Giant cockroaches, nuclear bombs and disemboweled guts. Yes, it’s “Fallout”, and it’s perfect [RECENZJA]

Previous film adaptations of games have been simply unsuccessful for many reasons. It is difficult to translate multi-threaded stories to the small and large screen, and it is also difficult to make a single-threaded story captivate viewers. Something that works well as a game doesn’t work very well as another medium. Books based on games? Mostly drama. Movies? Oh no. TV series? So far, there have been quite few of them and their reception has been mixed. However, from Thursday morning Polish time you can watch all episodes of the production based on the games “”. And I think there has finally been a breakthrough in the category of game adaptations.

Welcome to our crypt!

The production of “Fallout” was fraught with considerable risk. This is a very well-known universe in the gaming world, the first title in the series was released in 1997. Since then, we have even released a dozen or so items, most of them from one developer – . Fallout has its own mythology, it is a world ready to be repopulated, a stage on which a completely new show can be staged. It has loyal fans who will tell the story from memory 200 years after the nuclear attacks on Earth. By touching this world, as with “The Lord of the Rings,” Amazon risked sacrilege. And kudos to him for making different decisions than in “Rings of Power”.

In the series, as in the games, we move to an alternative reality of the 1960s in the USA, caught in the long-standing Cold War. The technology has both stuck and made leaps in some areas (autonomous robots). People mentally stopped in the post-war era, where democrats are fighting communists. And one day nuclear rain falls on this beautiful world. Some of the richest people, who bought a place in spacious shelters, will manage to survive. What about the rest? Nobody cares.

We jump forward 200 years. Hidden in the so-called “crypts” rich people who remember the flash of explosions on the horizon are long dead. But their descendants still live in shelters with their own ecosystems, hoping that one day they will come to the surface and make America will be great again. Not everyone realizes that the place in the crypts purchased by their ancestors was a great social engineering plan intended to show which community model would work best in the most difficult conditions. The lucky inhabitants of crypt no. 33, who quite suddenly and brutally have to come into contact with the outside world, do not know this either. This one didn’t wait for the “crypto people” to come out of the shelters to save everyone – it turned into a wasteland straight from “Mad Max” and “Metro 2033”, where only the strongest, the smartest and the ones who can count on themselves will survive, because they only count on themselves.

Forced by circumstances, Lucy MacLean, innocent as a primrose, finds herself in such a world. He has a mission – to save his father. Did the hermetic shelter teach her the things necessary to survive in another reality? We’ll find out on the first night.

‘Fallout’ Photo Amazon Prime Video

Don’t lose your head!

Amazon used Fallout to create a backdrop that fans of the series love. There’s… everything here. Every detail is correct. The setting is transferred from Bethesda games so faithfully that it looks like “Fallout VR”. And you can see that it was done by people who have played the game extensively, know its flavors, know what we, players, value in the visual layer of Fallout. This is also an element that will make new viewers feel that the presented world lives its own life, is not an artificial jumble of two cross-cut plans. Everything here makes sense and there is a SOMETHING. So we have various Vaults, Filly, a desert wasteland, ruins like from Detroit, dense forests, demolished city centers, bomb craters… In addition, there are interiors that every fan of the game will recognize (yes, there is a SuperDuper Market, and even something that resembles Megaton!) In addition, there is a charming Pip-boy on the forearm of some of the characters – it looks absurd, acts absurd and is absurd, but… it exists. And this is beautiful. We managed to use CGI to make a visually pleasing addition that is not unsightly and looks as natural as possible.

But all this is just the background for the micro-stories that Lucy, Maximus, Ghoul and Norm encounter on their way. In the case of games, Bethesda often uses a method of completely giving the player the opportunity to decide what they want to do and where to go. The main goal looms somewhere in the background, but it is exploration and discovering gems that are the key to both Bethesda’s “Fallout” and their Elder Scrolls series. The main goal theoretically pushes the heroes forward, but on their way they encounter places-enclaves with their own history. It’s very similar in the series – Lucy’s primary goal (saving her father) is blurred by a dozen or so side missions that come her way. And this is not a bad thing, because each of these tasks adds depth to the heroine, who finds reservoirs of completely new features that she has never known before. The cruelty necessary to survive in the Wasteland appears. There is no shortage of cold blood, revenge looms on the horizon… Ella Purnell just needs to look and it all appears to her as if by magic. Casting her in the main role was an absolute hit, plus Ella is lucky that her Lucy is wonderfully written in terms of dialogue. She’s wonderfully anachronistic, hopelessly naive (at first), and so direct that it’s hard not to smile.

