By any metric – critical acclaim, viewership, or audience reaction – Amazon’s live-action Fallout series is an enormous success.
Viewers, even those who weren’t previously familiar with the long-running game series, embraced the quirky fifties-inspired post-apocalyptic setting and Fallout’s signature mix of humor, over-the-top gore, and grim themes. The first season of the series is sharply written, with three archetypal main characters that were a joy to watch develop and grow.
It’s downright difficult to make adaptations of video games. It’s easy to fumble the ball, starting with the choice of source material. For instance, Rampage is a poor choice of game to adapt for what should be an obvious host of reasons – but that didn’t stop filmmakers from trying.
In recent years, we’ve gotten not only a great Fallout adaptation but an acclaimed The Last of Us series on HBO, an honestly good Dungeons & Dragons movie, and an upcoming star-studded take on Borderlands which – though the final verdict is still to be rendered – appears from the trailer to have captured the source material’s goofy spirit.
Adapting a videogame requires navigating a tricky tightrope between old fans and a new audience, but Fallout shows how to do it right.
How did Amazon strike gold in the post-apocalyptic wasteland? Read on.
Simultaneously the most crash-prone and
the most interestingly unique Fallout game.
Pick the Right Franchise
The Fallout series has a long history. The original two games by Interplay are classics of isometric RPG heyday in the late nineties. Inspired by games like Wasteland and movies like Mad Max, the first Fallout delivered legitimate choice and freeform exploration, and established the visual and thematic touchstones of the setting.
Bethesda picked up the license in 2007 and proceeded to deliver Fallout 3. Though some fans thought Fallout 3 fell short of the high bar set by the original games, the shift to first-person shooter mechanics, the breadth and open nature of the gameplay, and the clever VATS system widened the franchise’s audience to a whole new generation of fans.
Fallout 3 was quickly followed by Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas in 2010, the sales juggernaut of Fallout 4 in 2015, and Fallout 76, the first multiplayer game in the franchise. Each game added to the extensive lore of the wasteland, expanding the history of its colorful setting and diverse factions.
So Amazon didn’t have to build an interesting universe from the ground up. They had over two decades’ worth of backstory to start from – along with a passionate fanbase that dissected, reimagined, and poured over even the tiniest nuggets of lore.
There are obvious benefits in adapting a franchise with as much backstory as the Fallout games provide – but there’s a risk as well, one that it’s clear the Amazon showrunners were aware of.
Leverage Fan Passion
When you’re adapting a long-running franchise and a core of ultra-passionate fans, there are two ways you can go.
You can ignore the parts of the lore that don’t suit your goals, risking alienating the hardcore but potentially delivering a more mass-market product.
Or you can slavishly adapt every preexisting element of the source material, delivering what the original fans want but making it harder to draw in new viewers who don’t have the context.
Beloved franchises can, over time, start to collapse under the weight of their history. Witness the fan dissection of intellectual properties like Star Wars and Star Trek over the years – attempts to reconcile various movies, TV shows, books, and games with a single One True View of a setting’s lore.
massive spikes in player counts for all the
games. Bethesda must be thrilled!
The trick is to start from a comprehensive understanding of what elements are most important about a franchise – something the showrunners of Fallout took the time to figure out.
It’s evident from the opening scene, a training montage for the naive vault dweller Lucy which mirrors Fallout’s classic character creation, down to calling out specific skills from the game (and crucial to wasteland survival), like repairing.
Their passion for the material bleeds off the set design and props – a passing shot of a two-headed brahmin, the familiar look of the radiation-ravaged ghouls, and the signature oversized Pip-Boy on Lucy’s wrist.
And it shines through in the cinematography and soundtrack – the sharp well-defined color palette of the wasteland setting (periodically splashed with blood and gore), paired with old songs that perfectly set the mood for each scene.
Fallout was made by and for fans of the game. Yet it doesn’t leave new viewers behind and spend hours explaining every detail of its lore – it keeps the characters, plot, and action front and center, and trusts that the wasteland is interesting enough to keep newcomers engaged.
Some of the best fan service moments are blink-and-you’ll-miss-them – a single shot of a deathclaw skull, a brief glimpse of the hacking minigame from Fallout 3. These moments don’t distract a viewer who’s unfamiliar with the lore; instead, they feel like the background elements they are, minor enrichments to a full-featured setting.
But the well-paced inclusion of bits from the franchise’s history, coupled with an unparalleled respect for the continuity of the stories of all the games, demonstrates a level of care for the source material missing from most video game adaptations.
Know your Material
The creators of HBO’s The Last of Us made a fantastic show and deserve all the praise they received, but I think they had an easier job than the creators of Fallout.
The Last of Us was a direct adaptation of a story-focused game – one where a strong plot and great characters, rather than the gameplay, are the elements that engage the audience.
Fallout has always been more about its unique setting and open, flexible gameplay than a compelling main plot. The showrunners had to deliver a fresh story that would draw in a new audience while including the elements that made the games popular in the first place.
As an ex-New Englander, it’s my
favorite setting from the games.
It could have easily gone wrong. The history of video game adaptation is littered with failure. But a few of those failures are interesting to revisit with fresh eyes.
For instance, the Doom movie from 2005, which prominently featured Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, is frequently silly – yet at the same time, it has moments suggesting the same kind of understanding of the source franchise’s material that the Fallout series demonstrates.
Dead scientists are named after developers (“Dr. Carmack”) – a fantastic easter egg. There’s a prominent unveiling of the BFG, Doom’s signature weapon. There’s even an oddly nostalgic first-person sequence at the end, featuring the game’s famous chainsaw.
Don’t misunderstand – I’m not saying the Doom movie was good. The dialogue is ridiculous, the behavior of the characters is frequently off-putting, and the movie stumbles from action set piece to action set piece with paper-thin justifications, including a moment or two for the Rock to show off his wrestling moves.
But as a gamer, the Doom movie is a guilty pleasure of mine. The creators were clearly trying. The blueprint for making a game adaptation that they applied – respect for the source material and clever nods to the fans, paired with a fresh story for newcomers – is the blueprint for success that the Fallout creators executed so well.
With decades of video game history behind us, filmmakers and studio executives have finally learned how to do it right. The stumbles of the worst adaptations, such as 1999’s dreadful Wing Commander or 1997’s clunky and ludicrous Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, are mistakes that won’t be repeated.
Today’s movie and television execs grew up as gamers themselves. As Fallout demonstrates, they understand how to adapt a game for a wider audience – while simultaneously making the fans of the original game happy.
Season 1 of Fallout is streaming on Amazon Prime. New blog content appears on ScreeGames.com every Tuesday.