You don’t need to have played the globally popular video game Fallout to fall for this live-action adaptation. Prime Video’s big-budget take — from Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy — is filled with dazzling effects, dark humor, and cinematic action. But if you are a gamer, know that “the attention to detail has been obsessive,” says Nolan, and Easter eggs are plentiful.
(Credit: Prime Video)
Like its digital inspiration, Fallout is set some 200 years after a nuclear catastrophe that has driven mankind underground. Yellowjackets’ Ella
Purnell stars as Lucy, a descendant of the original survivors from 2077.
Despite having spent her entire life below the Earth’s surface as one of the Vault Dwellers, she heads above ground on a rescue mission and finds that things have gotten mighty weird in two centuries. Think: giant bugs, zombie mutants, lumbering super soldiers in mechanical armor — and Justified’s Walton Goggins as a noseless bounty hunter called the Ghoul.
And while Lucy’s arc is definitely a hero’s journey, it’s also a wholly original storyline, no joysticks involved. “We’re not going to turn this into a game. This is going to exist on its own,” notes executive producer James Altman, who is also Bethesda Softworks’ director of publishing operations. “We want it to be part of one living, breathing world of Fallout…basically an expanded universe.”
One that’s overrun with radiated cockroaches, of course.
Fallout, Series Premiere, Friday, April 12, Prime Video