Fallout Gets an A+ for Adaptation
Fans of the game are breathing a sigh of relief. It’s good. Really good.
Following on the heels of Arcane: League of Legends (Netflix) and Last of Us (Max), Fallout has proven it is possible to produce video game adaptations that are done right. After decades of failures like Assassin's Creed and Mortal Combat, we finally have proof on a repeatable scale that, with the right creative team, these adaptations can be more than poorly rendered action scenes lathered in melodrama cheese.
Having never fully played the Fallout games, I came into this story with little knowledge of the worldbuilding behind it. (I bought Fallout 4 on sale at some point during the pandemic, but I never got far into it before the world started opening up again.) So fear not if you are not a player of the game! I am sure, like me, there are a lot of Easter eggs you will miss, but you will not be lost.
The series places us in an alternative reality where the survivors of humanity have been living in a post nuclear apocalypse for a few centuries. The brilliance of the show design, like the game, is the way it juxtaposes a world destroyed by war and radiation with the 1950’s branding of post-war optimism. Characters living in “vaults” to survive the war wear bright colors, live by the codes and promises of a by-gone American dream, and speak in wholesome qweloquiallisms you might hear on shows like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best.
Just above them on the surface, however, the world is far more violent and grim. It is filled with irradiated “ghouls” living unnaturally long lives, giant bugs, and several factions at war trying to remake what is left of the world in their own vision. The comparison of the two worlds is an obvious irony whose aesthetic has been appealing to Fallout fans for decades. In this show, they’ve just been able to heighten all of it to a new level of production value.
If I had to lay out why this show works where other game adaptations fail, it would be the same bag of tricks: good writing, good acting and direction, and gorgeous production design. However, what is done particularly well in this story is the way they balance naive characters trying to maintain their innocence against the harsh realities from which they hide.
In a more simplified version, you might see the innocent characters becoming slowly corrupted by the evil characters in the show. This does happen to some extent when you see likable characters making tough choices that butt their morals up against their need to survive. However, what makes this show more interesting is how deeply it delves into that duality in just about every single character. No one is purely good or bad. Everyone is some kind of victim just as much as they are an agent of their own corruptions, and often, it is challenging to figure out who to root for or against.
The characters’ internal conflicts are all closely linked to the external geo-political motivations of the world they are born into, but it is only through the course of the show that they begin to discover just how deeply manipulated they have been by higher powers. The story definitely raises some stark questions about the endgame of capitalism coming into conflict with human interests, and it does so in a way where the visual metaphors of what the world becomes are undeniably powerful and complex.
The performances of all the leads (Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, Moises Arias, and Aaron Clifton Moten) standout and carry the story believably on a downward spiral of optimism to cynicism. What keeps them all fascinating, however, is despite the desolate circumstances, all of the characters find reasons to keep moving forward. As far down the dark rabbit hole as they go, we the audience still want them to find some kind of redemption on the other side. Maybe because, deep down, our real world’s current affairs feel startlingly close to the nightmare world Fallout is depicting, and, like the characters in the show, we all hope we can find a good reason to keep surviving on the other side.
FUN FACT! The lead actress in this show, Ella Purnell, was also the voice actor for the character, Jinx, in Arcane: League of Legends. So she’s two-for-two as the lead on top-notch video game adaptations!
Sterling Martin is a writer, artist, and designer living in Chicago, IL. His background includes drawing, writing, theatre, teaching, improv & sketch comedy, and whatever else he can get his hands on to be creative. You can find him on the internet at:
Instagram: @sterfest.art (but it’s really starting to test my patience)
Website: sterlingmartin.design
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