Maximus (Aaron Moten) got a slightly smaller role, but oh boy, watching him in battle armor is pure pleasure. We finally see the Brotherhood of Steel thread from the less heroic side that the games show us – in them we are also Maximus. And if you’ve played one of the Bethesda parts of the game, you surely remember the excitement when you FINALLY get the mechanized armor and suddenly you’re invincible. The series is more realistic than the game, thanks to which we are no longer indifferent to the fate of Maximus and give us room to develop our interest in his story.

‘Fallout’ Photo Amazon Prime Video

Ghoul has a different style of survival. There is no room for illusions here – if someone has lived for 200 years, it is only because they have no illusions left. Or he stopped being human. Or both. The Ghoul is absolutely ruthless and goal-oriented, sanctifying all means – he is the opposite of Lucy.

The conglomerate made up of these three characters, two naive people and an old hand, is a wonderful mix. Although they rarely have the opportunity to appear together on screen, their mixed duets are so harmonious that we start rooting for them without a second thought. And yet there is a second meaning to the series, still hidden in the crypts. There we follow the curiosity and skepticism of Norm, Lucy’s brother. What is happening deep underground, what elaborate plan from 200 years ago is being implemented there? Each episode is another piece of a shattered mirror that Norm tries to put back together without losing his head.

And why is there so much blood?

“Fallout” as a game is brutal and bloody – after all, it is a shooter in which you can choose the path of peace and love, but it is easier and faster to reach for the gun and shoot. The series followed the same path. It’s all there – guts on the surface, fork in the eye, brain smeared on the wall. Lucy, with her charisma points, loses very often to brute physical strength, but idealistically she still tries to convince others that violence is not the only way. Maximus also quickly learns that ideals are ideals, but an accurate shot to the head effectively pacifies his opponents. The only one who does not have these doubts is, of course, the Ghoul – after all, he is a hunter who can be hired to do unpleasant, dirty work for bottle caps.

The icing on this tripe cake is a large dose of comedy and music. It is also a nod to Fallout fans, as the series is famous for its mixture of pathos and absurdity, as well as for its wonderful music from the 1940s and 1950s. Even a less trained ear will be able to hear the songs played by Radio Galaxy News, and the songs are incorporated into the series in such a way that they become they are part of the plot.

In short – fans of “Fallout” games should be delighted. There are, of course, some shortcomings (e.g. Lucy wandering around exactly the same sand-covered ruins for three episodes), but in terms of showing the world we know from the games, it is overwhelming. Will Amazon Prime Video’s “Fallout” appeal to people who haven’t played the game? Should. There are many starting points here that can catch people unfamiliar with this universe. “Westworld” also enjoyed a huge audience, and there is “Snowpiercer”, which had three seasons. The general atmosphere in the world favors productions that show life after the great holocaust, and “Fallout” is one of those examples that does it very well and in its own style.

All the sins of Amazon

When Amazon announced cooperation with Bethesda on the production of the “Fallout” series, fans were – to put it mildly – skeptical. Bethesda rather mercilessly squeezes everything it can out of this title, reducing the philosophy and realism of the first games that did not belong to it yet. Amazon also has a habit of disregarding the voices of fans and “improving” the wheel in its own way (an example of which is the free American allowed in “Rings of Power”, which is a distorted copy of Tolkien’s trilogy and Jackson’s film adaptation). However, as rarely as possible, the fans’ fears were not confirmed. “Fallout” is a real gem, faithful to the original and using its own characters written from scratch, which turned out to be a good thing. You can feel the spirit, atmosphere and a large dose of love for a title that has become very important to many people. It has already been announced that there will definitely be a second season of the series, and there is also a significant chance for a third one. And that’s good, because we urgently need more. And those who watched all eight episodes in less than 24 hours definitely need it.

“Fallout”, Amazon Prime Video; Creators: Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy, Todd Howard, Graham Wagner, Geneva Robertson-Dworet; starring: Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, Moises Arias, Wolten Goggins