PARIS, FRANCE – OCTOBER 27: Visitors queue to play the video game ‘Fallout 76’ developed and published by Bethesda Softworks during the ‘Paris Games Week’ on October 27, 2018 in Paris, France. ‘Paris Games Week’ is an international trade fair for video games and runs from October 26 to 31, 2018. (Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images)
Amazon is making a TV show based on Fallout, Bethesda’s long-running post-apocalyptic RPG series. The show will be developed by Westworld creators/executive producers’ Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy.
There’s no doubt that the expansive and immersive world of Fallout can from the basis for a great TV show, but are Nolan and Joy the right people to make it?
First, a quick refresher for those unacquainted with the world of Fallout: the series spans six main games along with a handful of spinoffs. It takes place in a future United States devastated by a nuclear war with China. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, while technology progressed to the point of including androids, laser weapons and advanced genetics, culture has not grown past the 1950s. Think Leave it to Beaver meets Star Trek in a nuclear ravaged landscape.
Mankind survived inside bunkers, or vaults, built deep underground. Each game follows a survivor from a different vault who now navigates the scarred landscape, which is packed full of deadly mutants, robots, and warring factions.
Sounds like fun, right? But is it the right show for Nolan and Joy? My first instinct is be a very solid “no.” The duo’s most successful work, Westworld, is a navel-gazing mess that lost me after its second season. Needlessly complicated and weighed down by expository dialogue that runs in circles, the show has good moments but always seems more interested in asking questions than answering them. And while shows that force us to question our values can be enlightening, Westworld never seems to know just what it wants to tell us, and in its rush to explore the big questions loses almost all entertainment value.
So I don’t know if they’re a good fit for Fallout. For one thing, the protagonists of Fallout aren’t known to be talkative; in fact, many of them hardly ever speak. Meanwhile, the main distinguishing feature of Westworld is that Dolores never stops talking, at great length, about humanity, or artificial intelligence, or whatever MacGuffin she and her team are chasing at the moment. I can do without that, on Westworld and elsewhere.
Evan Rachel Wood in Westworld Season 3.. Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
Setting that aside, while Fallout explores some serious themes, I’m not sure it ever approaches the level of moral, scientific or religious discourse that Nolan and Joy seem intent on exploring. Nolan has writing credits on films like Memento, The Dark Knight and Interstellar, none of which are exactly light and breezy. Those are excellent movies, but it’s hard to picture the mind that wrote those working in the dark humor and more straightforward conflicts that are the lifeblood of Fallout.
On the flip side, Nolan and Joy both seem to know the world of Fallout very well, as they told Deadline when the show was announced: “Fallout is one of the greatest game series of all time. Each chapter of this insanely imaginative story has cost us countless hours we could have spent with family and friends. So we’re incredibly excited to partner with [Bethesda director] Todd Howard and the rest of the brilliant lunatics at Bethesda to bring this massive, subversive, and darkly funny universe to life with Amazon Studios.”
They sound like they have a handle on what Fallout is and isn’t — or at least, they’ve played a lot of it — but a lot can happen in the adaptation process.
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND – MARCH 19: An attendee at Comic Con 2016 in cosplay as a character from Fallout 4 on March 19, 2016 in Birmingham, United Kingdom. (Photo by Ollie Millington/Getty Images)
Ultimately, it will largely depend on how much of their own personality the duo inject into the series. Yes, the protagonist — whoever they end up being — is going to need to talk more than they do in the games, but if we have to watch our hero wander the wasteland rambling about what freedom really means, I’ll be changing the channel. Fallout leads are usually the strong and silent type, and after The Mandalorian showed us how good a show with minimal can be, I’m hoping the Fallout series follows its example.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels
