Prime Video’s Fallout TV show, which is based on the Fallout video game franchise, is surprisingly great.
The TV series, set in a post-apocalyptic take on Los Angeles, stars Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, Moises Arias, Aaron Moten and more. Goggins is excellent as The Ghoul, and the series also goes back 200 years before the apocalypse when his character attempts to learn more about Vault-Tec and its misdoings.
Purnell’s character, Lucy MacLean, is a young woman who’s lived her entire life in a vault, but after raiders invade her home to steal her father, she sets out into the wasteland to bring him back. Meanwhile, her brother Norm, played by Arias, learns the mysteries of Vault 32. There’s also a compelling side story focused on Moten’s Maximus, a young member of the Brotherhood of Steel.
The Fallout TV series features several mysteries alongside twists and turns that keep the viewer guessing. Staying true to the long-running video game franchise, the TV show has ample humour and gore, including off-the-wall jokes about cousins engaging in sexual acts, heads completely blowing off in a ridiculous fashion, a guy who sleeps with chickens, and more.
It also contains easter eggs with many connections to the Fallout video games, including the mention of Super Mutants, Dogmeat, the ability to hack, a two-headed cow known as Brahmin, Shady Sands and the New California Republic, which were both prominently featured in Fallout: New Vegas.
Not playing by the book
There are often at least a few notable issues with TV or movie adaptations of books and video games, but that’s not the case with the Fallout TV series because it’s not an exact copy of the game franchise’s story and world. Many adaptations play too close to the source material, aiming to directly replicate a book, video game or other form of media in an almost one-to-one way.
The Fallout TV show is set in the game series’ world but tells its own story and builds on it in unique and interesting ways. This is helped by the fact that the TV show takes place nine years after the events of Fallout 4.
While the Fallout TV series isn’t perfect, it gets a lot of things right — and I’m not alone in that opinion. Consider Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender TV series, which received a Metacritic score of 55 and a user score of 6.3. As someone who loved Nickelodeon’s original Avatar: The Last Airbender, I found the live-action TV show disappointing. It wasn’t that the acting or CGI was bad, but it was because it was an overall bad reimagining of the original series.
If Netflix had created its own story or focused on other characters in the world, its live-action take on Avatar the Last Airbender could have been far better, but going by the book and making changes that didn’t make a lot of sense resulted in a not-so-great viewing experience.
Without giving too much away, the Fallout TV show takes the fact that you create your own character and make decisions that notably impact gameplay and runs with it in a unique way. More game and book adaptations should take this route instead of playing it too close to the original source material.
More shows like Fallout
If you’re going to adapt a video game, this is the way to do it. Instead of trying to replicate the original, don’t be afraid to mix things up and create a new story set in the same world. It might feel like fan fiction to some, but I’d prefer this approach over an outright bad, more traditional adaptation.
Prime Video is part of Amazon Prime, which costs $9.99/month or $99/year (you can pay an extra $2.99/month to remove ads).
Image credit: Prime Video
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