Branding at the premiere of the TV series “Fallout” on Thursday, April 4, 2024 in London. (Scott A. Garfitt/Invision/Associated Press)
As superhero movies lose traction in pop culture, video game movies are next to emerge. In recent years, movies and TV shows based on interactive entertainment have steadily gained attention, such as “Sonic the Hedgehog,'' “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,'' and “The Last of Us.''
Hollywood's relationship with the young art form has evolved from a way to make a quick buck to a fascinating conversation about how to translate the experience of playing video games into viewing. Some projects use special effects (“Sonic”), while others use animation (“Mario”). Still, other video game series are easily cinematic in nature (The Last of Us).
The best success story, and most intriguing, is creators Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet's interpretation of Fallout. This eight-part Prime Video series of his differs from other efforts in the structure of its source material. In Bethesda Game Studios' title, players create their own protagonist, known as his Vault Dweller, and are thrown into the wasteland to explore. Players have free will and the opportunity to dramatically change the world.
Players will meet strange denizens, form alliances with factions, and in some cases choose who lives or dies. In even crazier examples, players can even blow up entire settlements. That could really make it unpopular. It's not like a simple platformer like Mario or a story-driven blockbuster like The Last of Us.
How can you create a show with such an open-ended premise? The creators draw on over 25 years of lore and the beautifully weird atmosphere of video games. The original 2D game satirized American culture, politics, and capitalism, but later games added darker tones, hints of paranoia, and an anything-goes mentality. (Fallout 3 and beyond have had more fleshed out alien stories.)
This TV show captures only a small portion of that, but it offers fascinating fun for newcomers and longtime fans alike. It's a fresh story with characters and situations that are as memorable as anything in video games. For those new to the world of Fallout, this is a dark and comedic look at a post-apocalyptic world. This alternate-reality, retro-futuristic world is at once familiar and anachronistically strange. They look at Lucy, Maximus, and Ghoul (aka Cooper Howard) as protagonists with varying levels of experience in the wasteland.
Video game veterans, on the other hand, will be thrilled by this reference to the series. From his signature Vault-tec font to his computer hacking methods, everything is perfect. In many ways, the “Fallout” show feels as if it were a scenario written for a video game. Wagner and Robertson-Dworet are amazing at making the world and story not only approachable to Fallout newcomers, but also authentic to those who have spent hundreds of hours with the video game. I did some work.
This is a difficult balancing act that the creators deftly manage while also holding back on the storytelling secrets they weave. The process of figuring out how all the pieces fit together is a journey almost like a video game quest.
What's more, the plot that unfolds over the course of eight episodes carries the weight of being part of the series' lore. This is important because unlike other mediums, video games allow curious people to visit the world they see on TV and explore as much as they want. You can watch the show on Prime Video, and if you're intrigued enough by the world of Fallout, you can even venture into the wasteland yourself.
And “Fallout” fans new and old continue to do so. According to Steam data, Fallout 76, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout New Vegas have seen a surge in players jumping into the games. These titles rank in the top 20 of the gaming service's top sellers list. Not since a streaming show has had such a big impact on video games since Cyberpunk: Edgerunners renewed interest in Cyberpunk 2077 after its maligned launch.
For fans, the tide of video game movies and TV shows is changing. The collaboration between Hollywood and video games is creating high-quality, symbiotic projects. Both companies are looking for ways to present a world that's not only compelling enough to want to discover through a controller, but also compelling enough to keep viewers captivated in front of their TVs.
