Lucy climbs out of the luxurious underground bunker for the first time in her life. She will have to use all her skills to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland decimated by atomic weapons. The new Fallout TV series is set roughly two centuries after nuclear Armageddon.
Amazon Prime Video will release all eight episodes this Thursday in 240 countries, including the Czech Republic. Behind the project are husband and wife Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, authors of the award-winning Westworld saga. While filming, they were mixed with excitement and nervousness. “Honestly, it was kind of scary because I’ve played the Fallout games and I love them,” Nolan says.
Retrofuturistic game series working with the aesthetics of the 40s and 50s of the last century began the first work from 1997, the last so far, titled Fallout 76, was published in 2018. They all take place in a world where atomic energy was supposed to bring about a better future. However, the utopian belief was dashed when a nuclear apocalypse occurred instead. It wiped out most of the civilization, on whose ruins a new one is now being born.
The series takes place more than 200 years after the war, around 2296, and follows a trio of characters. Ella Purnell plays the naïve, optimistic young idealist Lucy. She puts on a blue-and-yellow jumpsuit and for the first time leaves the safety of the luxurious anti-nuclear shelter number 33. Outside, however, she discovers an environment full of violence, anarchy and mutants.
Walton Goggins portrayed Ghoul, who made a living as a Western actor before the apocalypse. During a nuclear armageddon, he tried in vain to save his family, after which he mutated and lost the remnants of his illusions. Today he is missing his nose and is a ruthless man hunter who only cares about himself, describing Forbes magazine.
In terms of value, Maximus, played by Aaron Moten, is a young member of the military organization Brotherhood of Steel, which tries to establish law and order. Its members wear massive armor, known to players as the T-60.
On the left is a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, on the right is Aaron Moten as Maximus. | Photo: Amazon Prime Video
Both men, each pursuing different goals, Lucy meets in the inhospitable landscape on her way to her father. He was portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan, known from the series Twin Peaks or Sex and the City. He conceived of his character, the administrator of underground shelter 33, as a father figure. “I have a fifteen-year-old son myself, but I don’t get many chances to play a father, so I was looking forward to it all the more,” he said MacLachlan to Variety.com.
According to the magazine The Hollywood Reporter the adaptation of Fallout differs from other post-apocalyptic series such as the recent The Last of Us by how strongly it works with the aesthetics of the 1950s. It also relies heavily on humor and sometimes shocking levels of violence. The project raised expectations ahead, promotional events last week attended billionaire Elon Musk.
The 47-year-old creator Jonathan Nolan is the brother of the better-known director Christopher Nolan. He wrote the screenplay for several of his films including The Dark Knight or the sci-fi Interstellar. In the case of Fallout, however, Jonathan Nolan directed the first three episodes. “I see a similarity with games in that they are all part of one open world, but each has its own story and its own characters. Our series shares that world with them, but also introduces new characters into it,” describes the creator.
He has had a lifelong relationship with games, well remembering how he was enchanted by Fallout 3 16 years ago. ” he compares and specifically mentions sagas like Half-Life or BioShock.
According to him, the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout is “dark, mythical and violent, but also funny, satirical and almost goofy in places”, which he tried to transfer to the series. “I probably had the most fun when we were working on all the monsters and the action scenes and the armor and stuff,” Jonathan Nolan mentions.
The Fallout series will be available on Amazon Prime Video from Thursday. | Video: Amazon Prime Video
The crew filmed in the US states of Utah and New York, but also traveled to the African Namibia for shots from the desert and wasteland.
“When you see us walking through the desert at the very beginning, it’s not gimmicks, it’s Skeleton Coast,” actor Walton Goggins mentions. The Skeleton Coast is the name given to a 500 kilometer stretch of Atlantic coast in the north of Namibia. “The sets we go through are real, we shot it in abandoned diamond mines,” Goggins elaborates.
His colleague Kyle MacLachlan understands that players are tempering their enthusiasm ahead of the premiere. “I think the real fans of those games are happy and at the same time a little afraid, because they have already burned themselves several times,” says the actor, referring to other unsuccessful attempts to make movies or series based on the games.
He doesn’t understand them himself, he tried to play Fallout and within a few seconds his character died, he admits. “However, it seems to me that the more Fallout we show, the more excited people are,” believes Kyle MacLachlan.
Deadline.com on Monday he wrote, that although the first reactions to Fallout are yet to come, a sequel already seems certain. Although Amazon Prime Video has not officially announced it, it has already received tax incentives from the US state of California in the amount of 25 million dollars to film the second season.
