The Fallout season one trailer proves that series creators and cast are perfectly bringing this video game to life, down to every last detail.
The Fallout games have a huge following, and for good reason. The open world concept allows players to follow a central story line but do it their way. They can be as good or as bad as they want to, as well as join different factions like the Brotherhood of Steel. Video game adaptations can be hit or miss, but there has been some success lately with series like The Last of Us. Prime Video will be releasing season one of Fallout on April 11th, and just by taking a look at the trailer it is obvious the creative team behind it are massive fans.
Not only is the overall feel exactly like the games – old timey music playing over a post-apocalyptic world – there are an insane amount of gaming Easter Eggs in the Fallout trailer. From the bobbleheads that players collect making an appearance, to the Vault-tec products and labels, to the Mr. Handy offering to “help” Lucy, to the Pip-Boy on vault dwellers wrists, this game made sure it was going to get everything right.
Lucy is a vault dweller, Maximus is a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, and The Ghoul is.. well… a ghoul. The settings are perfect as well. The inside of the vault looks as if it ripped right out of the video game screen, as does the distraught outside. Even the rubble is exactly like the piles of things you will dig through and collect as a gamer. And lets not forget the creatures — from a radiated bear, to a gulper, to everyone’s favorite companion (we are just going to be calling that canine by dogmeat). We just can’t wait to see a mirelurk!
Fallout Cast & Creators Talk Bringing the Game to Life
During a press conference in support of Fallout, ahead of the trailer release. The cast and creators discuss what was important to them when bringing the video game to life. Executive Producer and Director Jonathan “Jonah” Nolan immediately confesses that Fallout 3 consumed a year of his life because of how playable and fun it is, so it was a no brainer for him to sign on to this project.
“The games are just incredible. It’s such a rare thing and such an unbelievable to be able to take something that you love and get a chance to play in that universe. To get to create your own version of that universe. First time around for me was Batman and this time with Fallout, a series of games that I absolutely love.” Nolan admits that he had a fanboy moment when he met with Executive Producer, Bethesda Game Studios Todd Howard to discuss the series.” One of the things that is so powerful about the Fallout series is that everything is a little bit different.”
Executive Producer and Series Showrunner Graham Wagner confirms that this show is set in the world of Fallout but it is a new story that comes after the events we have seen in the video games. “The show is built on twenty-five years of creativity and thinking and building. We thought the best thing to do is continue that versus retread it because that is what has worked with Fallout over the years.” He goes on to say it is a living thing and they opted to take a swing at trying to build a new piece on top of all of that.
Geneva Robertson-Dworet , Executive Producer and Series Showrunner, explains that the themes of Fallout is what drove them to want to adapt it. “What if we create a vault that is very wonderful and peaceful but what does it mean that not everyone gets to live there and people have to suffer on the surface?” That is they idea that they chose to focus the show around. This is a story of have and have nots and the lengths that people will go through to survive.
Todd Howard is a huge part of the Fallout world, so what was it that made him say yes? “People would approach us over a ten year period after Fallout 3 came out, from 2009 on, to adapt Fallout to film or television, and we took a very cautious approach. Jonah was somebody I was such a fan of the movies he did, the TV he was doing, and actually had someone reach out. When I first talked to Jonah, honestly, it was like someone I had known for a long time. His approach right from the get-go was in sync with what I was thinking.”
Howard goes on to explain that this is a creative endeavor and having partners that you trust and know can create the world of Fallout in a new but authentic way, you jump at it. “It’s been a great collaboration.”
Ella Purnell, who plays a vault dweller named Lucy, says that what excited her about taking the role is that she is so innocent and naïve, but also privileged. “It was exciting for to start in that place. She’s essentially a newborn baby. She hasn’t had any real life experience. What she knows is what she was taught, and what she has read in books, in the vault. It’s very limited. Then you put her on the wasteland and what happens with that?”
Aaron Moten takes on the role of Brotherhood of Steel member Maximus, who is quite different from Lucy. “What excited me is a little bit of what Ella was talking about, that starting place and where you go from there. A person who has lived in the wasteland for his entire life and he has to have a certain type of moral ambiguity that is forced upon him in the world he lives in and where you go from there. How you hold on what is your unique pure self and how that changes and how you discover what you want.”
The Ghoul himself, Walton Goggins describes The Ghoul as the poet Virgil in Dante’s Inferno. “He’s the guide, if you will, through this irradiated hellscape that we find ourselves in in this post-apocalyptic world. He is a bounty hunter, an iconic bounty hunter. He is pragmatic, he is ruthless, he has his own set of moral codes, and he has a wicked sense of humor.”
He goes on to say, “He’s a very, very, very complicated guy, and to understand him, you have to understand the person that he was before the war. He had a name. His name was Cooper Howard, and he was a vastly different person than the ghoul that you’ve seen so far. Over the course of the show, through his experience back in the world before the nuclear fallout, you will understand how the world was. And he is the bridge between both these worlds.”
When it comes to what the team got right, Todd Howard says it is the authenticity they brought to it. “We like to say when we make the games that we obsess over every pixel. And Jonah and crew, they obsessed over every pixel of every frame, just to make it authentic. And the other thing, watching that trailer and the trick with Fallout is it has so many different tones. It goes between the serious, the dramatic, and action, and some humor and nostalgic music and dramatic music. I think the trailer does what the show does really well, which is it weaves those different things together in a very unique blend that only Fallout can bring. And they’ve done just an awesome job.”
As for Jonah and something he prides himself on that they accomplished, he says it is the power armor and the tone. “I think the tone was maybe the most challenging and the most intimidating thing for me. But working with Geneva and Graham, you knew that we were going to be in a really good place with that incredibly ambitious story. On a technical level, the scope of the world and the power armor in particular was one of those things you go, oh, how on earth are we going to do that? But we got there.”
Graham notes that his is a small thing. “If you saw in the trailer Chet, who gets splattered in blood, they got the Brylcreem just right. I know that’s not as ambitious but when they got the Brylcreem in his hair just right, I was like, nailed it. I guess we could have done that on a smaller show.”
Last but not least, Geneva admits it was everything. “We couldn’t be more grateful to our incredible production designer, Howard Cummings, who just poured his whole soul into this. Truly, arriving on set every day was like Christmas morning. And that, I think, is something that Jonah has brought to all of his projects. Just this incredible eye for meticulous detail. Every detail has to be perfect, and so much of it, we made physically. It’s not the effects. So I was really just grateful for that.”
Enter the world of Fallout on April 11th when it comes to Prime Video.
NEXT: How The Last Of Us Series Differs From The Games
About Fallout
Based on one of the greatest video game series of all time, Fallout is the story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have. 200 years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the irradiated hellscape their ancestors left behind — and are shocked to discover an incredibly complex, gleefully weird and highly violent universe waiting for them.
All episodes of Fallout season 1 will release on Prime Video April 11th.
Tessa Smith is a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Film and TV Critic. She is also a Freelance Writer. Tessa has been in the Entertainment writing business for ten years and is a member of several Critics Associations including the Critics Choice Association and the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association.