also thanks to the visual rendering. The latter is the result of an excellent mix of digital and artisanal, in which the special effects intersect with the construction of the creatures, the scenography, the make-up, the costumes, and above all the rendering of a technology poised over time, respecting the spirit of the videogame saga, but at the same time completely avoiding the fiction effect.
A soundtrack mixed with 50s songs and country songs (especially compositions by Johnny Cash) contributes substantially to this very precious result (fundamental to the success of the series) which perfectly evokes the atmosphere of the original title and allows the series to contextualize a story deliberately designed to broaden the boundaries also concerning the plots of the various chapters of the Bethesda title. The task was metaphorically entrusted to a character in particular, played by Walton Goggins (The Hateful Eight), the best actor in the cast and here at a great performance.
War (and therefore man) never changes
The plot chosen for the Fallout series was the other knot to resolve after the successful adaptation of the universe, given the profound significance that has always accompanied the stories of the video game saga, even about the contemporary. And even in this case, it was incredibly successful.
In fact, the narrative of the series manages to structure itself in an orderly manner despite starting from different ramifications which then intersect in a plot that always lives on two different lines designed to proceed in a parallel way towards a common direction. To achieve this goal, the authors intelligently decide to rely on classic narrative mechanisms such as the MacGuffin (even double in this case) or the hero's journey, to give (and give themselves) points of reference around which to set up a story that had to be measured given the weight it carries with it.
From a thematic point of view, Fallout is absolutely not lacking in ambition, on the contrary, it offers a story that points straight to the sense, even metafictional, with which the title was originally created in 1997, revealing a profound awareness of the original material. It is basically the personification of a metaphorical apocalypse, the result of an extreme distortion of the American Dream and of a world victim of ultra-capitalism, in which the war industry is denounced and human nature is investigated, forced to remain imprisoned in a seamless cycle of chaos, violence, death, and rebirth. War (and therefore man) never changes, therefore no end is truly possible.
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