JONATHAN NOLAN AND AMAZON PRIME VIDEO'S 'FALLOUT' WEB-SERIES REVIEW: BALLSY AND SPECTACULAR
Cast: Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, Aaron Clifton Moten, Moisés Arias, Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Emerson, Xelia Mendes-Jones, Johnny Pemberton
Director: Jonathan Nolan
Language: English
Fallout is much more than just its name. It flirts with ambitious and amazing ideas like apocalypse, war, survival, and adds hell lot of extravagant visuals, ingenious characters, and ballsy action. Internet says it is based on the role-playing video game franchise created by Interplay Entertainment and now owned by Bethesda Softworks , but there is much more than this.
The year is 2077, actor Cooper Howard and his daughter are caught in the middle of a nuclear attack against during the outbreak of the Great War. Only survival won’t suffice, so creators Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet lace the stunning show with stuff we won’t see in near future for long (No puns here).
Walton Goggins takes on the dual role of Cooper Howard, a B-movie western star, and The Ghoul, his 200-hundred-year-old mutant killer version; two vastly different characters existing in contrasting eras. And Goggins’ transformation into The Ghoul goes beyond acting. The character’s signature look involved extensive makeup and prosthetics.
Just like video games, Fallout grips you right from the word go. What does one need to get hooked to a video game? Maybe the concept, the idea, the background score, and the theme. And this series now streaming on Amazon ticks the boxes pretty effortlessly.
Will The Real Hero Stand Up?
And the actors are in fine form too, that are able to combine horror with humor when lives are at stakes and the future reeks of danger. In this ensemble, it’s hard to pinpoint who has the meatiest role and who walks away with the honors since all of them leave a lasting impression. The real heroes here could be the cinematographers Stuart Dryburgh and Teodoro Maniaci, and obviously the creators. They audaciously threw everything on the screen what they wrote on paper, and Stuart and Teodoro have truly let their imaginations run riot and wild. The show goes bonkers and allows us to feel the same.
No Room For Silence
But where video games suck us into their fictional world with silence and violence, Fallout has some crackling dialogues and exchanges. And mind you, this is no video game, we don’t have any remote in hands to control the future of the characters. There are no guns to kill the enemies, there are no mushrooms to strengthen the heroes, all we have are our nails to bite into as we sit back and wait what happens next.
To Machines, With Love
But just like games, does Fallout offer lifelines to people who could plunge to death? That’s a question the show answers rather metaphorically. And with futuristic shows like these, the machines have to emote as effortlessly as the humans, or sometimes even more, and they do. Every prop is a character here and every movement leads to something. Had this not been an eight-episode series, it unquestionably deserved a big screen experience. But since video games are played at home, Fallout has also come to our homes. Maybe next time.
Rating: 3 (out of 5 stars)
Fallout is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video